Book Review – Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming- author Mark Bowen

Review by Dennis Henize

If you have followed how the Bush administration has systematically censored government scientists whose work contradicts administration policies, particularly regarding global warming, you’ll want to read Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming, by Mark Bowen (Dutton, 2008 – ISBN 978-0-525-95014-1). It’s the story of the fight for our planet, 306 pages long including acknowledgements and index, published in January of this year.

Censoring Science is both infuriating and compelling. It tells the story of how the Bush administration has done its best to keep the American public from hearing the bad news simply that the Earth’s climate is changing, much less that human activity, through burning of fossil fuels, is overwhelmingly likely the culprit. It also offers understandable explanations of the science behind global climate change.

The book, whose author holds a PhD in physics, chronicles the squelching of bad news related to climate change through Bush-Cheney political appointments of unqualified people to key management and public affairs positions within NASA and other agencies involved with Earth science and environment. In fact, NASA’s Mission Statement was quietly changed in 2006 to eliminate what had been its first line: “To understand and protect the home planet”, cutting the legs out from under its Earth science mission.

Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science for the past 25 years, is regarded as the nation’s preeminent climate scientist. Since the late 1980s, Hansen has warned us that with the rate at which we’re adding CO2 to the atmosphere, we’re on a course that’s likely to change the planet in very profound, negative ways. Until fairly recently, Hansen, ever the optimist, had assumed that once mankind understood the problem, we’d demand policy changes to do something about it. But we’ve done virtually nothing, and during the past eight years, information that there even is a problem has been low-balled.

Through placement of administration cheerleaders in NASA public affairs posts, information that several recent years were among the warmest on record was suppressed. Dean Acosta, who was the head of Public Affairs at NASA headquarters, had a media background as a sportscaster. Another PA appointment in NASA, George Deutsch, who stated that his job was “to make the President look good”, eventually resigned after it was revealed that he had lied about graduating college.

Interestingly revealed in Censoring Science, James Hansen has not always been a supporter of Al Gore’s call-to-arms on climate change. Although he recognized the problem, Hansen, during the Clinton years, was reticent to get on Gore’s bandwagon, feeling that Gore was trying too hard to spin the science. Hansen has since come to admit that Gore’s insights and intuition were on track.

Although hardcore climate skeptics probably won’t be swayed, the book offers good and clearly understandable explanations of how mankind’s burning of fossil fuels has set into motion processes which may in coming years become irreversible, leading to some very unsavory consequences… the most obvious for the Keys being significant sea-level rise. Very modest sea-level rise would make much (if not all) of the Keys uninhabitable.

Feedback mechanisms are well explained, the simplest being the change in Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) as the areal extent of ice diminishes. Ice and snow reflect sunlight, and with less surface area covered by ice and snow, Earth’s surface absorbs more sunlight, causing more heating, melting ice faster, accelerating the process. A less obvious but related and very significant feedback loop involves the release of methane (also a greenhouse gas) and CO2 gas as permafrost in arctic regions warms and melts. More greenhouse gas, more warmth is trapped (reflected back to Earth). As these and other amplifying feedbacks kick in, Hansen convincingly argues that at some point, the processes become runaway, such that reducing manmade release of greenhouse gases could not reverse the heating, i.e. the “tipping point”.

Sensitivity and time lag are also explained, sensitivity meaning how much temperature change (and its negative consequences) will result from a given increase in CO2 concentration. Time lag is significant, not only because warming lags behind increases in greenhouse gas concentration, but effects of the actual temperature change vary in the length of time to show up. Likewise but conversely, warming, as well as its negative impacts, will continue to occur for some time even if we get a handle on, and begin reducing, greenhouse gas emissions.

For specifics on how much temperature change we can expect from a “business as usual” continuation of CO2 emissions, and how much sea-level rise to expect from given amounts of warming, read the book. It’s available from the Monroe County library.

Some have said, quoting him incorrectly, that Dr. Hansen is predicting ridiculously dire consequences such as specific number of feet of sea-level rise. While he does present sea-level increases in certain ranges that have been associated with past global temperature records, he does hold out some hope that prompt and decisive actions can head off catastrophic climate change. But time’s a-wasting, and the past eight years certainly have been frittered away.

[There’s a bit of an epilogue to the book, which may or may not be relevant. Since the book’s publication, the Office of Inspector General of NASA in June issued a report on its investigation of claims that Dr. Hansen had been muzzled. Quoting from the IG’s report:

“Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”]