Censorship: NOAA Style

I saw an article about this on Think Progress and knew I had to write about it myself.

Here’s some news that should not come as a surprise to anyone… after all; we are talking about the Bush(Whacked) Administration.

A ranking Democratic member of the Government Reform Committee has released a series of emails from the Department of Commerce that suggests the Bush administration tried to prevent a federal scientist from talking about a link between “global warming and hurricanes.”

This administration censoring someone who disagrees with their tenets?? Impossible… I don’t believe that for one minute…

For those of you who couldn’t tell; I was being a smart-ass sarcastic.

Nothing, absolutely nothing that this administration does surprises me anymore.

Back to the topic of this post; BuchCo putting the squeeze on a NOAA scientist.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), in a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, details how CNBC requested an interview with NOAA scientist Tom Knutson in October 2005 (just over a month after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf States, btw) in order to discuss if “…global warming is contributing to the number or intensity of hurricanes.”

We at TBWA have touched-on this administrations censoring federal departments before (October 19, 2005), but it’s never really gotten a lot of notice… until now.

(Why the sudden interest now you ask? Because someone in the “main stream media” was inconvienced, so naturally; something had to be afoot)

CNBC sent a request for an interview with Dr. Tom Knutson, a scientist at NOAA. The request was then forwarded to Chuck Fuqua, the NOAA press officer.

When Mr. Fuqua got the reqest, he sent it back to NOAA and asked:

“What is Knutson’s position on global warming vs. decadal cycles? is he consistent with Bell and Landsea?”

(Let’s make note that Dr. Gary Bell and meteorologist Chris Landsea both have dissenting opinions about ay connection between hurricane intensity and global warming.)

NOAA responded to Mr. Fuqua and said Dr. Knutson has projected a “very small increase in hurricane intensity” due to increased greenhouse gas pollution.

The request died at this point…
As I said above, the Bush Administration censoring anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe is nothing new… but to ignore something as potentially dangerous as global warming is inexcusable.

There is a link to global warming and hurricane intensity (backed up by THIS report and THIS report), and the sooner this administration and this government understand that… the better.

Or who knows what might happen…