| CENSORING SCIENCE Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming Mark Bowen New York: Dutton, December 2007 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-525-95014-1 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-525-95014-1 | 324pp. | HC/GSI | $25.95 | |
I was glad to see Dr. Griffin become administrator of NASA, thinking his engineering background would improve the quality of spacecraft hardware and expedite its production. Where he'll have an impact, if any, is in Orion and the rest of the VSE hardware, and though there are troubling signs, the jury will be out on that for some time. But when it comes to NASA's science programs, it's become clear that under Griffin, it's business as usual. This is to say that science gets short shrift — as it always has.
Things did improve somewhat when Griffin replaced Sean O'Keefe: He apparently wanted Mahone gone, and Mahone left the day after Griffin was confirmed by the Senate. (Gretchen Cook-Anderson outlasted him; she moved to GSFC two weeks later.) But Griffin still, by all accounts, largely toes the Bush line. He kept Dean Acosta on as his press officer, and the policy that all requests for interviews had to be approved by headquarters continues under him.
The following table, drawing from incidents described in Bowen's book, summarizes Griffin's involvement in matters relating to NASA policies on investigation of Earth science and disclosure of the results.
| Time | Griffin's | Comments | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frame | Action | Page | |
| Apr. 2005 | Takes helm of NASA | Probably responsible for Mahone's ouster from PAO, which is a good thing. | 1 |
| 3 Feb. 2006 | Issues Statement of Scientific Openness advising all 18,500 NASA employees that "It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff." Makes Dean Acosta the point of contact for any inquiries. | This Friday afternoon announcement said all the right things. But scientist Jay Zwally was not convinced by Acosta's reply to his humorous inquiry as to whether he would still be warned not to say that global warming is human-caused. And Andrew Revkin reported that there had been no response to the other censorship incidents he had brought to the attention of the Ninth Floor.1 | 79-81 |
| 6 Feb. 2006 | Alters NASA mission statement to remove the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet." Simultaneously rewrote NASA's strategic plan. | Unlike the adoption of the goal in 2002, under Sean O'Keefe, the change was made at NASA HQ without agency-wide consultation. A Ninth-Floor NASA official said (anonymously) that this lack of consensus is a violation of the Government Performance and Results Act. In any case, it sends a distinct message to the agency's Earth science people. | 268-9 |
| 14 Feb. 2006 | In a further response to Rep. Boehlert's letter, Griffin requests a meeting with Congressional staffers. Present are Boehlert's chief of staff David Goldston and his Democratic counterpart Chuck Atkins. NASA is represented by Griffin, Shana Dale, Dean Acosta, David Mould, Strategic Communications Chief Joe Davis, and congressional liaison Brian Chase. | As reported by Bowen, this is when George Deutsch was represented as a "loose cannon" who had successfully hidden his misbehavior from them until they looked at his e-mail traffic. This seems unlikely. |
87 |
| Feb. 2006? | Quietly and unilaterally cuts budgets for Earth science. The loss will amount to $3 billion over several years. Research and Analysis will be most strongly affected. The entire budget of GISS comes under R&A. | This despite his fall 2005 promise to preserve science funding levels. But this is what always happens at NASA when money gets tight: science projects are sacrificed to keep shuttle and station alive. | 264-72 |
Bowen's book sheds some galling light on Griffin's opinion of scientists in general:
It is unlikely that Michael Griffin was ever truly interested in censorship, but it is not unlikely that he may have wanted to exert a modicum of control over an "outspoken" scientist after having been surprised by a news story and even heard about it from the White House. Griffin was relatively new to his job, and he may not have been aware of every little drama that was going on at his agency. As well, his subsequent actions and words indicate that he doesn't hold science or scientists themselves in particularly high regard. He seems to think of them as childish and unruly. In fact, a senior scientist who has recently left the agency claims that Griffin "hates scientists." Griffin may well have voiced some ill-conceived notions about communications policy on December 15 that sounded much worse when they emerged from Mould and Acosta's mouths. – Page 96 |
"The press releases are not the sole property of the scientist...,"Griffin told me. "Scientists can publish papers. If the scientist wants a press release issued, and if after, you know, adult supervision, it is decided that, yes, this is a good thing to write a press release about, NASA will release a press release." – Pages 141-2 |
In the first week of February 2006, at the height of the censorship controversy, Michael Griffin decided to stifle his Earth scientists in a far more effective way, by quietly gutting their budget. It is difficult to know exactly who was responsible for the budget decision, since Griffin essentially handed it down from on high. – Page 264 |
Well, after promising over the fall that he would take not "one thin dime" from science to address overruns in other areas, that is precisely what Griffin did in the budget he announced on February 6, 2006. True, the allotment for science would rise 1.5 percent in the coming year; however, increases over the next several years would lag behind not only inflation but increases everywhere else in the agency. Compared to the budgets O'Keefe had envisioned, science would lose about $3 billion over the next several years. And this came on top of the 5 percent cut O'Keefe had imposed in 2005. Under Griffin's plan, science funding at NASA would not return to its 2005 level until 2011. As an editorial in Nature noted at the time, "NASA is undergoing a historic shift in direction without consulting scientists or paying attention to their advice. Projects with great appeal to scientists and to the public—including the search for planets around other stars and the study of dark energy—are being abandoned so that NASA can return astronauts to the moon [sic] half a century after the Apollo landings." – Pages 265-6 |
Near the end of May 2007, the press release about a new modeling study was under review by NASA's PAO staff. The paper (with 47 authors) said that Earth's climate was "close to critical tipping points, with potentially dangerous consequences for the planet." (See pp. 296-7.) A few days before the press release "hit the streets," Michael Griffin made these remarks to a National Public Radio reporter:
"I can't say" whether global warming "is a long-term concern," the administrator told the reporter. "I have no doubt that global—that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings—where and when—are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for human beings to take." – Page 297 |
It seems to me that the most charitable view of this pronouncement is that Dr. Griffin is between a rock and a hard place. Does he not understand the implications for NASA of the projected climate changes? Given that the elevations of the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center are 48 feet and 55 feet, it's not likely that they would be awash in sea water even under the worst-case scenario projected by the IPCC. It's not clear that other areas of KSC are equally safe. Even if they are, I think increased erosion might be a concern. More frequent storms are a greater concern, although Orion and Ares will be less susceptible to inclement weather than the Shuttle. And the biggest concern of all for Dr. Griffin should be what the global effects of warming will do to the priority of NASA's budget.
Dr. Griffin asks which human beings will be "accorded the privilege" of deciding whether to resist climate change, or to adapt to it. As he should have been aware, the answer is clear. It's us: every human being alive now, and those who will be born in the remaining years of the twenty-first century. We get to decide. It's our right, just as much as deciding who will be the political leaders of the world's various democracies. So, in my opinion, it's also legitimate to ascribe Dr. Griffin's words to cluelessness — as Bowen does.
I think it's fair to conclude from all this material that Dr. Griffin neither understands nor approves of NASA's investigation of global warming, and has little enthusiasm for any scientific investigation by NASA.2 That's too bad.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.