When it comes to global warming, the Bush administration is not beneath muzzling scientists. For example, James Hansen, the longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has spoken out repeatedly, explaining to anyone who will listen that administration officials have tried to censor scientific information about climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientists have reported similar problems.
What’s startling, however, is that in some cases the administration doesn’t have to proactively censor experts, researchers, and scientists — in some instances, the professionals now recognize the need to censor themselves.
The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.
Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year’s exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Also, officials omitted scientists’ interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered “to show that global warming could go either way,” Sullivan said.
When global warming and a chilling effect meet, it isn't pretty.
