Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the
Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to
the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a
danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate
is changing.Employees and contractors working for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological
Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over
the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking
on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their
reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news
leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media
altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over
climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being
fought in other federal science agencies as well.These
scientists — working nationwide in research centers in such places as
Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. — say they are required to clear
all media requests with administration officials, something they did
not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate
researchers — unlike staff members in the Justice or State
departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to
reporters — were relatively free to discuss their findings without
strict agency oversight.
