Post # 9 Rewriting the Science

                Rewriting of science has been happening to our county for decades, but recently the Bush administration has been especially guilty for this. It is showing that our environment is dealing with a global warming that is accelerating at an alarming rate. A good testament to this is the melting artic and Antarctica; we are losing much of this ice that forms the land there to the sea due to increasing temperatures. In the video “rewriting the science” James Hanson talks about how humans are now in control of the changing environment and the burning of the fossil fuels we use is completely dwarfing the natural changes that occur. Hanson’s research shows that if humans do not change and begin to reduce their greenhouse gas emission within the next 10 years we may reach a tipping point of global warming where it will reach an unstoppable state. Our country has been constantly silencing those who wish to go against what the government wants us to think. Ralf Sisceron (atmospheric chemist) the president of The National Academy of Sciences has been trying to get his research out to the public but is being stifled but the government. The moment he made the announcement saying “I find a willingness to listen to only those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined and flexible positions, this I believe is a recipe for natural disasters.” NASA has had Sisceron under close watch. He has had opportunities to speak on national radio and many other interviews but he was always made to defer these offers to a NASA representative. The only reason he was allowed to speak to 60 minutes is because he had a NASA representative in the room recording the interview. Another significant way the government has been rewriting our science is by editing information. There is a report writing annually called “our changing planet” and every year that it is sent to the white house for editing it comes back with a large amount of edits hand written on the hard copy. These edits are not done by an environmentalist or a scientist but by Phil Cooney, a lawyer that works for the white house. Most of the time edits change a word here or there but Cooney has completely taken out anything on human health risk, raising urgency, and significant information on our melting ice sheets and glaciers. This information is then replaced with “straying from research strategy into speculative findings”. Without the help of our government our world will soon reach this 10 year tipping point that Hanson talks about. Once this tipping point occurs it will no longer matter if the government gives us their support of not, it will be too late.