Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Well, Tvo, I think this just might answer your question about why we don't
have more young scientists coming out of U.S. schools.  Why would anyone
want to become a scientist if the government only supports walking in lock
step?

As someone on another list said, "Our 'leaders' are such butt heads. They
are selling out our childrens futures for pennies in their pockets."

Lynda

Silencing Science, RG, 20050124

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/01/24/ed.edit.globalwarming.phn.0124.
html

 January 24, 2005

 Silencing science: U.S. seeks to purge report on warming

 A Register-Guard Editorial <mailto:rgletters AT guardnet.com>

 Once again the Bush administration is trying to impose its "What, me
worry?" attitude toward climate change on the rest of the world.

 Last November, Bush administration officials squelched an effort by Arctic
nations to endorse mandatory carbon controls to counter global warming.
Now, the administration is trying to purge a United Nations action plan of
all references to climate change as a potential cause of future natural
calamities.

 For the Bush administration, global warming has become a matter of
political will over flashing red-light reality. Driven by a toxic blend of
denial, subservience to industry and ideological distrust of apolitical,
fact-based science, Bush already is signaling that he intends to spend the
next four years dragging his feet on this most critical of issues.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same way the president spent
his first term. During his 2000 campaign, Bush pledged regulatory controls
on carbon dioxide emissions. After the election, he flip-flopped, rejecting
the Kyoto Protocol approach to climate change. Even in the face of
administration's own scientific reports blaming carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases for global warming, the Bush White House continued to
insist the evidence was inconclusive and did not warrant action.

Last year, the White House shifted its strategy. The U.S. secretaries of
commerce and energy and the president's own science adviser signed a report
to Congress acknowledging that warming trends cannot be attributed solely to
natural factors and that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases play a
significant role. But the report also insisted there was no solid evidence
supporting the need for regulatory action.

The White House put this delaying strategy to work last November, when it
successfully lobbied members of the Arctic Council - a group of eight
nations, including the United States, that have Arctic territories - to kill
an aggressive policy statement calling for mandatory limits on carbon
dioxide emissions.

 Last week, the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Disaster
Reduction lobbied for the deletion of all references to climate change from
a new U.N. action plan on natural disasters. It did so despite the recent
conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a
U.N.-organized network of scientists, that global warming will cause more
extreme weather events, including hurricanes and droughts, in the decades to
come.

Meanwhile, the administration is doing its best to impose its political will
on the scientific community at home.

According to The Washington Post, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, accused a senior administration official of
trying to block him from discussing the dangerous effects of global warning.
And Bush's top science adviser, John Marburger, has warned researchers that
they risk losing their federal funding if they publicly oppose
administration policies.

 As the administration tries to force scientists to bend to its political
will, the buildup of climate-changing gases continues, with the United
States spewing an astonishing one third of the world's total. Scientists
warn that Arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming rate and that it could be
reduced by one-half as soon as the end of this century, causing severe
disruptions that range from the extinction of animal and plant species to
flooding in coastal regions across the globe.

 The Bush administration should stop denying the severity of global warming
and forcing scientists to bend to its political perspective. It should
acknowledge the weight of evidence supporting a conclusion that global
warming is a reality - one that will be the most pressing environmental
issue for decades to come and one that will affect the lives of everyone on
Earth.

 A crisis of such magnitude requires a comprehensive, truly global strategy.
The rest of the world already has begun the fight, with more than 120
nations ratifying the Kyoto treaty. But the United States - and the Bush
administration - are still missing in action.

<http://www.registerguard.com/standingdocs/rg_copyright.html>Copyright 2005
 The Register-Guard