The Gag on Global Warming

Hi Steve!

I'm Dan, and I work with Environmental Action - I was reading through your blog today, liked it quite a bit and wanted to let you know about the work that I'm doing
too -

Not sure if you're familiar with Environmental Action or not, but we're the group that came out of the first Earth Day in 1970 - worked through the 70's on passing the Clean Air and Endangered Species Acts, and currently continue our work to get people to take some kind of environmental action - whether it's better recycling and energy conservation, or emailing a member of Congress.

Anyway, right now we're pretty up in arms about the attempt by NASA to silence their top scientist on global warming, so we've launched on online petition to the NASA administrator responsible, letting him know we won't stand for it. We're working to get 4,000 comments in pretty quickly, so I'm hoping to get some write-ups from like-minded folks. So, I was hoping you could check us, and our stuff, out and if you like what you see, perhaps do a write up in your blog.

Thanks, and let me know if you've got any questions

Dan Stafford
Organizer
Environmental Action

PS - You're up in Winthrop? I grew up a little south of Syracuse and my dad lived for a long time in Watertown, so I chuckled a good deal when I saw your snow-covered cords of wood -
Anyway, hope to hear from you soon!

In the State of the Union address this week, President Bush proclaimed that the US is addicted to oil. And his prescription for solving it? More research and more study. Into switch grass. When the reality is that in the US we currently have the technology to drastically reduce the pollution that leads to global warming. Better gas mileage, more wind power, more solar power. He didn't even mention the words Global Warming in the entire speech. And maybe that's because his administration has been working to silence their own researchers on the issue.

Last week, the New York Times covered the story of James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA. Dr. Hansen claims that when he began speaking about about the global neccessity of the US reducing our carbon dioxide output, he was told their would be "dire consequences" if he continued talking about policy.

Environmental Action is doing something about this censorship. They've launched an online petition to the Bush-appointed Administrator at NASA, telling him this kind of censorship is unacceptable.

Here's the link: http://www.environmental-action.org/gw.asp?id=1319&id4=blog

Thankfully, some cooler heads are prevailing. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee has sharply criticized NASA saying, ""Political figures ought to be reviewing their public statements to make sure they are consistent with the best available science, scientists should not be reviewing their statements to make sure they are consistent with the current political orthodoxy."