Science

I can’t remember an American president with as much disdain for science as Bush. He has a reputation for picking advisors that tell him what he wants to hear. He finally acquiesced that global warming might be influenced by humans. It must have sunk in that he would go down in history as a complete idiot with his head in the sand.

He has such a reputation that even the Smithsonian Institute toned down an exhibit on the arctic for fear of funding reprisals.

His assaults on science are so numerous I couldn’t even scratch the surface in my short blog.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a group commissioned by the ACLU, issued a report in 2004 called “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.” It has been signed by over 6,000 American scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences. Parts of it cover political interference in science.

In the past month, the United States has been in a science war. The nation's scientific community is at war with the administration. Led by twenty Nobel laureates, the scientists say Bush's government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives. Examples include the suppression and censorship of reports on subjects like climate change and mercury pollution, the stacking of scientific advisory panels, and the suspicious removal of scientific information from government Web sites.

Obama, on the other hand, is picking John P. Holdren as his science advisor, Jane Lubchenco as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy. These are all respected scientist that won’t be afraid to tell the truth. We will probably hear things we don’t want to know. Who knows, maybe it will save our asses!