More scientists muzzled by the administration?

Today's (08 March 2007) NYT has an article discussing charges that the US Fish & Wildlife service (i.e. the administration) has issued memos to its employees stating that they may not discuss climate change, melting ice, drowning polar bears etc, unless officially charged to do so.

[The image, originally from NASA, is of the extent of floating polar ice in summer now, compared to in 1979. See this page at the NRDC for a low-level Q&A that points out that this is not "normal" decadal variation.]

I hope this is not true, but I won't be surprised if it is true. We astronomers should be thankful that our pursuit of knowledge is not (yet) considered as a political threat by those in political power.

Of course, if you follow Fox news (or the WSJ) then you won't worry about this too much, as you have lots of unqualified hacks from various "think"-tanks to re-assure you that man-made global climate change is "junk." Strange how its only the right wing think-tanks, specifically the ones funded by old inefficient and dirty industries, that have worked out that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is wrong.

But instead of having to spend time denying GCC every time some more evidence of it comes out, why not get the story to go away completely? See no evidence of you and your party's funders evil wastefulness, hear no evidence of your evil wastefulness. Brilliant!

[From Zenbowl at DailyKos]