Bully Bush and the Weather Makers
"It's getting hot in here so take off all your clothes."--Nelly
It is in the US, and specifically in the Bush Administration and its industry supporters, that the opposition to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is most virulent. The American energy industry is full of established, cashed-up businesses that use their influence to combat concern about climate change, to destroy emerging challengers and to oppose moves towards greater energy efficiency. The fact that in the 1970s the United States was a world leader and innovator in energy conservation, photovoltaics and wind technology, yet today is simply a follower, is testimony to the industry's success. It is almost impossible to overestimate the role these companies have played over the past two decades in preventing the world from taking serious action to combat climate change.
With the election of Bush, the fossil fuel lobby became even more powerful, and it has been able to corrupt processes within the US bureaucracy and the soliciting of scientific advice.
The US Government's sympathy for the nonsense touted by some in the industry is not necessarily a reflection on the intellectual capacities of those involved, but rather its capacity to be bought. Coal miners donated $US20 million to the Republican cause in 2000, and have added $US21 million since, ensuring that industry access to the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and his secret energy committee, is unparalleled.
The Bully Bush Boys try AGAIN to silence a scientist on global warming. The New York Times reports:
"It's getting hot in here so take off all your clothes."--Nelly
It is in the US, and specifically in the Bush Administration and its industry supporters, that the opposition to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is most virulent. The American energy industry is full of established, cashed-up businesses that use their influence to combat concern about climate change, to destroy emerging challengers and to oppose moves towards greater energy efficiency. The fact that in the 1970s the United States was a world leader and innovator in energy conservation, photovoltaics and wind technology, yet today is simply a follower, is testimony to the industry's success. It is almost impossible to overestimate the role these companies have played over the past two decades in preventing the world from taking serious action to combat climate change.
With the election of Bush, the fossil fuel lobby became even more powerful, and it has been able to corrupt processes within the US bureaucracy and the soliciting of scientific advice.
The US Government's sympathy for the nonsense touted by some in the industry is not necessarily a reflection on the intellectual capacities of those involved, but rather its capacity to be bought. Coal miners donated $US20 million to the Republican cause in 2000, and have added $US21 million since, ensuring that industry access to the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and his secret energy committee, is unparalleled.
The Bully Bush Boys try AGAIN to silence a scientist on global warming. The New York Times reports:
Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said...
Dr. Hansen says such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead. "Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."
Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan. In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.
He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry. But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.
