Bloggasm

A few weeks ago I posted an email I had sent to Kenneth Green, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Green had written an article in which he cited a NASA press release that he claimed showed that arctic ice melting had nothing to do with global climate change.

In my email, I pointed out that the press release never once mentioned global warming, and that it was disingenuous of him to say that it claimed otherwise. “A person reading that paragraph in your piece would think that the NASA study addressed green-house gases and concluded that they had nothing to do with the ice melting,” I wrote. “The press release does not really address what is causing the wind patterns, and whether they have been caused by green-house gases.”

At the time I thought it incredibly odd that the press release never once addressed the issue of global warming. In his reply to me, Green wrote, “The NASA release would surely have mentioned it if they thought there was a greenhouse-gas component involved. The fact that they did not mention that, I believe, is strongly suggestive of the fact that they didn’t think a greenhouse-warming was involved in what they found.”

Well, today I was vindicated. The NASA Office of Inspector General released the findings of an investigation to examine reports of alleged “political interference,” predominantly by senior NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs officials.

The findings?

Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public through those particular media over which the Office of Public Affairs had control (i.e., news releases and media access).

So that’s why the press release never mentioned once global warming, despite the fact that the release was about arctic ice melting. When I had originally read the press release I had wondered how a study into such a topic could occur without global warming being addressed at all. Now we know why.

But what’s more interesting is that the investigation implies that the global warming mischaracterization ceased by the end of 2006, when this press release was written in late 2007.

I’ve sent a follow-up email to Green asking if he still stands behind his assertion in the article. I’ll post his reply if he sends one.