Climate Censorship Arouses Concern in Australia, Canada and U.S.

Commentary by John C. Topping, Jr., President, Climate Institute

National governments in Australia and the US, the two leading industrial nations to refuse both to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and adopt binding domestic greenhouse emission limits, have been in the same week shaken by disclosures of government censorship of scientific statements by some of their top climate scientists. The issue of climate censorship has been simmering for some time within the climate science communities of both countries, but some particularly ham-handed actions by political appointees in the two governments served to spotlight this issue.

The U.S.: Being Nibbled to Death by Ducks

For the past few years there has been growing evidence of a close working relationship between outside climate skeptic groups and fossil fuel industry groups and some mid and low-level political appointees within the Bush Administration in trying to Bowdlerize government reports to exclude solid scientific findings on climate change. In a particularly Orwellian use of language some have used the terminology “Sound Science” as they have sought to discredit a growing scientific consensus that climate change is underway and human actions are contributing to it. The tactics have included a lawsuit by one climate skeptic group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to pull down material from government web sites. In anticipation of such actions the Climate Institute in August 2003 opened a comprehensive Climate Impacts section on its web site and took steps to ensure that information on climate impacts would be available on line even if political pressures resulted in removal of such data from government sites.

Although the Competitive Enterprise Institute failed in its lawsuit, it and allied climate skeptic groups have enjoyed success on a host of related issues as US government funding for climate change impacts has shriveled, EPA has stepped back from analysis begun late in the Reagan Administration on climate change implications for the United States and the world, and government scientists in both NOAA and NASA have been subjected to various constraints from speaking to the media on climate science or impacts. Occasionally this problem has bubbled to the surface most notably in June 2005 when evidence surfaced that a mid-level political appointee at the Council on Environmental Quality and former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist had been rewriting scientific findings on climate change. This disclosure resulted in some biting cartoons and the aide’s departure for the private sector to work for Exxon Mobil.

The censorship issue became much more prominent in late January 2006 when it became clear that one of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) had been subjected to having political minders sit in when he discussed climate science with the news media. A week and a half later this minor embarrassment for the Bush Administration became much more damaging when it was revealed that the person overseeing this attempted censorship of Hansen was a 24-year-old political appointee who had apparently misrepresented that he had graduated from Texas A& M when he had no such degree. This young operative resigned but the whole affair emboldened Hansen to speak out on the broader issue of censorship of climate science.

What is remarkable about this is that incredibly ham-handed political operatives have transformed the normally shy Jim Hansen into a compelling whistleblower. Winner of the Blue Planet Prize, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel, Hansen is about as close as one will find in the sciences to Diogenes. A mild mannered Iowan who first worked on the Van Allen belt, he has been uncompromisingly honest, sometimes to the discomfiture of environmentalists. He has followed the science wherever it leads rather than kowtowing to notions of political correctness. His analysis led him to argue five and a half years ago that an effective climate protection strategy should focus much more on methane and black soot than carbon dioxide alone. This was unwelcome to some environmentalists who preferred a strategy of focusing on carbon dioxide alone; it also resulted in Hansen’s being asked twice to brief Vice President Cheney. I have known Jim Hansen for 23 years and I believe there are few scientists who are less driven by ego or malice.

The Bush Administration would be well advised to heed Hansen’s warnings rather than seeking to discredit him. This will require some nimble artistry as fossil fuel interests adamantly opposed to any US greenhouse gas limits have shrewdly built up a firewall against climate action by sprinkling funding to scores of climate denial groups and placing trusted operatives in key jobs in the Administration and Capitol Hill.

These actions have been lumped together by author Chris Mooney as The Republican War Against Science, but it is noteworthy that the two US legislators who seem to have been most critical of the politicization of climate science, House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert of New York and Senator John McCain of Arizona, are both Republicans. President Bush could help himself greatly by heeding their counsel.

Down and Dirty Down Under

The other major industrial country holdout against greenhouse emission limits, Australia has been beseeched by Pacific island nations that fear devastation by sea level rise to do an about face on climate change. Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Minister Sir Rabbie Namaliu cited two reports on sea level rise, including one by two Australian scientists, to indicate that his country and other Pacific island nations were more vulnerable than previously believed. He urged both Australia and the US to act.

Just as this was occurring, The Age, a respected Australian newspaper, reported that three top Australian climate scientists had been subject to censorship. Dr. Graeme Pearman, who headed the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research for a decade,was allegedly forced to retire from the Australian Government’s chief scientific research agency because he had joined the Climate Group. This group, set up in 2003 by the Australian Insurance Group and WWF, favored Australia’s involvement in carbon trading. Dr. A Barrie Pittock, who for years ran CSIRO’s climate impacts program, reported that he had been subject to a gag on what he might say. Pearman and Pittock are world-renowned climate scientists; they provided the scenarios and climate impacts framework for climate change country studies undertaken between 1992 and 1994 in eight Asian nations — Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam. These studies by national teams in each country provided the basis for a February 1995 Asia Pacific Leaders Summit on Climate Change hosted in Manila by then Philippine President Fidel Ramos.

A few days later the controversy gained added traction when the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Four Corners investigative journalist show interviewed Pittock and Pearman along with another former CSIRO scientist, a former aide to Environment Minister Bob Hill, who had held that post during the Kyoto negotiations, and the current Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell, and Clive Hamilton of the newly formed Climate Institute Australia. Guy Pearse, the former aide to Hill, described his experiences after government service as an industry operative, alluding to a self described “greenhouse Mafia” of industry operatives who sought to ensure that Federal government policy involved no greenhouse emission limits. The climate censorship story gained added resonance as it came against the backdrop of a skillfully orchestrated industry campaign that involved energy lobbyists drafting government policy.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard's tendency to downplay the threat from climate change has drawn fire from the Opposition and from Australian environmental groups.

Wildfire or Backfire in Ottawa?

A few weeks after the Australian and US climate censorship stories received wide media attention in these two non- Kyoto countries, the issue reared its head in Canada. Canada has been in a strange twilight zone on Kyoto. Under the preceding Liberal government Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but had made little progress in meeting its Kyoto obligations. In fact, Canada has to date missed meeting its Kyoto targets by much more than the US that has chosen to stay out of Kyoto; this was due in significant part to the boom in the Western Canadian oil and gas industry that has produced fuel to slake the energy thirst of Canada’s Southern neighbors. Producing this energy, particularly from synthetic fuels, is itself a large generator of greenhouse emissions.

Still there is widespread public support in Canada for the Kyoto process. Thousands of Canadians, mostly from Quebec, marched in the streets of Montreal during the Montreal Climate Conference in support of strong international action to limit greenhouse emissions. Although the Conservatives under their Leader Stephen Harper emerged with a plurality and were able to form a minority government, the other three parties with seats in the Parliament- the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and the left of center New Democrats, all are strong Kyoto proponents. The Conservatives have been critical of Kyoto for years but an outright abrogation would risk a vote of no confidence in Parliament where the pro- Kyoto parties hold about three fifths of the seats. Instead, the Harper Government has soft- pedaled Kyoto without formally abandoning it, cutting back funding for some climate protection programs but still maintaining the appearance of adhering to Kyoto. Recently this balancing act may have come a cropper over the issue of climate censorship.

On April 13 Mark Tushingham, a Canadian government scientist who had written a novel about a future war between Canada and the US over water scarcity in a greenhouse stressed world, was forced to cancel a luncheon speech in Ottawa about his book after receiving an email message from the environment minister’s office directing him not to appear ("Climate change expert muzzled"). Whether this Canadian action was aberrational or part of a conscious process to censor climate language is yet to be seen. Recent signs are not particularly auspicious. Canadian climate skeptics, financed in part by oil patch funding, have succeeded in speeding a Canadian government retreat from the country’s long-time activism on climate protection. Recently a well-regarded government web site on climate was pulled down.

In Canberra, Ottawa and Washington, national governments might help right themselves if they recognize that it is unwise to slay the messenger of bad news. This admonition from mythology is particularly appropriate as world leaders grapple with the perplexing issues posed by climate change. Unwillingness to listen to reliable science is no more sensible than piloting a ship into a minefield and refusing to read the charts mapping the hazards.