IN SEPTEMBER 2004 Thomas Knutson, a climate modeller at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published a paper suggesting that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide would lead to more intense hurricanes. Ten months later, when further research supported this link, Knutson was invited to comment by a TV station. Before he could appear, however, a NOAA press officer informed him that his slot had been cancelled, because “the White House said no”. All further media enquires were routed to a researcher who contested the link between hurricane intensity and global warming.

This story is just one of many uncovered in Atmosphere of Pressure: Political Interference in Federal Climate Science, a report published this week by two US pressure groups, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The incidents reveal the extraordinary lengths to which the Bush administration is willing to go to suppress information about climate change (see “Censors exposed”).

Since President Bush entered the White House, his administration has been investigated for political vetting of scientific advisors, and criticised for attempting to muzzle leading climate researchers, such as NASA’s Jim Hansen (New Scientist, 4 February 2006, p 5). But what the GAP and UCS have found is that attempts to distort the scientific message on global warming run even wider and deeper than previously thought.

Similar tactics emerged across seven federally funded bodies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to NOAA and the US Geological Survey. They include denying the media access to researchers with the “wrong” views or research results, delaying interviews so the media lose interest, not issuing press releases, changing press releases by injecting uncertainty, removing “hot-button” terms such as global warming, or making them so bland or technical that nobody would give them a second glance. The worst examples involve changing scientific information in advice to members of Congress.

Such tricks are reminiscent of those used by Big Tobacco to obfuscate the dangers of smoking, and of George Orwell’s Newspeak, the language he created in his novel 1984, which prevented anyone from discussing issues prohibited by the Ministry of Truth. They are not what you expect from a democratic government that spends $3 billion a year on climate change research. It poses the question, why spend the money in the first place?

We all know that governments take scientific findings and use them or ignore them according to their ideological goals. But what is happening here is different: the scientific findings themselves are being manipulated in a cynical attempt to perpetuate ignorance and misunderstanding. US policy makers and the public have a right to know what their scientists have discovered. Without that information, they cannot make realistic plans for a future that may well be radically altered by climate change.
“Scientific findings are being manipulated in a cynical attempt to perpetuate ignorance and misunderstanding�

What should be done? There are already safeguards that allow US scientists to speak publicly about their work, such as the Whistleblower Act and the Anti-Gag Statute. The trouble is that these still pit researchers against their employers. Surely, it would be better if federal research agencies fostered an atmosphere free from ideological control.

The new Congress with its Democratic majority has an opportunity to bring federal agencies to heel. It could order investigations into agencies’ policies, call the agency heads to account in hearings or legislate to force agencies to support the free exchange of scientific information. Since the debacle between Hansen and NASA, the space agency has adopted more open policies, which have been cautiously welcomed by researchers and which have improved morale.

The Bush administration has made clear that it does not follow a “reality-based” agenda. Portraying a distorted view of climate change may have served it well in the short term. But the laws of physics and chemistry that govern climate change cannot be eluded for ever. They are ultimate arbiters of reality, and ignoring them will serve nobody well in the long term.

From issue 2589 of New Scientist magazine, 03 February 2007, page 5