Re: Guillemots to the lions!

On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:09:04 -0000 someone who may be "simon"
<simon@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote this:-

Therin lies the problem. It seems there is only one interpretation and no
one is allowed to question it. Well maybe thats why there is a consensus.

While looking for something else I came across the best piece on
this I have seen, which is well worth repeating in full


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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2053521,00.html

There is climate change censorship - and it's the deniers who dish
it out


Global warming scientists are under intense pressure to water down
findings, and are then accused of silencing their critics

George Monbiot
Tuesday April 10, 2007
The Guardian

The drafting of reports by the world's pre-eminent group of climate
scientists is an odd process. For months scientists contributing to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the
evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This
means that the panel's reports are conservative - even timid. It
also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can
be.

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians
sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything that
threatens their interests.

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make concessions.
The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning
that "North America is expected to experience locally severe
economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural
disruption from climate change related events".

This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the
rightwing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is
conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why
governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky
world of the climate conspiracists no explanations are required. The
world's most conservative scientific body has somehow been
transformed into a conspiracy of screaming demagogues.

This is just one aspect of a story that is endlessly told the wrong
way round. In the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail, in columns by
Dominic Lawson, Tom Utley and Janet Daley, the allegation is
repeated that climate scientists and environmentalists are trying to
"shut down debate". Those who say that man-made global warming is
not taking place, they claim, are being censored.

Something is missing from their accusations: a single valid example.
The closest any of them have been able to get is two letters sent -
by the Royal Society and by the US senators Jay Rockefeller and
Olympia Snowe - to that delicate flower ExxonMobil, asking that it
cease funding lobbyists who deliberately distort climate science.
These correspondents had no power to enforce their wishes. They were
merely urging Exxon to change its practices. If everyone who urges
is a censor, then the comment pages of the newspapers must be closed
in the name of free speech.

In a recent interview, Martin Durkin, who made Channel 4's film The
Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed he was subject to "invisible
censorship". He seems to have forgotten that he had 90 minutes of
prime-time television to expound his theory that climate change is a
green conspiracy. What did this censorship amount to? Complaints
about one of his programmes had been upheld by the Independent
Television Commission. It found that "the views of the four
complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted
by selective editing" and that they had been "misled as to the
content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take
part". This, apparently, makes him a martyr.

If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you
what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists
whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have
been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or
suppressed.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate
scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to
its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following
constraints: 1. Pressure to eliminate the words "climate change",
"global warming", or other similar terms from their communications;
2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors that "changed
the meaning of scientific findings"; 3. Statements by officials at
their agencies that misrepresented their findings; 4. The
disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other
science-based materials relating to climate; 5. New or unusual
administrative requirements that impair climate-related work; 6.
Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned
from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to
change scientific findings. They reported 435 incidents of political
interference over the past five years.

In 2003, the White House gutted the climate-change section of a
report by the Environmental Protection Agency. It deleted references
to studies showing that global warming is caused by manmade
emissions. It added a reference to a study, partly funded by the
American Petroleum Institute, that suggested that temperatures are
not rising. Eventually the agency decided to drop the section
altogether.

After Thomas Knutson at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) published a paper in 2004 linking rising
emissions with more intense tropical cyclones, he was blocked by his
superiors from speaking to the media. He agreed to one request to
appear on MSNBC, but a public affairs officer at NOAA rang the
station and said that Knutson was "too tired" to conduct the
interview. The official explained to him that the "White House said
no". All media inquiries were to be routed instead to a scientist
who believed there was no connection between global warming and
hurricanes.

Last year Nasa's top climate scientist, James Hansen, reported that
his bosses were trying to censor his lectures, papers and web
postings. He was told by Nasa's PR officials that there would be
"dire consequences" if he continued to call for rapid reductions in
greenhouse gases.

Last month, the Alaskan branch of the US fish and wildlife service
told its scientists that anyone travelling to the Arctic must
understand "the administration's position on climate change, polar
bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to
these issues".

At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago, Philip Cooney, a
former White House aide who had previously worked at the American
Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to
government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush
administration. Though not a scientist, he had struck out evidence
that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that
there was serious scientific doubt about global warming.

The guardians of free speech in Britain aren't above attempting a
little suppression, either. The Guardian and I have now received
several letters from the climate sceptic Viscount Monckton
threatening us with libel proceedings after I challenged his claims
about climate science. On two of these occasions he has demanded
that articles are removed from the internet. Monckton is the man who
wrote to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, claiming that their letter
to ExxonMobil offends the corporation's "right of free speech".

After Martin Durkin's film was broadcast, one of the scientists it
featured, Professor Carl Wunsch, complained that his views on
climate change had been misrepresented. He says he has received a
legal letter from Durkin's production company, Wag TV, threatening
to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public
statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.

Would it be terribly impolite to suggest that when such people
complain of censorship, a certain amount of projection is taking
place?

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--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54
.

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