Bush Administration Rewriting Science.

Source: CBS News

The Bush Administration is taking unprecedented steps to restrict and censure what government scientists can say, and who they can talk to.

(CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Even going as far to edit scientific factual conclusions, treating them like opinionated pieces in your local paper.

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "...there is a new review process...," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can't even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There's too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, it's lawyers and politicians."

This sounds like the scheming of an evil communist regime. Censorship of facts and science that doesn't support your economic policies..how 1984ish of you.

And that "on again, off again, is it real" global warming thing. Facts point to major global climate changes.

He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

"Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river," Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.

"We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions," Hansen explains. "And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we've got to be on a declining curve.

"If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don't think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we're going to, that there's a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can't build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control.

It looks like even the president's science advisor is off-limits.

For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president's science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn't return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

How convenient?

I guess the truth and words like "danger" are outlawed in this administration.

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.

"I think we know a lot more about the tipping points," says Hansen. "I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets."

"You just used that word again that you're not supposed to use--danger," Pelley remarks.

"Yeah. It's a danger," Hansen says.

Forget the "war on terror".

They are going full steam ahead on the "war on science," and science is suffering as a result.

Tags: [James Hansen], [White House], [Bush], [NASA], [government scientists], [war on science], [global warming], [the truth and words like "danger" are outlawed in this administration], [the president's science advisor is off-limits], [major global climate changes], [editor at the Council on Environmental Quality now works at Exxon Mobil], [Greenland's ice sheet is melting away rapidly]