Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Bush suppresses global warming science

This week, just like any other, brought more of the same mundane headlines. As usual, newspapers were consumed with the latest public outcries against the war coupled with bloody images to champion the protests. Just below the latest report of ruckus in the Middle East was the typical story of yet another Bush administration scandal. Man, was I relieved. After all, what would a day be without another tale of the Bush posse's clandestine doings to warm my heart? For those who are smart enough to know better than to ruin their day by reading the newspaper, allow me to enlighten you on the latest Washington gossip.

In a recent survey conducted by The Union of Concerned Scientists, a scientist's advocacy group; and the Government Accountability Project, a public interest group working to defend whistle-blowers, some 1,600 federal scientists were sent questionnaires. Despite a relatively low reply rate (about 19 percent of the 1,600 scientists surveyed responded) the findings yielded from the 308 responding scientists are still valid. Forty-six percent of those 308 scientists reported that they had been pressured to alter their findings in ways that resulted in a significant change to their scientific reports. These changes constituted the exclusion of words such as "climate change," or any other such word that is indicative of global warming. In addition to this scientific censorship, the surveyed scientists generated accounts of several other instances in which politics reared its ugly head in the face of science.

Gosh, where to start? Primarily, I could explore the importance of addressing the international crisis of global warming. After all, this testimony of political fiddling coincides perfectly with a frightening, soon to be released, report from the International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC for short. In their first report on environmental changes since 2001, the IPCC warns that by 2080, roughly 3 billion people will suffer water shortage, approximately 600 million will starve, and on top of all this human devastation, the environment will suffer drastic changes which will effectively destroy ecosystems as well as entire species. Although skeptics of global warming continue to argue these shifts in climate are completely natural, it is utterly impossible to ignore mankind's influence on globally mounting carbon dioxide levels.

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The first step of many in the path to stopping, or at least slowing global warming is awareness. How can the American public expect to be environmentally conscious when important facts and reports are never making it to the public eye? The term "Orwellian society" is becoming all too common in recent years where government is forcing its sinister hand into every crevice of the nation.

In a directive that was passed this week, the Bush administration decreed that the policy makers of several government agencies will now be supervised by politically appointed watch dogs. This quietly approved piece of legislation gives the Bush gang the comfort of knowing that several government policy makers, including those for the environment, and pubic health department, will have no option but to enforce the Bush agenda.

It's demoralizing that the White House was granted this directive, especially considering what they will do with it. This legislation was not even enacted by the time the public received preliminary reports of Bush's gagging of scientists. Now that there is a law to qualify him, we can be sure Bush will have no qualms telling researchers what, or for that matter what not, to print.

The conflict of interest here is flagrant. For example, can we trust a man who is involved with the tobacco industry, and at the same time expect that same man to fund lung cancer research? Or for that matter, how could one who is intimately involved in the oil industry be just as concerned with environmental issues such as global warming?

Even more alarming than this single example of government controlled science is the bigger picture. The inherent conflict here is that we have a leader who is more involved in self-interest groups than he is in the interest of humanity. The leader of the free world, who we are inclined to put our faith and trust into, has been anything but trustworthy. People have a right not to be fooled by their government, and it is the loss of this right that should be worrying everyone just as much as global warming.

Max Schlusselberg ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in journalism.

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