Climate change deniers love to claim that the scientific community is hostile to any competing theories on climate change, they claim that there is a massive conspiracy silencing anyone who doesn’t agree with the conclusions of the IPCC despite there being no evidence for such claims, and plenty of evidence suggesting that the opposite is true. It has been a poorly kept secret that the Bush administration has systematically prevented climate scientists from communicating their findings on climate change to the public, presumably in an effort to prevent the Bush administration from making the embarrassing admission that it has completely dropped the ball on climate change.
Well just in case you weren’t yet convinced of the Bush administration’s efforts to suppress climate science, a new report from the inspector general at NASA concludes that:
NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.
In other words, the free and open flow of scientific information, on the one of most pressing issues facing the planet, was apparently downplayed in an effort to prevent facts from interfering with White House policies.
It seems that James Hansen was right on the money when he said that:
Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career, in my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now.
This is unacceptable and everyone, regardless of political leanings, should be outraged. As I have repeated several times: policy made from inaccurate facts is bound to fail. This is one of the central failings of the Bush administration, and any future administration would be wise to learn form this mistake.
The reality facing deniers (though as they namesake suggests they will deny it) is that if a climate change conspiracy does exists it is a conspiracy to confuse the public and downplay climate science.
(h/t DeSmogBlog)
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