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Funny story. Al Gore got up and gave a speech on global warming before James Hansen spoke while Gore was Vice President. Gore went further than Hansen was comfortable with given the state of the science at the time and essentially rebuked the Vice-President for doing so. The Clinton Adminstration respected that rebuke. Hansen’s career is a testament to an independent scientist in government employ who does his job–evaluating the Earth’s climate.

Unfortunately, the current administration doesn’t see it that way.

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him – New York Times

Trying to paint him as a radical is ridiculous. The offending comments?

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth “a different planet.”

IOW, as he has often done, he argues that reducing emissions could be done far more cost effectively than many estimates predict.

So now, scientists in the public employ, are having their access to the press restricted

But Dr. Hansen and some of his colleagues said interviews were canceled as a result.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. “the most liberal” media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was “to make the president look good” and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch’s priority.

But she added: “I’m a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That’s not our job. That’s not our mission. The inference was that Hansen was disloyal.”

Normally, Ms. McCarthy would not be free to describe such conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Mr. Acosta, at NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any retribution for doing so.