Senior NOAA Scientists Claim Word "Kyoto" Banned From Discussion At Boss' Orders - RMN

[hatrack]

federal climate scientist in Boulder says his boss told him never to utter the word Kyoto and tried to bar him from using the phrase climate change at a conference. The allegations come as federal investigators probe whether Bush administration officials tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and attempted to censor their research.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement - never ratified by the United States and opposed by the Bush administration - that requires nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Boulder laboratory, said the ban on using the word Kyoto was issued about four years ago. "We were under instructions not to use the word Kyoto, which of course is absurd," said Tans, who measures levels of carbon dioxide at NOAA's Global Monitoring Division. He has worked for the agency since 1990.

Tans said the order was issued verbally by his boss, David Hofmann, the division director. Another senior researcher at the Boulder laboratory, NOAA physicist James Elkins, said Hofmann told him the same thing. Elkins studies greenhouse gases and has worked at NOAA for more than 20 years. He said he can't remember when the directive was issued, but it was "probably in 2000 or 2001."

EDIT

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5205550,00.html

[Divernan]

1. Thanks for this and all the other environmental posts today, Hatrack.

I'm forwarding them to my environmentalist friends and relatives.

[hatrack]

2. De nada!

:hi:

[Kolesar]

3. Joe Stalin censored scientists doing genetic research

because it contradicted the Soviet behavioral science conclusions on nature vs. nurture (genetic vs. environment). Hell, Stalin probably had them sent to the gulag or shot.