From the Star Ledger:Scientists at a world-renowned climate research lab in New Jersey say their discoveries are being hidden from public view because their conclusions on global warming differ from those in the Bush administration."What can I tell you? I was telling them something they didn't want to hear," said Richard Wetherald, a career scientist at the federally funded center. "But the public is not being informed when these things are zapped." Neither NOAA nor the White House responded to several requests for an interview. President Bush's science adviser, John Marbuger, was not available for this article. Tensions between the lab and officials in Washington first came to light last week when the journal Nature quoted Ants Leetmaa, the director of the Plainsboro center, as saying the Bush administration has squelched a public statement on hurricanes and climate change prepared last spring. The paper was the work of a panel of scientists Leetmaa headed. The problem started in 2001, he said, after Congress rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to restrict the amount of fossil fuel emissions. Shortly after Congress acted, he wrote a press release, he says, with the help of the NOAA press office, on ...

According to Paul Thacker at Salon: 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. 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?"

NASA has just released the results of a new Global Warming study that was led by the notorious James Hansen of recent government censorship fame."The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y. along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or smaller than at the present time. Recent warming is forcing species of plants and animals to move toward the north and south poles."Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows how temperatures changed on average from 2001-2005. 2005 was the warmest ranked year on record. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the ...

NASA's QuickScat Satellite team reported yesterday that perennial sea ice that normally survives the summer melt season has abruptly shrunk by 14% between 2004 and 2005. The changes were most pronounced in the East Arctic Ocean, which lost almost 50% of its perennial ice over the same period. "Recent changes in Arctic sea ice are rapid and dramatic," said Son Nghiem, The JPL team leader. "If the seasonal ice in the East Arctic Ocean were to be removed by summer melt, a vast ice-free area would open up. Such an ice-free area would have profound impacts on the environment, as well as on marine transportation and commerce." Researchers indicate that if the sea ice cover continues to decline, the surrounding ocean will get warmer, further accelerating summer ice melts and impeding fall freeze-ups. This longer melt season will, in turn, further diminish the Arctic ice cover.You would think that at some point, our government would realize that they have sided with a dwindling pool of scientific outliers in casting doubt upon anthropogenic warming trends. How long do you think they can continue to oppose the growing library of almost indisputable hard ...

Or, how to confuse correlation with causality, part 34,289,767.Some friends and I went to see Al Gores recent movie "An Inconvenient Truth" a few weeks ago. It was really quite a good show, in marked contrast to his political voice through the failed campaigns.Let me start my review, lest my yelping liberal wife slay me out of hand, by saying that I DO believe that there should be serious and growing concern regarding global warming. I also believe that there should be more movement in federal policy circles to address these issues sooner rather than later. I also think that Gore put together a very approachable and emotionally effective presentation on why we should all take the global stakes of failing to act on such an awesome threat to our ecosystem much more seriously.I even saw a news article briefly appear on Yahoo entitled something to the effect of "Gore gets science right in global warming movie." Unfortunately though, the blogosphere dug in over the next few days to discover that the reporter who wrote the article only contacted 35 scientists, only 5 of whom had actually seen the movie, none of whom were climatologists.To Gore's and the movie producers' ...