Palin is an Anti-Science Butcher

excerpts from a Salon article by Mark Benjamin:

Wildlife activists thought they had seen the worst in 2003 when Frank Murkowski, then the Republican governor of Alaska, signed a bill ramping up state programs to gun down wild wolves from airplanes, inviting average citizens to participate. Wolves, Murkowski believed, were clearly better than humans at killing elk and moose, and humans needed to even the playing field. 

But that was before Sarah Palin took Murkowski’s job at the end of 2006…

In early 2007, Palin’s administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage. Ruling that the Palin administration didn’t have the authority to offer payments, a state judge quickly put a halt to them but not to the shooting of wolves from aircraft.

Detractors consider the airborne shootings a savage business, conducted under the euphemism “predator control.” The airplanes appear in the winter, so the wolves show up like targets in a video game, sprinting across the white canvas below. Critics believe the practice violates the ethics of hunting, while supporters say the process is not hunting at all, but a deliberate cull.

[...]

“Palin acts like she has never met an animal she didn’t want shot,” says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, based in Connecticut.

The controversy over Palin’s promotion of predator control goes beyond animal rights activists recoiling at the thought of picking off wolves from airplanes. A raft of scientists has argued that Palin has provided little evidence that the current program of systematically killing wolves, estimated at a population of 7,000 to 11,000, will result in more moose for hunters. State estimates of moose populations have come under scrutiny. Some wildlife biologists say predator control advocates don’t even understand what wolves eat.

...[I]t is not hard to find Alaskans who say Palin’s enthusiasm for predator control fits a broader narrative of how she edits science to suit her personal views. She endorses the teaching of creationism in public schools and has questioned whether humans are responsible for global warming.

In 2007, she approved $400,000 to educate the public about the ecological success of shooting wolves and bears from the air. Some of the money went to create a pamphlet distributed in local newspapers, three weeks before the public was to vote on an initiative that would have curtailed aerial killing of wolves by private citizens. “The timing of the state’s propaganda on wolf control was terrible,” wrote the Anchorage Daily News on its editorial page.

“Across the board, Sarah Palin puts on a masquerade, claiming she is using sound management and science,” says Nick Jans, an Alaskan writer who co-sponsored the initiative. ”In reality she uses ideology and ignores science when it is in her way.” The initiative was defeated last month.

Gordon Haber is a wildlife scientist who has studied wolves in Alaska for 43 years. “On wildlife-related issues, whether it is polar bears or predator controls, she has shown no inclination to be objective,” he says of Palin. “I cannot find credible scientific data to support their arguments,” he adds about the state’s rational for gunning down wolves. “In most cases, there is evidence to the contrary.”

Last year, 172 scientists signed a letter to Palin, expressing concern about the lack of science behind the state’s wolf-killing operation. According to the scientists, state officials set population objectives for moose and caribou based on “unattainable, unsustainable historically high populations.” As a result, the “inadequately designed predator control programs” threatened the long-term health of both the ungulate and wolf populations. The scientists concluded with a plea to Palin to consider the conservation of wolves and bears “on an equal basis with the goal of producing more ungulates for hunters.”

Apparently Palin wasn’t fazed. Earlier this year she introduced state legislation that would further divorce the predator-control program from science. The legislation would transfer authority over the program from the state Department of Fish and Game to Alaska’s Board of Game, whose members are appointed by, well, Palin. Even some hunters were astounded by her power play.

The legislation would give Palin’s board “more leeway without any scientific input to do whatever the hell they basically wanted,” Mark Richards, co-chair of Alaska Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, wrote in an e-mail. The legislation is currently stalled in the Alaska state Senate.

Scientists insist that the Palin administration is systematically killing wolves with an inadequate understanding of the relationship between the carnivore and hoofed animals. The state responds that predators kill over 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die each year, while hunters and trappers kill less than 10 percent.

Haber says the state’s numbers are wildly inflated. His decades of wolf research have shown that wolves are, in fact, mostly scavengers. “Sixty to 70 percent of the moose they eat are scavenged, not killed,” he says. He adds that the state’s wolf population estimates, based on secondhand observations and extrapolations, are also high.

Palin offered the $150 bounty for wolf paws in 2007 after efforts to kill wolves from airplanes that season were, in her view, coming up short. State officials had hoped that 382 to 664 wolves would be killed during that predator-control season. State officials were disappointed when only 115 wolves were killed from the air.

Palin thought the $150 cash bounties would do the trick. Haber has another explanation for the dry spell. “I can tell you from my own research that the reason they didn’t get many wolves in certain years, particularly last winter, is because they have scraped those areas clean,” he says.

Last year, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., introduced legislation designed to curtail predator-control programs, except as a last resort. “It’s time to ground Alaska’s illegal and inhumane air assault on wolves,” Miller said. Palin quickly fired off a curt letter in response, applauding the state’s programs as “widely recognized for their excellence and effectiveness.” She pointed out that her state has “managed its wildlife so that we still maintain abundant populations of all of our indigenous predators almost fifty years after statehood.”

Says Jans, co-sponsor of the losing initiative to outlaw aerial wolf hunting: ”This is a reflection of a somebody who doesn’t have any use for science.”

Boxer on the McLiar Acceptance Speech

I’m not sure about the last sentence, but the rest of Barbara Boxer’s statement on McLiar’s blubbering is on target (i.e., truthful):

Last night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain used the word “fight” more than 40 times in his speech.

In the 16 years that we have served together in the Senate, I have seen John McCain fight.

I have seen him fight against raising the federal minimum wage 14 times.

I have seen him fight against making sure that women earn equal pay for equal work.

I have seen him fight against a women’s right to choose so consistently that he received a zero percent vote rating from pro-choice organizations.

I have seen him fight against helping families gain access to birth control.

I have seen him fight against Social Security, even going so far as to call its current funding system “an absolute disgrace.”

And I saw him fight against the new GI Bill of Rights until it became politically untenable for him to do so.

John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time in 2008—that’s no maverick.

We do have two real fighters for change in this election—their names are Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Bush administration bans talk on polar bears

from Mongabay:

The Bush administration has banned discussion of polar bears, sea ice, and global warming among officials traveling overseas, according to environmental groups and the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This is positively Orwellian,” said Kieran Suckling, policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that made the allegation. “Only the worst cynic could admit the polar bear is being driven extinct by global warming, then issue a gag order to stop government scientists from talking about it.”

National Park Service Still Forced to Lie

from PEER:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. “We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.”

Science Ignored, Again

from the NYT:

The Bush administration loves to talk about the virtues of “sound science,” by which it usually means science that buttresses its own political agenda. But when some truly independent science comes along to threaten that agenda, the administration often ignores or minimizes it. The latest example involves the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject the recommendations of experts inside and outside the government who had urged a significant tightening of federal standards regulating the amount of soot in the air.

At issue were so-called fine particles, tiny specks of soot that are less than one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair. They penetrate deep into the lungs and circulatory system and have been implicated in tens of thousands of deaths annually from both respiratory and coronary disease. The E.P.A., obliged under the Clean Air Act to set new exposure levels every five years, tightened the daily standard. But it left unchanged the annual standard, which affects chronic exposure and which the medical community regards as more important.

In so doing, the agency rejected the recommendation of its own staff scientists and even that of its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council, a 22-member group of outside experts that had recommended a significant tightening of the standards. Stephen Johnson, the agency administrator, claimed there was “insufficient evidence” linking health problems to long-term exposure. He added that “wherever the science gave us a clear picture, we took clear action,” noting also that “there was not complete agreement on the standard.”

One wonders how much evidence Mr. Johnson requires, and how “complete” an “agreement” must be before he takes action. A 20-2 vote in favor of stronger standards seems fairly convincing to us; likewise the unanimous plea for stronger standards from mainstream groups like the American Medical Association.

The environmental and medical communities suspect that the administration’s main motive was to save the power companies and other industrial sources of pollution about $1.9 billion in new investment that the more protective annual standard would have required. But here, too, the administration appears to have ignored expert advice. Last Friday, the agency released an economic analysis showing that in exchange for $1.9 billion in new costs, the stronger annual standards could save as many as 24,000 thousand lives and as much as $50 billion annually in health care and other costs to society. Studies like these always offer a range of possible outcomes, but even at the lower end — 2,200 lives and $4.3 billion in money saved — the cost-benefit ratios are very favorable.

In the next year or so, the administration must decide whether to tighten the standards for another pollutant, ground-level ozone, which causes smog and is also associated with respiratory diseases. The scientific advisory committee has tentatively recommended that the ozone standard be tightened, citing new evidence of smog’s adverse effects. This time Mr. Johnson should pay more attention to the scientists and less to the political strategists in the White House.

The Shame of NASA’s Nobel

from the NYT (slightly altered to better reflect reality):

NASA is basking in the glow of a Nobel Prize awarded to one of its scientists and to a Berkeley astronomer for research performed on a satellite built by NASA. The award is richly deserved, and the agency deserves great credit for making the work possible. Too bad the program that yielded these pioneering discoveries was reined in eviscerated not long ago so that NASA could pour billions of dollars into resuming shuttle flights, finishing the international space station, and developing spacecraft to pursue the Bush administration’s ambitious bogus space “exploration” program.

The research that won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was performed using instruments aboard the Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE satellite, which was launched in 1989. Huge teams of government and academic researchers measured and analyzed the cosmic microwave background radiation that permeates the universe. Their findings provided strong support for the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe, and turned cosmology, previously rather speculative, into a precise science. The discoveries have been hailed as one of the greatest scientific advances of the past century.

The COBE satellite was part of NASA’s Explorer Program, which uses small satellites to conduct important studies that don’t need gigantic, costly space platforms. Yet these and similar small-scale missions were disproportionately cut to free up money for more grandiose political programs. The Nobel award suggests that NASA needs to rebalance its portfolio, a task the agency says (cough, cough) is in progress.

Climate-controlled White House

from Salon:

By Paul D. Thacker

In February, there were several press reports about the Bush administration exercising message control on the subject of climate change. The New Republic cited numerous instances in which top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the National Hurricane Center sought to downplay links between more-intense hurricanes and global warming. NOAA scientist Thomas Knutson told the Wall Street Journal he’d been barred from speaking to CNBC because his research suggested just such a link.

At the time, Bush administration officials denied that they did any micromanaging of media requests for interviews. But a large batch of e-mails obtained by Salon through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the White House was, in fact, controlling access to scientists and vetting reporters. (The e-mails were provided to several members of Congress for comment; Rep. Henry Waxman’s office has now published them here.)

In 2005, NOAA press officer Kent Laborde wrote an e-mail that approved Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin’s request to interview scientists. “CEQ and OSTP have given the green light for the interview,” he wrote. CEQ is the Council on Environmental Quality and OSTP is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both are White House agencies that work on science issues. During the Bush administration, numerous critics have charged that CEQ has been particularly aggressive in pushing a pro-business agenda and suppressing inconvenient science.

In another e-mail, Laborde’s boss, Jordan St. John, said of NOAA scientist Dave Hoffman, whose work tracks greenhouse gases, “This doesn’t say anything new about the data, it’s just a new way of tracking it. This was the CEQ-approved release that went on the NOAA Web site earlier this week.”

The e-mails also show that after Hurricane Katrina, NOAA press officers had to get clearance from the Department of Commerce for scientists to discuss global warming and hurricanes with the press. (NOAA is part of Commerce.) Regarding the request for a particular interview, Commerce press officer Catherine Trinh wrote, “Let’s pass on this one.” The response from a NOAA official reads, “Can I please have a reason?”

In another message, Trinh writes, “Let’s pass on this ... interview, but rather refer him to BLANK of the BLANK at BLANK. CEQ suggested him as a good person to talk on this subject.” The blanks denote passages that were whited out by lawyers releasing the documents.

But Commerce’s deputy director of communications, Chuck Fuqua, was happy to have a more politically reliable NOAA hurricane researcher named Chris Landsea speak to the press. At the time, Landsea was stating publicly that global warming had little to no effect on hurricanes. “Please make sure Chris is on message and that it is a friendly discussion,” Fuqua wrote regarding a request for Landsea to appear on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” On the show, Landsea downplayed research that linked global warming with more-intense hurricanes like Katrina.

In an e-mail the week prior, Fuqua OK’d Landsea for another interview and asked, “Please be careful and make sure Chris is on his toes. Since BLANK went off the menu, I’m a little nervous on this, but trust he’ll hold the course.”

The individual who went “off the menu” could have been researcher Thomas Knutson, whose published research indicates that hurricanes will grow stronger because of global warming. But when NOAA press officers asked if Knutson could appear on CNBC, Fuqua asked if Knutson had the same opinion as Landsea. When he learned that Knutson had published research suggesting that hurricanes will be getting stronger, he responded, “Why can’t we have one of the other guys on then?”

Fuqua is the former director of media relations for the Republican National Convention. Contacted by Salon, he asked, “Can I get back to you?” Subsequent attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.

Asked if Commerce clears scientists to talk to the press, Richard Mills, the department’s director of public affairs, said, “I wouldn’t characterize it like that.” What did it mean when Fuqua said that Chris Landsea should “stay on message?” Responded Mills, “Chuck just meant that Chris should be ready and prepared.”

When NOAA press officer Laborde was contacted to discuss the e-mails, he denied that interviews were subject to approval from White House officials. Confronted with his own e-mails, however, he said, “If you already knew the answer, why did you ask the question?”

“Unfortunately,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., after viewing e-mails provided by Salon, “it is no longer surprising to receive reports of the Bush administration interfering with public access to government scientists. These documents, if confirmed, suggest the lengths the Bush administration will go to control the message rather than let the facts speak for themselves.” Boxer will be among the senators questioning Jim Connaughton of CEQ Wednesday when he appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Political Corruption of Science

from truthout:

By Gene C. Gerard

Unions representing thousands of scientists and other specialists employed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently complained that EPA officials are ignoring science. The unions indicated that agency administrators are allowing numerous toxic substances to be used in agricultural pesticides. This revelation comes on the heels of a survey of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists which found that the agency has become so political that it’s no longer protecting public safety. While all presidential administrations, by their very nature, are political, it’s increasingly clear that the Bush administration is using politics to corrupt science.

Nine unions comprised of 9,000 EPA scientists maintained that multiple agricultural pesticides are dangerous for pregnant women, children, and the elderly. In a letter to EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson, union leaders indicated that agency officials seem to believe that “the concerns of agriculture and the pesticide industry come before our responsibility to protect the health of our nation’s citizens.” An EPA scientist warned that the agency often ignores scientific studies that disagree with industry-funded studies. This isn’t surprising, given that the EPA’s own inspector general acknowledged earlier this year that the agency had failed to protect children from pesticide exposure.

Late last month, the Union of Concerned Scientists released the disturbing results of its survey of FDA scientists. The survey was sent to almost 6,000 FDA scientists, of whom about one-fifth responded. The responses revealed that 20 percent had been asked explicitly by FDA administrators to provide incomplete, inaccurate or misleading information to the public. And 60 percent of the scientists reported that commercial interests have inappropriately induced or attempted to induce the reversal, withdrawal or modification of FDA actions.

Almost 20 percent of FDA scientists in the survey indicated that they had been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or conclusions in a scientific document. There was ample evidence of this in 2004 when the FDA prevented an agency scientist from publicly criticizing antidepressants. In February of that year agency officials prevented Dr. Andrew Mosholder from testifying at a public hearing on the increased risk of suicide among children who take antidepressants.

Dr. Mosholder conducted an FDA review of 22 studies on children and antidepressant medication. He concluded that these children were twice as likely to become suicidal. After being slated to present his findings at a public hearing, FDA officials removed him from the agenda. In the fall of 2004, a Congressional committee discovered that agency administrators forced Dr. Mosholder to delete data regarding the risks of antidepressants from documents he submitted to Congress. Essentially, FDA officials put the health and safety of America’s children at risk by promoting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. But that shouldn’t be shocking, given that drug makers spent $158 million in 2004 to lobby the Bush administration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Almost half of the FDA scientists in the survey indicated that the agency isn’t effectively protecting public health. The FDA’s involvement in the now discredited drug Vioxx is glaring proof of this. Dr. David Graham, the associate director of the FDA Office of Drug Safety, complained in 2004 that officials attempted to suppress the results of his study on Vioxx. He found that as many as 139,000 people had suffered heart attacks or strokes and approximately 55,000 people died as a result of taking the drug.

Ironically, late in 2004 the manufacturer of Vioxx, Merck, removed the drug from the marketplace after clinical studies demonstrated an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. According to Dr. Graham, the FDA is “virtually incapable of protecting America.” Merck made almost half a million dollars in political contributions in 2004, with 70 percent going into Republican coffers. It seems likely that the FDA’s actions toward Vioxx were attributable to politics.

More than half of the agency’s scientists who participated in the survey reported that the FDA doesn’t routinely provide complete and accurate information to the public. The agency was certainly guilty of this concerning its involvement with the drug Ketek. In 2001 an FDA panel recommended its approval to treat pneumonia, although the panel had concerns about potential liver damage. Consequently, the drug’s manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis, agreed to conduct a study of the drug’s effect on the liver. It was later discovered that the study was fraudulent.

However, FDA officials continued to cite the study as proof that Ketek was safe, and in 2004 the drug was approved. Earlier this year, the agency’s Office of Drug Safety found 110 cases of liver problems related to Ketek, including cases of liver failure and death, and recommended that it be withdrawn from the market. And agency scientists estimated that the drug caused liver failure at approximately four times the rate of other antibiotics. Despite all these warnings, FDA administrators approved of clinical trials using the drug on children as young as six months old.

The complaints of scientists at both the EPA and the FDA are serious and troubling. And there seems to be little doubt that their accusations are valid. The Bush administration is consistently placing political and industry interests ahead of sound science. As a result, the health, safety and welfare of the nation are being compromised.

NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

from NYT:

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush’s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.

But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the “understand and protect” phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

“We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that go out for peer review, whenever we have strategy meetings,” said Philip B. Russell, a 25-year NASA veteran who is an atmospheric chemist at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “As civil servants, we’re paid to carry out NASA’s mission. When there was that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the planet, that made it much easier to justify this kind of work.”

Several NASA researchers said they were upset that the change was made at NASA headquarters without consulting the agency’s 19,000 employees or informing them ahead of time.

Though the “understand and protect” phrase was deleted in February, when the Bush administration submitted budget and planning documents to Congress, its absence has only recently registered with NASA employees.

Mr. Steitz, the NASA spokesman, said the agency might have to improve internal communications, but he defended the way the change was made, saying it reflected the management style of Michael D. Griffin, the administrator at the agency.

“Strategic planning comes from headquarters down,” he said, and added, “I don’t think there was any mal-intent or idea of exclusion.”

The line about protecting the earth was added to the mission statement in 2002 under Sean O’Keefe, the first NASA administrator appointed by President Bush, and was drafted in an open process with scientists and employees across the agency.

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as “the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

And since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track changes on the earth’s surface, the agency has been increasingly involved in monitoring the environment and as a result has been immersed in political disputes over environmental policy and spending, said W. Henry Lambright, a professor of public administration and political science at Syracuse University who has studied the trend.

The shift in language echoes a shift in the agency’s budgets toward space projects and away from earth missions, a shift that began in 2004, the year Mr. Bush announced his vision of human missions to the Moon and beyond.

The “understand and protect” phrase was cited repeatedly by James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA who said publicly last winter that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Hansen’s comments started a flurry of news media coverage in late January; on Feb. 3, Mr. Griffin issued a statement of “scientific openness.”

The revised mission statement was released with the agency’s proposed 2007 budget on Feb. 6. But Mr. Steitz said Dr. Hansen’s use of the phrase and its subsequent disappearance from the mission statement was “pure coincidence.”

Dr. Hansen, who directs the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA office, has been criticized by industry-backed groups and Republican officials for associating with environmental campaigners and his endorsement of Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Dr. Hansen said the change might reflect White House eagerness to shift the spotlight away from global warming.

“They’re making it clear that they have the authority to make this change, that the president sets the objectives for NASA, and that they prefer that NASA work on something that’s not causing them a problem,” he said.

Drug Warriors Push Eye-Eating Fungus

from In These Times:

By Jeremy Bigwood

On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its “ReNu with MoistureLoc” rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness—requiring a corneal replacement.

That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in “a major drug-producing country,” such as Colombia. The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and its most vocal supporter was his colleague Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been promoting the fungus for almost a decade as key to winning the drug war.

The Colombian government has come out against it. And those entities of the U.S. government that have studied the use of Fusarium for more than 30 years don’t recommend it either: The Office of National Drug Control Policy, also known as the Drug Czar’s office, CIA, DEA, the State Department and the USDA have all concluded that the fungus is unsafe for humans and the environment.

“Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly. … Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide,” wrote David Struhs, then secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, in a 1999 letter rejecting the use of the fungus against Florida’s outdoor marijuana crop. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species.”

Mutation of the fungus allows it to attack other “hosts.” The eye-eating Fusarium seems to be a result of such a mutation. After all, the soft-contact lenses that it grows behind are a recent development—having only been commercially available since 1971.

The DEA stopped funding Fusarium research in the United States during the early ’90s after it learned that Fusarium infections can be deadly in “immunocompromised” people—not only AIDS patients and those with other illnesses, but also those who are severely malnourished. The University of the Andes in Bogot� has recently reported that 12 percent of Colombian children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Spraying this fungus on a vulnerable population could be perceived as using a biological weapon.

The CIA has been against the use of Fusarium to kill drug crops since at least 2000. At that time, one official told the Times, “I don’t support using a product on a bunch of Colombian peasants that you wouldn’t use against a bunch of rednecks growing marijuana in Kentucky.”

A top scientist from the USDA, which has studied the fungus the longest, said that his agency “cannot support” its use. And the State Department, whose Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement carries out drug crop eradication all over the world, does not support it, either.

In 2000, when Congress first passed “Plan Colombia,” the Colombian aid package that ordered the use of the fungus in Colombia, President Clinton waived the part of the bill that dealt with the fungus because he thought its use would be perceived as biological warfare. At the same time, the Andean Community of Nations, an organization comprising Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, banned it within their territories.

So, who does support the spraying of the eye-eating fungus over other countries? Only a few adamant drug war jihadists in the House, led by Burton, who are frustrated by the lack of progress in the drug war.

The fungus provision has already passed the House, but the Senate version of the bill contains no similar language. Responsibility for a final decision rests on the conference committee where the House and Senate bills will be reconciled—scheduled to happen before this summer.

Science Under Attack

From Nature (23 Feb., 2006):

Researchers are increasingly upset with the Bush administration, not for its tactics but for its entire operational philosophy.

The highlight of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) last week was an impassioned session in which scientific leaders, including molecular biologist David Baltimore, made clear their views on the fraught relationship between science and the Bush administration.

The discussion was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists in the wake of revelations about how the administration’s political appointees have sought to control the messages communicated by scientists to the public, including attempts by the NASA press office to muzzle climate scientist James Hansen (see page 896).

And judging from the response at a packed and emotional hall in St Louis, a great many US scientists now believe that the Bush administration is prepared not only to ignore scientific facts in making policy decisions, but also to suppress findings that conflict with its own priorities.

For Baltimore — Nobel laureate, outgoing president of the California Institute of Technology, president-elect of the AAAS, and arguably the most eminent voice in all of American science — events have reached a tipping point. He suggested that the Bush administration’s approach to science stems from its adherence to a particular philosophy of government, that of a ‘unitary executive’. Instead of resignedly shrugging their shoulders whenever such a case of scientific manipulation arises, Baltimore argued, scientists need to recognize the potency of the threat that this governmental philosophy represents to the long-cherished independence of US science.

The unitary executive is an old idea, but not many Americans had heard of it until last month, when it cropped up during the Senate confirmation process of Supreme Court judge Samuel Alito. At the extreme, it holds that the executive branch can run the US federal government as it sees fit, especially in wartime. Given that a seminal achievement of the Constitution of the United States was to establish a balance of power between the executive branch, the Congress and the judiciary, this may sound absurd, but it seems to hold considerable sway within the Bush administration.

Baltimore warned that the doctrine opens the way for “an exertion of executive hegemony over science”. He called on researchers to “fight for a very different doctrine” under which “the executive’s role is to defend intellectual freedom”. In the light of the Bush administration’s adherence to this philosophy, he added: “It is no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of science.” From someone of Baltimore’s experience and reputation, these are strong words.

For science to flourish it needs settings that support freedom of enquiry, and the creation of such settings was a great achievement of the Enlightenment. Protecting them is vital, not just for science but for all of humanity.

Government agencies can never provide such settings in quite the same way universities can. But their scientists must still be allowed to express the results of their research as they see fit. They should also be free to discuss how their research makes an argument for changes in policy, as Hansen sought to do with regard to climate change. In return, scientists have to acknowledge that the line between science and policy is a fine one, and endeavour to distinguish clearly between their scientific findings and their policy ideas.

In its five years in office, the Bush administration has sought to exert tighter control of the branches of government where scientists work. This applies not only to regulatory agencies, where politics are never far below the surface, but also to places such as the National Institutes of Health and NASA, where intramural researchers are used to the freedom of expression enjoyed by their university colleagues.

It is by no means the case that these proud federal agencies or their staff have fallen subject to the executive branch’s decree. Most federal agencies have a deep stock of integrity, which even eight years of the Bush administration will not erode away. Yet Congress, in particular, should be doing much more to defend them from White House interference. And researchers should stand up and be counted with colleagues in the federal government in their hour of need.

NASA cargo to hitch a ride on Indian spacecraft

from Nature (18 May 2006):

Two payloads from NASA will fly on board Chandrayaan-1, the first unmanned Indian spacecraft to the Moon, which is scheduled for launch in early 2008.

A synthetic aperture radar developed by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, will look for water in the Moon’s polar regions, and an instrument designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will map and characterize minerals on the lunar surface.

The Indian Space Research Organization will fly the equipment for free, and NASA will share its data with Indian scientists, under an agreement signed on 9 May.

Four other instruments — from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria — were also selected out of 16 proposals from abroad. They will join India’s own payloads, which include a terrain-mapping camera and a Moon-impact probe that would test future landing technologies.

Chandrayaan-1 will scrutinize the lunar surface for two years from an altitude of 100 kilometres. NASA’s participation is seen as a sign of revival of Indo-US cooperation in space that was interrupted by sanctions imposed by Washington following India’s nuclear tests in 1998.

Putz Griffin on the NASA budget

Tony Reichhardt

Space agency chief answers his critics.

NASA head Mike Griffin was blunter than usual last week, as he defended his scaling back of the agency's science programme. Space scientists have responded angrily to the cutbacks (see Nature 439, 768–769; 2006), but Griffin insisted to two key advisory groups — the Space Studies Board and the science subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council — that the science programme is still healthy. He made it clear, however, that the White House's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars takes priority over increased science funding. And although he is willing to rethink some specifics, he reminded scientists "to be respectful of the political and budgetary constraints we face".

Griffin's stance on...

Whether budget cuts might be reversed

We're willing to reconsider, but reconsideration should be based on community input, not the loudest voice, the longest e-mail or who can use the most capitals.

The outcry over cutting research grants

The community doesn't care if we fly missions; they want money for universities. I find that, to be honest with you, appalling.

A law requiring NASA to try to rescue the Hubble telescope — even though such a mission would take hundreds of millions of dollars from other science projects

I hope the astronomy community likes the decision they lobbied for. They better damn well like it, because they got it.

Cutbacks to life-sciences research aboard the International Space Station

What is the point of funding life-sciences research when I can't put people into space? I need the budget I have to recreate abilities that we once had to fly [beyond Earth orbit], that we don't have any more. It's a sequencing problem.

Deep cuts to NASA astrobiology

I did think astrobiology was less important than traditional space science. It had less intrinsic subject matter to it, and was less advanced. If the community rises up and says it should be funded, we'll rethink it.

Opportunities for science on the Moon

I have to draw the line when people say "I'm not interested in the Moon. I would rather put the money into studying the physics of the tropopause."

OK, great. Glad you have an opinion; everybody gets one. But the people who run the country have decided that we are in fact going to the Moon. It's a question of what scientists would like to do with that.

The importance of finishing the International Space Station

As administrator, I inherit a situation not of my liking. But other nations have spent a very significant part of their own discretionary space funding supporting our agenda. They built their hardware, and they want to see it flown. I want us to honour this commitment.

House Panel Defeats Net Neutrality

by JEFF CHESTER

The GOP House leadership rejected calls Wednesday to preserve the Internet's open and democratic nature in the United States. Phone and cable industry lobbyists breathed a sigh of relief as the House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated, 34 to 22, an amendment to a broadband communications bill (known as the Barton-Rush Act) that would require "network neutrality." Under the proposal, developed by Massacusetts Democrat Ed Markey and others, phone and cable companies would have been prohibited from transforming the Internet into a private, pay-as-you-post toll road.

Over the past week, there has been a remarkable outpouring of public and corporate support for network neutrality. SavetheInternet.com, organized by Free Press and representing dozens of nonprofit groups and leading Internet experts, helped generate 250,000 signatures in less than a week for an online petition calling on Congress to protect the Internet and pass the Markey bill.

This new group, a collection of unusual bedfellows that runs the political gamut from Common Cause, the Gun Owners of America and the Parents TV Council to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, also spurred many bloggers to take a strong stand (ranging from the liberal Daily Kos to the libertarian Instapundit).

Meanwhile, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay and IAC, which make up the Network Neutrality Coalition, unveiled their "Don't Mess With the Net" campaign, running ads in Roll Call and The Hill targeting lawmakers. MoveOn.org's new Save the Internet campaign also generated many letters and e-mails to members of Congress.

It is puzzling, though, why Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and allies have not unleashed a serious--and very public--nationwide campaign in support of network neutrality. So far, these giants have worked cautiously, largely inside the Beltway, reflecting perhaps their corporate ambivalence about calling on Congress to pass Internet-related safeguards. Unlike the phone and cable efforts, there has been no saturation-TV or print-advertising campaign, something these deep-pocketed digital giants could eaily afford.

This growing pressure on the Democrats to stand up for an open Internet helped convince House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to formally support the call for network neutrality. Consequently, only five House Commerce Committee Democrats voted with the GOP majority to kill the digital nondiscrimination plan, including Edolphus Townes (New York), Albert Wynn (Maryland), Charles Gonzalez (Texas), Bobby Rush (Illinois) and Gene Green (Texas). Only one Republican committee member, Heather Wilson of New Mexico, voted in support of the network neutrality amendment.

Giants including AT&T (SBC), Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner have staked their business plans for the Internet based on being able to control and "monetize" the flow of digital communications coming into PCs, digital TVs and mobile services. The Federal Communications Commission--at the behest of the phone and cable lobby--recently overturned longstanding safeguards requiring the Internet to operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. The two industries are spending tens of millions of dollars to fight off any Congressional safeguard for the Internet that would restore the nondiscrimination principle.

Commerce Committee chair Joe Barton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have been the chief cheerleaders for the cable and phone lobby. On Wednesday, Barton derided the call for network neutrality, claiming that it's "still not clearly defined. It's kind of like pornography: You know it when you see it." Barton and Hastert are expected, as early as next week, to successfully pass the bill in the House without a network neutrality provision. A showdown is now looming in the Senate Commerce Committee, which is about to take up its own broadband Internet legislation. A bipartisan network neutrality amendment, similar to what was just defeated in the House committee, will be offered by Senators Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan. Public-interest advocates and corporate allies plan to mobilize an even larger outcry of support for this proposal.

With midterm elections looming, GOP leaders will come under increasing pressure to make a choice. Will they continue to back their few phone and cable industry supporters and keep the open Internet safeguards off the table? Or will they recognize that a genuine digital-age protest movement is emerging that could further harm their party's chances in November? The next few weeks will reveal whether the "smart mobs" can win over a tiny handful of communications monopolists.

Scientists condemn US as emissions of greenhouse gases hit record level

from The Independent via ThinkProgress:

By Steve Connor

The United States emitted more greenhouse gases in 2004 than at any time in history, confirming its status as the world’s biggest polluter. Latest figures on the US contribution to global warming show that its carbon emissions have risen sharply despite international concerns over climate change.

The figures, which were quietly released on Easter Monday, reveal that net greenhouse gas emissions during 2004 increased by 1.7 per cent on the previous year, equivalent to a rise of 110 million tons of carbon dioxide.

This is the biggest annual increase since 2000 and means that in 2004 - the latest year that full data is available - the US released the equivalent of nearly 6,300 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Scientists in Britain condemned the increase, saying that it showed how the US was failing to take a lead in the international attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions despite being the worst offender.

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