Saturday, February 04, 2006

Muffled warnings on global warming

By Derrick Z. Jackson
Boston Globe
February 4, 2006

THE BURNING issue was the thin ice encrusted on the boulders. The rocks were half-submerged in a small stream at the foot of the White Mountains in Maine. Ribbons of water swirled around them, propelled by two days of nonstop rain.

That was the first problem. It was mid-January. In northern New England, the rain usually would have been a foot of snow. The boulders would have been smothered into giant marshmallows. This aberration was amplified by the seductive warmth in Boston. For the first time in about a quarter century of Januarys, I jogged around the Charles River on consecutive weekends in shorts. The only true blast of winter I have felt this season was with my Scouts, snowshoeing in the White Mountains to 2,700 feet.

The coup de ice came at the end of January when NASA’s chief climate scientist, James Hansen, said Bush administration minions were muffling his warnings on global warming. Hansen said officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in recent months have canceled or rejected interview requests for him and appointed monitors for approved interviews. He reportedly was ordered last fall to remove preliminary information from the Internet that said last year might be the warmest year on record. Last week, NASA announced that 2005 was indeed the warmest on record.

‘’In my three decades in government, I’ve never seen control of communications to the public so constrained,” Hansen said over the phone this week. ‘’Communications from government scientists have never been so constrained.”

Hansen, 63, said NASA, which denies any censorship, seemed particularly petrified by a December speech he gave in San Francisco before other earth and space scientists. He said of the nation’s stonewalling on climate change, ‘’It seems to me that special interests have been a roadblock wielding undue influence over policymakers. The special interests seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren or the long-term economic well-being of our country.”

Hansen said ‘’business as usual” will lead to a ‘’different planet.” The temperature will rise about 5 degrees Fahrenheit over this century to a warmth not seen for 3 million years, a time when sea levels were eight stories higher than today. The human-induced melting of polar ice could bring those eight stories of water back in mere centuries, not a more natural timing of many thousands of years.

Hansen said we can beat the tipping point for runaway change if the United States leads global efforts to limit or eliminate greenhouse gases and pollutants. There is no margin for business as usual. ‘’We can’t afford to wait another 10 years,” he said.

It appears we will lose more time. In his State of the Union address, Bush said, ‘’America is addicted to oil,” but did not mention the top first step environmentalists and scientists say the United States must take to fight global warming—higher fuel efficiency for cars. He said he wanted to support more math and science for schoolchildren and more research in the physical sciences.

But if his minions ignore and stifle the best scientists we have today, there is no point.

In the early days of the Bush administration, Hansen’s credentials earned him two invitations to address Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive, industry-packed energy task force. He spoke two years ago to US auto executives at ExxonMobil headquarters.

The White House went on to urge energy drilling at all costs. Auto execs rebuffed Hansen on fuel efficiency by saying they only give consumers what they want. ‘’After the meeting, I watched TV and saw all these ads, with cars on top of mountain peaks and fantastic vistas of the American West,” Hansen said. ‘’It’s like the cigarette ads that use sex to sell. All the average person does with an SUV is commute to work or the store. They’re creating a market they claim the public is demanding.”

Listening to Hansen, it was clear he will continue to speak out for science despite the special interests. He said the last time he checked, democracy only works when the public is well informed. ‘’For instance, they’re using the economy as the reason not to consider taking action,” Hansen said. ‘’I’ve been chastised for being a scientist saying we are damaging the economy in the long run. But you need to look at the broad problem. I think I’m free to do so and free to have my opinion.”

The melting polar ice and the thin ice cap on the river boulder in Maine wait for America to listen to the right opinion. The ice cube is the new canary warning of doom. If we do not listen, it will melt in one place, and drown us in another.