2.12.2006
God and man at NASA:A change in climate
Editors Report / Indian Country Today
February 10, 2006
A rebellion at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is highlighting a shift in the debate over climate change, a shift which leaves the Bush administration looking like religious obscurantists and indigenous prophets looking like the best scientists.
This debate has been running for at least a generation, and it might be the most important issue of the generation; but the latest round came to light at the end of January with charges that NASA officials had tried to silence their most prominent expert on climate change. The charges came directly from the target, James E. Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York City. Hansen has been sounding the alarm for nearly two decades about sharp rises in the global surface temperature attributable to man's activity. Some credit him with coining the phrase ''global warming.''
Futile official attempts to tone down Hansen occur at least annually, but he told The New York Times that the latest spate of warnings was the worst he had seen in nearly 30 years. He and his superiors were particularly angry that the threats ''of dire consequences'' came in phone calls rather than memos, which would leave a paper trail. All the campaign did, however, was to put him on the front page of the Times and give national publicity to his latest paper, stating that calendar year 2005 posted the highest global surface temperature in more than a century of measurements.
Hansen is a hard man to shut up, not only because he clearly has courage and a mission but also because so much of the political and scientific world is paying him attention. About the same time certain NASA public relations functionaries were trying to pressure Hansen, British Prime Minister Tony Blair lent his name to an official United Kingdom government report warning that the climate impact could be even more serious than previously thought. Blair wrote the forward to the report ''Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,'' published Jan. 30. The book compiles evidence from a meteorological office conference last February.
''It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought,'' Blair wrote. ''It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.'' With a voice like Blair's behind him, Hansen is no cinch to hush up.
This pattern of dire warnings and political disparagement has been predictable, but this time something unusual happened. After Hansen's interview hit the paper, Times reporter Andrew Revkin began to receive a flood of complaints from other NASA employees charging political interference with scientific information. The most startling charges centered on a 24-year-old presidential appointee named George Deutsch, the point man in the attempt to muzzle Hansen. Deutsch, it seems, had also ordered a NASA Web designer to add the word ''theory'' after every mention of the ''big bang,'' the cosmological explosion at the origin of the universe.
In an e-mail leaked to the Times, Deutsch said the big bang is ''not proven fact; it is opinion.'' He went on, ''It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.'' Deutsch, a recent journalism graduate from Texas A&M University, appears to be a foolish young man whose theology is a shaky as his science. The big bang, now repeatedly confirmed by astronomy, was first posited by a Jesuit cosmologist, George-Henri Lemaitre, later director of the Pontifical Academy of Science. Initial resistance came from anti-religious scientists who suspected that it fit too neatly into church doctrine. Deutsch's venture into these depths has earned him the role of scapegoat; he resigned Feb. 8 after news of his resume inflation surfaced.
NASA's new administrator, Michael D. Griffin, responded to the Times articles with an agency-wide e-mail slapping down the public affairs office.
We hope that Griffin's message does the job of restoring ''scientific openness'' to an agency that has earned great good will throughout Indian country. Natives remember with appreciation the outreach that NASA, and its public affairs officers, extended during the space mission of astronaut John Herrington, a Chickasaw tribal member. But this political intrusion highlights an ironic feature of the global warming debate that tribal elders will relish.
Indigenous people have warned all along that European-style industrialization is devastating the natural balance. The dominant culture has scoffed at these ''New Age'' prophesies, but they turn out to have been based on solid ''scientific'' experience. Natives of Alaska and the far north have been seeing this warming firsthand, in their empirical observations. (The Goddard report said that the ''remarkable Arctic warmth'' was the main factor pushing 2005 to the top of the chart.)
Instead, it's the skeptics of global warming who have been blinded by religious preconceptions. Their endorsement of the ''conquest of nature'' derives from the first chapter of Genesis, as filtered through the apostle of economics, John Locke. According to Genesis, God created the Earth, and its plants and animals, for the sake of mankind. But, added Locke, ''he gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational.'' This rationale lies at the heart of the European settlement of America and also of modern industrialism. It mandates constant exploitation of natural resources to provide mankind with creature comforts, but turns a blind eye to the condition of nature itself. The use of the Earth quickly turns into its abuse.
(To be fair, we should say that a large number of churchmen repudiate this outlook. Evangelical Christian leaders recently launched an ''Evangelical Climate Initiative'' to reduce the causes of global warming.)
The indigenous outlook, on the other hand, here and across the globe, emphasizes co-existence with nature, not conquest. The other created beings have equal rights with man, and we all have a duty to seek a sustainable balance. Locke's heirs might deride this view as primitive and unproductive, but in the long run it is looking pretty wise, indeed.
Global warming is the ultimate vindication of the Native outlook. Rapid changes in climate and erratic weather patterns are threatening the creature comforts humankind has accumulated. The only way to avoid calamity is to seek a life in balance with nature.
Scientific evidence to support the Native view is now accumulating so rapidly that no amount of political interference can hush it up.
© 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today
********************************************************************************
from: http://indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412436
