Bush vs. the Laureates

From: elmer swanson (elmer_swanson_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/20/04 

Date: 20 Oct 2004 09:14:43 -0700

October 19, 2004
"Bush vs. the Laureates: How Science Became a Partisan Issue"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/19/science/19poli.html?ei=5094&en=7f7a20f8ae7ab725&hp=&ex=1098244800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
 
Why is science seemingly at war with President Bush?

For nearly four years, and with rising intensity, scientists in and
out of government have criticized the Bush administration, saying it
has selected or suppressed research findings to suit preset policies,
skewed advisory panels or ignored unwelcome advice, and quashed
discussion within federal research agencies.

.... political action by scientists has not been so forceful since
1964, when Barry Goldwater's statements promoting the deployment of
battlefield nuclear weapons spawned the creation of the 100,000-member
group Scientists and Engineers for Johnson.

This year, 48 Nobel laureates dropped all pretense of nonpartisanship
as they signed a letter endorsing Senator John Kerry. "Unlike previous
administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush
administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy
making that is so important to our collective welfare," they wrote.
The critics include members of past Republican administrations.

And battles continue to erupt in government agencies over how to
communicate research findings that might clash with administration
policies.

This month, three NASA scientists and several officials at NASA
headquarters and at two agency research centers described how news
releases on new global warming studies had been revised by
administrators to play down definitiveness or risks. The scientists
and officials said other releases had been delayed. "You have to be
evenhanded in reporting science results, and it's apparent that there
is a tendency for that not to be occurring now," said Dr. James E.
Hansen, a climate expert who is director of the NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies in Manhattan.

Glenn Mahone, the assistant administrator of NASA for public affairs,
yesterday denied that any releases on climate had been held up or
modified by anything other than normal reviews. "There has been a
slowdown," he said.

But he insisted, "There is nothing in terms of any kind of approval
process with the White House."

Earlier this year, after continuing complaints that the White House
was asking litmus-test questions of nominees for scientific advisory
panels, the first question asked of a candidate for a panel on Arctic
issues, the candidate said, was: "Do you support the president?"

When asked about such incidents, officials with the Bush campaign call
attention to Mr. Bush's frequent queries to the National Academy of
Sciences as evidence of his desire for good advice on technical
issues.

"This president believes in pursuing the best, most objective science,
and his record proves that," said Brian Jones, a campaign spokesman.

Yet complaints about the administration's approach to scientific
information are coming even from within the government. Many career
scientists and officials have expressed frustration and anger
privately but were unwilling to be identified for fear of losing their
jobs. But a few have stepped forward, including Dr. Hansen at NASA,
who has been researching global warming and conveying its implications
to Congress and the White House for two decades.

Dr. Hansen, who was invited to brief the Bush cabinet twice on climate
and whose work has been cited by Mr. Bush, said he had decided to
speak publicly about the situation because he was convinced global
warming posed a serious threat and that further delays in addressing
it would add to the risks.

"It's something that I've been worrying about for months," he said,
describing his decision. "If I don't do something now I'll regret it.

"Under the Clinton-Gore administration, you did have occasions when Al
Gore knew the answer he wanted, and he got annoyed if you presented
something that wasn't consistent with that," Dr. Hansen said. "I got a
little fed up with him, but it was not institutionalized the way it is
now."

Under the Bush administration, he said, "they're picking and choosing
information according to the answer that they want to get, and they've
appointed so many people who are just focused on this that they really
are having an impact on the day-to-day flow of information."

Disputes between scientists and the administration have erupted over
stem cell policy, population control and Iraq's nuclear weapons
research. But nowhere has the clash been more intense or sustained
than in the area of climate change.

There the intensity of the disagreements has been stoked not only by
disputes over claimed distortion or suppression of research findings,
but on the other side by the enormous economic implications.

Several dozen interviews with administration officials and with
scientists in and out of government, along with a variety of
documents, show that the core of the clash is over instances in which
scientists say that objective and relevant information is ignored or
distorted in service of pre-established policy goals. Scientists were
essentially locked out of important internal White House debates;
candidates for advisory panels were asked about their politics as well
as their scientific work; and the White House exerted broad control
over how scientific findings were to be presented in public reports or
news releases.

An Early Skirmish

Climate emerged as a prickly issue in the first months of Mr. Bush's
term, when the White House began forging its energy policy and
focusing on ways to increase domestic use of coal and production of
oil.

In March 2001, a White House team used a single economic analysis by
the Energy Department to build a case that Mr. Bush quickly used to
back out of his campaign pledge to restrict power plant discharges of
carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

The analysis, from December 2000, was based on a number of
assumptions, including one that no technological innovation would
occur. The result showed that prompt cuts in carbon dioxide from power
plants would weaken the economy.

Other analyses, including some by other branches of the Department of
Energy, drew different conclusions but were ignored.

Advice from climate experts at the Environmental Protection Agency was
sought but also ignored. A March 7 memorandum from agency experts to
the White House team recommended that the carbon dioxide pledge be
kept, saying the Energy Department study "was based on assumptions
that do not apply" to Mr. Bush's plan and "inflates the costs of
achieving carbon dioxide reductions." The memo was given to The New
York Times by a former E.P.A. official who says science was not
adequately considered.

Nonetheless, the White House team stuck to its course, drafting a memo
on March 8 to John Bridgeland, the president's domestic policy
adviser, that used the energy study to argue for abandoning the
campaign promise.

None of the authors was a scientist. The team consisted of Cesar
Conda, an adviser to Vice President *** Cheney and now a political
consultant; Andrew Lundquist, the White House energy policy director,
who is now an energy lobbyist; Kyle E. McSlarrow, the chairman of Dan
Quayle's 2000 presidential campaign and now deputy secretary of
energy; Robert C. McNally Jr., an energy and economic analyst who is
now an investment banker; Karen Knutson, a deputy on energy policy and
a former Republican Senate aide; and Marcus Pea***, an analyst on
science and energy issues from the Office of Management and Budget.
They concluded that Mr. Bush could continue to say he believed that
global warming was occurring but make a case that "any specific policy
proposals or approaches aimed at addressing global warming must await
further scientific inquiry."

A copy of the memo was recently given to The New York Times by a White
House adviser at the time who now disagrees with the administration's
chosen policies.

The Environmental Protection Agency tried one more time to argue that
Mr. Bush should not change course.

In a section of a March 9 memo to the White House headed "Global
warming science is compelling," agency officials said: "The science is
strongest on the fact that carbon dioxide is contributing, and will
continue to contribute, to global climate change. The greatest
scientific uncertainties concern how fast the climate will change and
what will be the regional impacts. Even within these bands of
uncertainty, however, it is clear that global warming is an issue that
must be addressed."

On March 13, Mr. Bush signed and sent a letter to four Republican
senators who had sought clarification of the administration's climate
plans. In it, Mr. Bush described the Energy Department study as
"important new information that warrants a re-evaluation, especially
at a time of rising energy prices and a serious energy shortage."

He said reconsideration of the carbon dioxide curbs was particularly
appropriate "given the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the
causes of, and solutions to, global climate change."

The letter also reiterated his longstanding opposition to the Kyoto
Protocol, the climate treaty now moving toward enactment in almost all
other industrialized countries.

In the next months, the White House set up a series of briefings on
climate science and economics for the cabinet and also sought the
advice of the National Academy of Sciences. The experts convened by
the academy reaffirmed the scientific consensus that recent warming
has human causes and that significant risks lie ahead. But the
administration's position on what to do has not changed.

Hidden Assumptions

A handful of experts who have worked on climate policy in the Bush and
Clinton administrations say that both tried to skew information to
favor policies, but that there were distinct differences.

Andrew G. Keeler, who until June 2001 was on the president's Council
of Economic Advisers and has since returned to teaching at the
University of Georgia, said the Clinton administration had also played
with economic calculations of the costs of curbing carbon dioxide
emissions, in its case to show that limiting emissions would not be
expensive.

But it made available all of the assumptions that went into its
analysis, he said; by contrast, the Bush administration drew contorted
conclusions but never revealed the details.

"The Clinton administration got these lowest possible costs by taking
every assumption that would bias them down," he said. "But they were
very clear about what the assumptions were. Anybody who wanted to
could wade through them."

Tilting the Discussion

Some of the loudest criticisms of the administration on climate
science have centered on changes to reports and other government
documents dealing with the causes and consequences of global warming.

Political appointees have regularly revised news releases on climate
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA,
altering headlines and opening paragraphs to play down the continuing
global warming trend.

The changes are often subtle, but they consistently shift the meaning
of statements away from a sense that things are growing warmer in
unusual ways.

The pattern has appeared in reports from other agencies as well.

Several sets of drafts and final press releases from NOAA on
temperature trends were provided to The Times by government employees
who said they were dismayed by the practice.

On Aug. 14, 2003, a news release summarizing July temperature patterns
began as a draft with this headline: "NOAA reports record and
near-record July heat in the West, cooler than average in the East,
global temperature much warmer than average."

When it emerged from NOAA headquarters, it read: "NOAA reports cooler,
wetter than average in the East, hot in the West."

Such efforts have continued in recent weeks. Scientists at the Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, a leading research center studying
climate, worked with public affairs officials last month to finish a
release on new studies explaining why Antarctica had experienced
cooling while most of the rest of the world had warmed.

The results, just published in a refereed scientific journal, showed
that the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica had temporarily
shifted atmospheric conditions in a way that cooled the region, but
that as the layer heals in coming decades, Antarctica would quickly
warm.

The headline initially approved by the agency's public affairs office
and the scientists was "Cool Antarctica May Warm Rapidly This Century,
Study Finds."

The version that finally emerged on Oct. 6 after review by political
appointees was titled "Study Shows Potential for Antarctic Climate
Change."

More significant than such changes has been the scope and depth of
involvement by administration appointees in controlling information
flowing through the farthest reaches of government on issues that
could undermine policies.

Jeffrey Ruch, who runs Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, a network for whistle-blowers who identify government
actions that violate environmental laws or rules, said the Bush
administration had taken information control to a level far beyond
that of its predecessor.

"The Clinton administration was less organized and systematic, with
lots of infighting, kind of like the old Will Rogers joke 'I belong to
no organized political party; I'm a Democrat,' '' Mr. Ruch said.

"This group, for good or ill, is much more centralized," he added.
"It's very controlled in the sense that almost no decision, even
personnel decisions, can be made without clearance from the top. In
the realm of science that becomes problematic, because science isn't
neat like that."

Dr. Marburger, the president's science adviser, defended such changes.

"This administration clearly has an attitude about climate change and
climate science, and it's much more cautious than the previous
administration," Dr. Marburger said. "This administration also tries
to be consistent in its messages. It's an inevitable consequence that
you're going to get this kind of tuning up of language."

Choosing Advisers

Another area where the issue of scientific distortion keeps surfacing
is in the composition of advisory panels. In a host of instances
documented in news reports and by groups like the Union of Concerned
Scientists, candidates have been asked about their politics. In March
2003, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
criticized thosequeries, saying in a statement that the practice
"compromises the integrity of the process of receiving advice and is
inappropriate." Despite three years of charges that it is remaking
scientific and medical advisory panels to favor the goals of industry
or social conservatives, the White House has continued to ask some
panel nominees not only about their political views, but explicitly
whether they support Mr. Bush.

One recent candidate was Prof. Sharon L. Smith, an expert on Arctic
marine ecology at the University of Miami.

On March 12, she received a call from the White House. She had been
nominated to take a seat about to open up on the Arctic Research
Commission, a panel of presidential appointees that helps shape
research on issues in the far north, including the debate over oil
exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The woman calling from the White House office of presidential
personnel complimented her résumé, Dr. Smith recalled, then asked the
first and - as it turned out - only question: "Do you support the
president?"

"I was taking notes," Dr. Smith recalled. "I'm thinking I've lost my
mind. I was in total shock. I'd never been asked that before."

She responded she was not a fan of Mr. Bush's economic and foreign
policies. "That was the end of the interview," she said. "I was
removed from consideration instantly."

In interviews, senior administration officials said that most advisory
panels reflected a broad array of opinions and backgrounds and that
Mr. Bush had the right at least to know where candidates stood on his
policies.

"The people who end up on these panels tend to be pretty diverse and
clearly don't all support the president's policies," Dr. Marburger
said. "I think you'd have to say that the question is not a
litmus-test question. It's perfectly acceptable for the president to
know if someone he's appointing to one of his advisory committees
supports his policies or not."

Inevitable Tension

To some extent, the war between science and the administration is a
culture clash, both supporters and critics of Mr. Bush say.

"He uses a Sharpie pen," said John L. Howard Jr., a former adviser to
Mr. Bush on the environment in both the White House and the Texas
statehouse. "He's not a pencil with an eraser kind of guy."

In the campaign, Mr. Bush's team has portrayed this trait as an asset.
His critics in the sciences say it is a dangerous liability.

Dr. Marburger argues that when scientific information is flowing
through government agencies, the executive branch has every right to
sift for inconsistencies and adjust the tone to suit its policies, as
long as the result remains factual.

He said the recent ferment, including the attacks from the Union of
Concerned Scientists, Democrats and environmental groups, all proved
that the system works and that objective scientific information
ultimately comes to the surface.

"I think people overestimate the power of government to affect
science," he said. "Science has so many self-correcting aspects that
I'm not really worried about these things."

He acknowledged that environmental and medical issues, in particular,
would continue to have a difficult time in the policy arena, because
the science was fundamentally more murky than in, say, physics or
chemistry.

"I'm a physicist," Dr. Marburger said. "I know what you have to do to
design an experiment where you get an unambiguous result. There is
nothing like that in health and environment."

The situation is not likely to get better any time soon, say a host of
experts, in part because of the growing array of issues either
underlaid by science, like global warming, or created by science, like
genetic engineering and cloning.

"Since the Sputnik era we have not seen science and technology so
squarely in the center of the radar screen for people in either the
executive branch or Congress," said Charles M. Vest, the president of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the
President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. "I think
it's inevitable we're going to have increasing conflicts and arguments
about the role it plays in policy."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company