Climate change: its worse than you think

[amran]

This could be a good thing as it can determine legitimate / genuine research as opposed to those without scientific basis, but like everything else is open to abuse.

New Controls on Publishing Research Worry USGS Scientists

December 14, 2006 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.

New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Top officials at the Interior Department's scientific arm say the rules only standardize what scientists must do to ensure the quality of their work and give a heads-up to the agency's public relations staff.

"This is not about stifling or suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in any way," Barbara Wainman, the agency's director of communications, said Wednesday. "I don't have approval authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our product flow."

Some agency scientists, who until now have felt free from any political interference, worry that the objectivity of their work could be compromised.

"I feel as though we've got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that's a very scary thing. I worry that it borders on censorship," said Jim Estes, an internationally recognized marine biologist in the USGS field station at Santa Cruz, Calif.

"The explanation was that this was intended to ensure the highest possible quality research," said Estes, a researcher at the agency for more than 30 years. "But to me it feels like they're doing this to keep us under their thumbs. It seems like they're afraid of science. Our findings could be embarrassing to the administration."

The new requirements state that the USGS's communications office must be "alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature."

The agency's director, Mark Myers, and its communications office also must be told _ prior to any submission for publication _ "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed."

Patrick Leahy, USGS's head of geology and its acting director until September, said Wednesday that the new procedures would improve scientists' accountability and "harmonize" the review process. He said they are intended to maintain scientists' neutrality.

"Our scientific staff is second to none," he said. "This notion of scientific gotcha is something we do not want to participate in. That does not mean to avoid contentious issues."

The changes amount to an overhaul of commonly accepted procedures for all scientists, not just those in government, based on anonymous peer reviews. In that process, scientists critique each other's findings to determine whether they deserve to be published.

From now on, USGS supervisors will demand to see the comments of outside peer reviewers' as well any exchanges between the scientists who are seeking to publish their findings and the reviewers.

The Bush administration, as well as the Clinton administration before it, has been criticized over scientific integrity issues. In 2002, the USGS was forced to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report followed, this time saying the caribou would not be affected.

Earlier this year, a USGS scientist poked holes in research that the Interior Department was using in an effort to remove from the endangered species list a tiny jumping mouse that inhabits grasslands coveted by developers in Colorado and Wyoming.

Federal criminal investigators are looking into allegations that USGS employees falsified documents between 1998 and 2000 on the the movement of water through the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. The USGS had validated the Energy Department's conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, scientists and advocacy groups alike are worried about closing libraries that contain tens of thousands of agency documents and research studies. "It now appears that EPA officials are dismantling what it likely one of our country's comprehensive and accessible collections of environmental materials," four Democrats who are in line to head House committees wrote EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson two weeks ago.

Democrats about to take control of Congress have investigations into reports by The New York Times and other news organizations that the Bush administration tried to censor government scientists researching global warming at NASA and the Commerce Department.

[sandesh]

Still couldn't locate the report, Forficula. Will keep you updated if and when I do find it.

It could be in a paid site, or it has been published "in the real world" but not transcribed online as yet. Or google has not indexed the document.

[Eco Man]

Control is good, Amran, mate. The way things are going, the public is manipulated by unsound research. But who controls it? Favours can be asked through lobbies. Also a thin line between control and censorship. They prolly realise our concerns, hence:

Top officials at the Interior Department's scientific arm say the rules only standardize what scientists must do to ensure the quality of their work and give a heads-up to the agency's public relations staff.

"This is not about stifling or suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in any way," Barbara Wainman, the agency's director of communications, said Wednesday. "I don't have approval authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our product flow."

Hope they stick by it. It'll make finding true research easier. Won't stop bad science to filter through the newspapers though. They can still get media time and be loud.

[forficula]

And you guys got all excited about this? This is an American ruling and last time I looked they still had not taken over the world.What of all the other research going on around the world?
Its near time that Uncle Sam reined in the lunatic fringe of his scientific community and this ruling goes a little towards this end. It is calling for properly regulated peer evaluation and an end to the back scratching that has gone on for far too long( an end to the idea that somehow humans can can control the Universe might be a bonus !).Its time that those supplying the likes of Gore with slanted data were brought back to doing science and not politics.

[sandesh]

It's a fatal attraction that countries have with America. A love and hate sort of relationship that demands the US to be leader due to its influence and yet we get pissed off (pardon my Japanese) when the beloved leader doesn't exactly follow the image that we give it. Case in point Kyoto. Still we feel that if the US adopt just a stand maybe it may just follow in other countries. How is it in Europe, Forficula? Don't seem as if its regulated there either ... I agree though, such a regulation should be International in nature. It'd make more sense imo.

[Danial]

It's a fatal attraction that countries have with America. A love and hate sort of relationship that demands the US to be leader due to its influence and yet we get pissed off (pardon my Japanese) when the beloved leader doesn't exactly follow the image that we give it. Case in point Kyoto. Still we feel that if the US adopt just a stand maybe it may just follow in other countries. How is it in Europe, Forficula? Don't seem as if its regulated there either ... I agree though, such a regulation should be International in nature. It'd make more sense imo.

I guess it is something like that, Sandesh. The Americans have been right by me for ages. Even the ineffective-on-world-stage and i've-never-had-a-sexual-relationship-with-miss-lewinsky Clinton had his saving-graces, just the present administration is just rubbing me the wrong way. Even my stiffie is gone. A strong trusted America can improve the environmental situation the world over. Especially since we can't expect leadership from the European powerhouses, they are just not influential enough imo.

[Eco Man]

Dan mate, seems the ineffective Europeans have managed to reduce their air pollution. Least it's cleaner then before.

"The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said the drop in sulphur dioxide emissions to less than 15 million tonnes meant Europe had already reached its 2010 target on cutting the amount of the colourless gas released from coal-burning power plants and heavy industry.

"Europe's air is getting cleaner," the Geneva-based agency said in a statement.

Some individual European countries have surpassed their targets, and about half still needed to reduce emissions to comply with a 1999 Gothenburg Protocol agreement."

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39525/story.htm

I'm not saying that they are the purveyors' of antipollution, mind you. Just that they've not as ineffective as you think, politics not withstanding.

[forficula]

here is an interesting piece about sunspots.Notice how the graph showing the increase in solar activity just happens to kinda match that of temperatures over the last few years.................

http://forums.hypography.com/astronomy- ... cycle.html

[amran]

That IS interesting Forficula. The rise in temperature is due to several things already mentioned and discussed in posts all over this forum, human intervention is only one of the reason and plays only a very small part in the overall scheme of things. More and more everything seems to indicate that it is a natural phenomenon within a close system. The sun being the primary and natural source of energy for earth makes it more than a feasible candidate. Now if only this can be proven conclusively ...

[sandesh]

The article doesn't really say "global warming" Amran. Excellent article.

[forficula]

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/clima ... 37,00.html

Dr Vincent, who has travelled to the ice island, said yesterday: "This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ah

Why not "we are going to see remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been hidden in ice for many thousands of years."

"What surprised us was how quickly it happened," he said. "It's pretty alarming. Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly, but the big surprise is that, for one they are going, but secondly, that when they do go, they just go suddenly, it's all at once, in a span of an hour."

Hmmmmmm,I thought we mentioned rapid climate change in this forum.....................maybe top scientists don't visit us often enough

[May Yin]

Saw that on the news Forfi. Hee hee "top scientists" are very confused people.

"The ice island is 37 metres (120ft) thick and measures 9 miles by 3 miles" - is that a common island size Forfi? To break away I mean. That's a huge lunk of ice. Could be hazardous to ships, even whales?

[forficula]

Saw that on the news Forfi. Hee hee "top scientists" are very confused people.

"The ice island is 37 metres (120ft) thick and measures 9 miles by 3 miles" - is that a common island size Forfi? To break away I mean. That's a huge lunk of ice. Could be hazardous to ships, even whales?

I don't think it will bother the whales much May,but it could be a hazard to shipping.Yet again this seems to be making the news because we can see it all taking place in real time.20-30 years ago it may well have gone unnoticed just as many big storms did before we had so much research going on.Icebergs used to big a big hazard in the North Atlantic in the last century,don't hear much a bout them now. [remember the Titanic?]

[Danial]

Saw that on the news Forfi. Hee hee "top scientists" are very confused people.

"The ice island is 37 metres (120ft) thick and measures 9 miles by 3 miles" - is that a common island size Forfi? To break away I mean. That's a huge lunk of ice. Could be hazardous to ships, even whales?

I don't think it will bother the whales much May,but it could be a hazard to shipping.Yet again this seems to be making the news because we can see it all taking place in real time.20-30 years ago it may well have gone unnoticed just as many big storms did before we had so much research going on.Icebergs used to big a big hazard in the North Atlantic in the last century,don't hear much a bout them now. [remember the Titanic?]

What you don't know won't hurt you. "Out of sight out of mind" kind of situation mate. Now almost everything is considered a threat. And life, especially in cities, has been so mundane that any sort of news that will keep the adrenaline pumping, people would just jump at the idea. Also people are lacking cause to fight and live for, hence the present climate in the world. They jump at the first opportunity of being part of causes like global warming etc.

[forficula]

Heres a bit on changes in Asia and South America which took place at the same times.The full article will be out this week, I'm sure planet ark etc, will pick up on it.

The Asian–Australian monsoon is an important component of the Earth’s climate system that influences the societal and economic activity of roughly half the world’s population. The past strength of the rain-bearing East Asian summer monsoon can be reconstructed with archives such as cave deposits, but the winter monsoon has no such signature in the hydrological cycle and has thus proved difficult to reconstruct. Here we present high-resolution records of the magnetic properties and the titanium content of the sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal southeast China over the past 16,000 years, which we use as proxies for the strength of the winter monsoon winds. We find evidence for stronger winter monsoon winds before the Bølling–Allerød warming, during the Younger Dryas episode and during the middle and late Holocene, when cave stalagmites suggest weaker summer monsoons. We conclude that this anticorrelation is best explained by migrations in the intertropical convergence zone. Similar migrations of the intertropical convergence zone have been observed in Central America for the period ad 700 to 900 (refs 4–6), suggesting global climatic changes at that time. From the coincidence in timing, we suggest that these migrations in the tropical rain belt could have contributed to the declines of both the Tang dynasty in China and the Classic Maya in Central America.Gergana Yancheva

By coincidence I have just started to read "The Rise and Decline of Nations" by Mancur Olson which is about the economics of long gone civilisations and ties in with this research.