On the DL

Julie Eilperin reports for the Post that "An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general's office said yesterday." The IG's office looked into the matter at the request of several senators, "after The Washington Post and other news outlets reported in 2006 that Bush administration officials had monitored and impeded communications between NASA climate scientists and reporters."

The Post writes about this as if it's a bad thing. But had the scientific data been made available to the public without political interference, that might have built political support for timely action to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. And that would have been contrary to the interests of the Bush administration's financial backers in the oil and coal sectors. Under the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible for them to do anything else.

Photo by Flickr user benklocek used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

The response has been ingenious. "We didn't do it and the matter was cleared up some time ago."

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 3, 2008 12:49 PM

Fair enough, but in retrospect it's kind of scary to think of what Bush would do with a real, scary mandate to fight global warming. I can just see it now: "Knowing what we now know about the dangers of petroleum, how can we continue to let the evil Iranians mine and sell it? I call on Congress to give me the authority to fight climate change by invading Iran!" Repeat as needed for Venezuela, Russia, etc...

Ok that's tongue in cheek, but honestly is there anything this Administration has done that hasn't resulted in massively perverse consequences?

Posted by NS | June 3, 2008 12:50 PM

"But had the scientific data been made available to the public without political interference, that might have built political support for timely action to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. And that would have been contrary to the interests of the Bush administration's financial backers in the oil and coal sectors. Under the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible for them to do anything else."

Oh please. So we could have done something 2-3 years ago and it would have had huge consequences in any direction at all?

Matt, you're delusional. On the one hand, you say that no effective change can come from military action in Iraq, regardless of the time and tactics put in place. On the other hand, you argue that we can make massive changes to a global system (never mind that we have zero ability to change the behavior of, say, China).

Right. While trying to describe all possible outcomes from a military engagement is very hard, I'd say that we have a far better understanding of those variables (based on history alone) than we do of climate.

Posted by James Robertson | June 3, 2008 1:06 PM

That the Bush people in NASA PR were spinning press releases to fit the Administration's biases was bad. However, I don't think it would have made much difference if NASA PR was staffed by Greenpeace.

In 2000, George lied during speeches claiming he gave a rat's okole about climate change. Since that time, in actions and in words he has made it quite clear that he wasn't going to do anything that had any real or opportunity costs to the industry groups he supported. He has stuck with that line through thick and thin.

In the grand scheme of things, having NASA PR toe his line was nice, but not critical to his policy. What was harmful was the deletion of follow-on Earth-sensing satellites to replace the old one's we've been retiring. Why sense what you don't want to see?

Posted by cmholm | June 3, 2008 3:35 PM