Customer Reviews

Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I struggle trying to decide what to write about this book. On the one hand, large portions of it are extremely tedious to get through and seem like overkill. On the other hand, a few parts are some of the best writing on the global warming issue I have read recently. The book begins with a section that covers about the first half, which is basically an almost blow-by-blow accounting of all sorts of censorship, editing, distortion, and intimidation by political appointees in NASA. I suspect many people will give up on this book before finishing this part. I think it is too long and detailed. Perhaps more summary with a few well-placed examples would have sufficed. Around the middle of the book, the tone changes greatly, and there is much more coverage of Hansen's actual work through the years and what it showed about global warming. In this section Hansen is depicted as a careful scientist who basically got it right 30 years ago and has been getting better since. This section contains some of the best descriptions of how real-world data and modeling fit the picture, and why global warming deniers are way off base. Finally, towards the end of the book emphasis shifts to Hansen's more recent advocacy in favor of doing something, and (the author's)dire predictions for what's in store if we don't. Curiously, the descriptions of how much Hansen has been doing found at the end of the book seem a little out of synch with the claims of censorship and muzzling found at the beginning of the book.

In the second half of the book, Bowen seems to rely on the work of Journalist Ross Gelbspan, who shares an interest in how political forces have tried to distort or derail the science of global warming, and some of the material from his own previous book on the study of ice.

I think the following extremely important points can be gleaned from the book:
1) Hansen is a very meticulous scientist who shys away from political involvement or spectacular claims in public, in spite of how is he generally characterized by those hoping to smear him.
2) Hansen is perhaps the most important global warming researcher in the US, and has an incredible 30+ year record of solid work and correct predictions or views on things.
3) We have essentially lost many years of attacking the problem of global warming by allowing short-term corporate interests to dictate a policy that puts profit above long-term stability of the environment.
4) There is overwhelming and basically unassailable evidence of what is going on, and a strong basis for solid predictions of what could happen.

I will conclude by suggesting this book, while being very important in some aspects could have been much better in many ways. It can't decide if it's a biography on Dr. Hansen, an investigative report on Bush administration attempts to stymie science, or a scientific wake-up call on global warming. I give it three stars because it's so hard to get through the first half. However, I do suggest that anyone interested in this topic give it a try.

The most important scientific issue confronting our fellow Americans, and indeed, all of humanity, is global warming. On a warm, humid afternoon in June 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen alerted us to its ever present danger, testifying before a U. S. Senate committee, and then, afterwards, to a group of reporters. One mere sentence uttered by Hansen to these reporters, emphasized this danger, "It's time to stop waffling.... and say that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate now." It is an ever present danger that has garnered the keen interest of diplomats and other politicians worldwide, including those here in the United States. But it is also an ever present danger whose very significance has been ignored by the current administration of President George W. Bush, which has instead, been engaged in scientific censorship of the most virulent kind. Physicist and writer Mark Bowen's "Censoring Science" takes a cold, hard look at the Bush administration's undeniable scientific censorship of NASA climatologist James Hansen in a fast-paced literary style that's more reminiscent of a well-plotted Ian Fleming espionage thriller, than a serious, rather credible, work of investigative scientific journalism. "Censoring Science" offers compelling evidence as to how that censorship worked, trying to cast "doubt" on superb climate science in extensively-edited scientific reports that "demonstrated" the "uncertainties" of this science, not the undeniable facts pointing to the reality of global warming. Bowen offers an inspirational portrait of Hansen, his research, and his colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies - the research center headed by Hansen - that's located at the southern end of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus; ones which are among the most important reasons to acquire this splendid book.

Bowen demonstrates how Bush administration political appointees fostered this censorship, especially through "editing" of press releases of newly published scientific research, and in determining how scientists like Hansen could speak to professional journalists. One of these political appointees was a new appointee, college dropout George Deutsch, who soon announced his keen interest in and support of Intelligent Design by noting in an e-mail to NASA science writer Flint Wild, "... it is not NASA's place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.... We, as NASA, must be diligent here, because this is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one half of this debate from NASA." Regrettably, an e-mail such as this one merely reflected the political mindset of those Bush administration appointees like Deutsch, who regarded global warming as "just a theory" unsubstantiated by actual scientific evidence; actual scientific evidence which was being presented by Hansen, other NASA climatologists, and their colleagues across the globe. In his unflinching, unsympathetic depiction of NASA scientific censorship of James Hansen and his research, Bowen deserves ample praise for writing what is truly one of the most important books published this year; one that ought to be read by a wide readership.

Dr. James Hansen is, without question, the most knowledgeable individual on the subject of climate science in the United States, and quite possibly the world. Having spent the better part of thirty years studying and researching global warming, he has little interest in politics and politicians. His goal is to discover information about global warming and disseminate that information to the world. Sadly for Dr. Hansen, Bush became President and started to insert political hacks into jobs they were sorely unqualified for ("Heck of a job there Brownie" anyone).

This book looks at a mix of three things....the almost tragically comical efforts of the Bush administration of censor science and the scientists that were producing the information (primarily at Goddard Institute for Space Studies), the life story of Dr Hansen and the science behind global warming.

The portions of the book that deal with the political attacks made me feel like I had fallen down the rabbit hole and joined Alice. It was astounding how incompetent and partisan NASA became after the appointment of various level hacks. While I can see where the employees at NASA were frightened, looking back its almost surreal how insane the whole situation became; primarily so Bush could get reelected and continue to help his corporate buddies.

The information on global warming and climate change explains some of the science and shows what the Bush administration was trying to hide. It is a fairly brief look at a very intense form of science and is explained quite well.

The book is generally well written, and the weaving of the political, biographical and scientific information keeps any one section from becoming overloaded with data. The only complaint I had was that it was nearly impossible to follow who worked for whom in which agency. A graph of who was where would have been a nice addition. A wonderful read, especially when coupled with the broader book of the subject, "Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration".

This important book tells one of the most troubling stories of 2005, the attempted silencing of scientific findings about global climate change at NASA in a ham-handed effort to control the story of scientific findings. "Censoring Science" outlines the battle between science and politicians in a very specific incident. Mark Bowen sets an impressive agenda for this book, and generally he does a credible job of explaining three related issues as they came together at NASA Headquarters in the middle part of the decade.

The first is the tragicomic efforts of the Bush administration to control scientists associated with the federal government and attempts to keep them from taking positions on hot-button issues, such as global warming, that would necessitate policy decisions anathema to the conservative political base. This was a broad-based effort involving scientists at NASA, NOAA, and other government agencies. The focus here, however, was on NASA and one particular scientist. This is the second issue that Bowen discusses thoroughly; James R. Hansen has been involved in research about global warming since the 1970s. His organization, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, has a long tradition of tracking the annual global temperatures and has been finding a slow rise over the decades since the space age began. A third area, less well handled by Bowen but certainly a useful overview for general readers, is the manner in which scientific disciplines and questioning has led to the current state of understanding about the phenomenon of global warming.

The story begins with James Hansen, a global climate change scientist at NASA's Goddard institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, N.Y., and he is clearly the star of "Censoring Science." Throughout he battles bureaucrats, ideologues, and contrarians to ensure that his research findings about global warming are neither bowdlerized nor buried under mountains of pressure from those seeking to minimize changes that might result from knowledge about this threatening crisis of the twenty-first century. "Censoring Science" makes the case that the evidence is compelling for global warming and that concerted efforts existed in the Bush administration to keep it from being presented. This took several forms: questioning the quality of the science or emphasizing that consensus on the meaning of the scientific data did not exist or in some instances bald-facedly altering reports and press releases to cast doubt on what the vast majority of scientists are convinced is the undeniable fact of global warming.

Hansen has been sounding the alarm for many years. For example, in June 1988 he told a U.S. Senate committee of the potential hazard of climatic changes. One sentence to reporters caught the public's attention: "It's time to stop waffling....and say that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate now." Such strident statements did not endear Hansen to political leaders who had responsibility for implementing changes to mitigate these changes because of the manner in which they would affect U.S. business interests. Bowen makes clear that this was not specifically a partisan issue at first. Some in both political parties believed action needed to be taken and others on both sides also believed no action was required. That has changed over the years, and the response to global warming has taken on the color of the two parties and their priorities, with the Republicans either denying it or questioning the science or, as we see in this book, manipulating the presentation of findings to reflect ideological biases. Hansen stands in "Censoring Science" as the resolute advocate of the integrity of science, eventually going over his NASA handler's heads to speak directly to the public through the media.

The villains in this story are several political appointees in the White House and at NASA who tried to counteract both the science and the fears concerning global warming. The associate administrator for public affairs at NASA, David Mould, is center stage in this discussion. So is Dean Acosta and Glenn Mahone. All were Bush administration political appointees. As Bowen quoted David Steitz at NASA Headquarters, "Glenn was evil and smart; Dean was just evil" (p. 123). Mark Bowen documents well the manner in which they ensured that the global warming science that Hansen issued was censored, especially through "editing" press releases of newly published scientific research, and in trying to box Hansen so that his access to the media was limited.

There are others also involved in censoring the science of global climate change. The person that received the most attention, although he was essentially a flunky, was a young political appointee named George Deutsch, who was not clevor enough to cover his tracks and resigned his job when his actions were exposed. As a junior public affairs officer at NASA Headquarters he exerted more pressure on the system than his position in the bureaucracy would have justified. He modified press releases, tried to control who spoke with scientists, and repeatedly put partisan loyalties above seemingly inviolate ethical considerations in the pursuit of science. His actions went far beyond global warming. He sent an e-mail to Flint Wild, a NASA educator, arguing that the Big Bang should not be mentioned unless NASA emphasize that "it is only a theory" and that "intelligent design" should have equal standing. "...it is not NASA's place, nor should it be," he wrote, "to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator....We, as NASA, must be diligent here, because this is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one half of this debate from NASA" (p. 66).

It was Deutsch's ham-handed approach to scientific censorship that ignited the public debate that eventually led to the reversal of these actions. Andrew Revkin's bombshell of a front-page "New York Times" article on Sunday, January 29, 2006, opened this story to public scrutiny. It led to official NASA policy statements affirming scientific independence.

But this came only after the actions of several careerists both inside NASA and out who worked, often quietly, to make sure scientists could report their findings without censorship. The chief among them is James Hansen, but Mark Hess, Public Affairs head at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Leslie McCarthy, the public affairs officer at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, are two others. Hess and McCarthy consistently asked for written guidance, and rarely got it. Failing that, they wrote notes of their telephone conversations with Mould, Acosta, and others, documenting what had been discussed. These proved critical in showing that NASA Public Affairs had ridden off the rails in carrying out its primary task, as stated in the National Air and Space Act of 1958, to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof."

"Censoring Science" is a fascinating and cautionary account of one of the saddest episodes in the history of NASA, the subversion of the search for scientific knowledge to a political agenda. NASA officials have made many mistakes over the agency's history; the agency heads' devotion to certain programs and priorities might be questioned but I am aware of no instance in NASA's past (and I have spent many years close to the space agency) in which there was a cabal in place systematically seeking to change scientific findings to fit some pre-ordained position. It reminds me of the great soliloquy by Randy Quaid from Ron Howard's feature film, "The Paper," about the tabloid nature of a major New York City daily newspaper: "We run stupid headlines because we think they're funny. We run maimings on the front page because we got good art. And I spend three weeks bitching about my car because it sells papers. But at least it's the truth. As far as I can remember we never ever, ever knowingly got a story wrong, until tonight."

This censorship episode was NASA's "tonight." I hope the agency does not allow such a thing to happen again. If Mark Bowen's account of what took place at NASA serves as a smack to the forehead of agency leaders and employees it will serve a valuable purpose. It also points directions for historical research in the future, as that community must work to explore the theme of the creation and dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge and its control in space history.

Very interesting reading . . . . The book outlines the battle between science and politicians in a very specific incident. When I read about something like this, I wonder why nothing much is in the news. Both politicians and media seem to underestimate the intelligence of the general population. Trying to "spin" science to meet political agendas will eventually fail. This book makes interesting reading!

This book carries a very powerful message, showing us that global warming is yet one more thing big business pays politicians to lie to the public about, in the interest of keeping money flowing their way. Like the tobacco companies have been doing for decades, oil companies and major factory polluters will mislead the masses as long as is humanly possible, and politicians will be paid well for helping. Things will only change if enough of the public learns from books like this one, and refuses to continue to allow corporations to get away with it.

Censoring Science, written by Mark Bowen (author of the highly regarded, Thin Ice, also about climate change), is a powerful indictment of the petroleum and other types of industries' control over the political decision-making process. It succinctly and captivatingly describes the science of global warming for lay persons. In addition, through moving personal narrative, we encounter the deep integrity of some of the persons involved in the issue. This is especially true of Jim Hansen, the lead climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr. Hansen, a modest, soft-spoken person, has come out publicly, beginning in 1988, both with dire warnings related to global warming as well as with disclosures that industry and fossil fuel-oriented elements of the government have been carrying on an intense campaign to prevent this information from being reported to the public.

In my opinion, this is a must read for anyone interested in the well-being of the planet and in understanding how powerful corporate and political forces have succeeded in keeping us ignorant about our planet's increasingly dire situation.

Jim Hansen's story is a fascinating one: a nice, quiet guy who would really rather just sit in his office working on computer programs and climate statistics, but who got riled up by the enemies who couldn't tolerate the scientific ideas he came up with. If you don't know his story, you should; it tells you much of what you need to know about what is probably the most important issues of the 21st century. Hansen is the most outspoken of the scientists who predicted, back in the 1970s, that sometime around 2000 the global average temperature would reach levels never recorded before. They were right, and since prediction is the gold standard of science, they deserve our close attention when they say it is going to keep getting hotter. As for those who claim that Hansen and his colleagues are all wrong, not only have their own predictions failed, but Bowen and others have documented that the entire movement to deny global warming had its origins in corporate public relations efforts and partisan political ideology. We can expect more of that as deniers pile on with negative reviews of this book. Hidden bureaucratic maneuvers are a difficult subject to explain, and so is climate science, but Bowen is a top journalist and knows how to make a story understandable and interesting.

This is excerpted from a review that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News and have archived on my Science Shelf web site (URL of The Science Shelf is the obvious choice).

People who have been following the politics and science of climate change know the name of NASA climatology expert James Hansen well. Since testifying at a famous Senate hearing in the blistering summer of 1988, he has been a leading voice among scientists warning that the Earth's average temperature is rising, that global warming can have consequences that threaten civilization, and that international and national policies can mitigate the threat.

Until recently, Dr. Hansen never advocated specific policies, but it was always clear that the political solution would entail burning less fossil fuel. That has made Dr. Hansen a threat to the coal and oil industries, which have been key supporters both Bush administrations.

By the middle of the current decade, with global temperature regularly setting records, the fossil fuel industry supported global warming denial machine needed to change its tactics. It was no longer sufficient to muddy the waters. They needed to rein in the public pronouncements of Dr. Hansen and a growing number of scientists within and supported by [government agencies]....

Fortunately for the big money fossil fuel interests, and unfortunately for the world at large, the George W. Bush administration was more than willing to ignore the science when they could, and put a different "spin" on it when they couldn't.

The administration's tactics came to light in a front-page New York Times article by Andrew Revkin on Sunday, January 29, 2006. The "fall guy" for the story was a 24-year-old political appointee named George Deutsch, who, without training in the sciences, was editing NASA news releases to fit his evangelical Christian views of the Big Bang and his denialist views of climate change....

Clearly, this is an important story, ...but as a piece of journalism, this book is weak in several respects. Bowen had in his hands the facts around which he could have woven a strong narrative thread about political bull-headedness and dangerous disregard of scientific reality on one side, and on the other, the recent transformation of Jim Hansen to someone who saw it as his duty to speak out on policy as well as science. Instead, the book begins with 100 pages filled with mind-numbing details of the George Deutsch story, though he is ultimately a minor character in the drama.

Then, when he finally gets to the science, Bowen is frequently incautious. He fails to label clearly the worst-case scenarios, which opens him up to criticism as an alarmist rather than as one sounding a needed warning. He frequently overstates the scientific case...

Ultimately, the book feels more like a paean to Jim Hansen than a probe "inside the political attack" on him. This will be disappointing to readers who pick up the book looking for good journalism as well as good science.

Third Nobelist? Yes, more on that in a minute.

If you want to know just how far BushCo has gone in collaboration with Big Oil and Big Coal in general, and folks like ExxonMobil and Peabody in particular, to censor sound science on anthropogenic global warming and its degree of certainty, this is THE book to read.

If you want to understand how this censoring, while it starts with the attacks on James Hanson, goes far beyond that, throughout NASA and onto the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this book has the details.

If you want to see how this attack came out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to the degree a paper/e-mail/phone log trail was left, this book will connect the dots.

If you aren't familiar with the major players in global warming denialism, how they stole pages from Big Tobacco's cancer denialism (ironic that global warming denialist Richard Lindzen, a smoker, denies the tobacco-cancer link, too), and how "global warming denialism" has been respun into "global warming skepticism," you need to read this book.

And ... it will connect the dots on the stellar scientific research of Dr. James Hansen, who should have been at Stockholm last December with Al Gore and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change head Rajendra K. Pachauri as the third Nobelist, a voice sounding the alarm on global warming for 20 years.

Author Mark Bowen, with a Ph.D. in physics himself, knows the value of free scientific discourse. That, along with the career and achievements of Hansen himself, intertwine in this book.

How bad is the attack on science? NASA's mission statement used to include the phrase, `To understand and protect our home planet." In late 2006, that phrase was removed, about the time NASA Administrator Michael Griffin started machete-whacking the budget for Earth science.