This morning's NYTimes reports on page one that NASA's mission statement was altered in February to remove any reference to the "Home Planet":
The change was made in February, but apparently is only now filtering down to NASA employees, who brought it to the attention of the New York Times.
This is the BushCo modus operandi. During the 2004 elections, James E. Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, banged the drum on global warming and irritated the admistration, which prefers using "common" sense to evaluate difficult scientific issues and considers peer-reviewed journals as "junk science".
After the election, Hansen complained about how the Administration was rewriting his agency's reports on Global Warming and muzzling NASA warnings. When things began to heat up, so to speak, in January of this year, Hansen said that he was warned that challenging the administration's scientific opinions with scientific facts could lead to budget repercussions. Oh, boy, did it ever:
From 2002 until this year, NASA'’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: "“To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can." ” In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase "“to understand and protect our home planet"” deleted.Although NASA's mission statement has changed over the years, this is the first time since the agency was formed in 1958 that the statement did not include a reference to learning about our planet.
The change was made in February, but apparently is only now filtering down to NASA employees, who brought it to the attention of the New York Times.
This is the BushCo modus operandi. During the 2004 elections, James E. Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, banged the drum on global warming and irritated the admistration, which prefers using "common" sense to evaluate difficult scientific issues and considers peer-reviewed journals as "junk science".
After the election, Hansen complained about how the Administration was rewriting his agency's reports on Global Warming and muzzling NASA warnings. When things began to heat up, so to speak, in January of this year, Hansen said that he was warned that challenging the administration's scientific opinions with scientific facts could lead to budget repercussions. Oh, boy, did it ever:
The "“understand and protect"” phrase was cited repeatedly by James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA who said publicly last winter that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Hansen'’s comments started a flurry of news media coverage in late January . . . . The revised mission statement was released with the agency'’s proposed 2007 budget on Feb. 6. But Mr. Steitz said Dr. Hansen'’s use of the phrase and its subsequent disappearance from the mission statement was "“pure coincidence."”
Yeah, right.
This President is an ass. From no child left behind to stem cells to global warming to Iraq to pick whatever issue you want, he oversees a corporate culture expert in ignoring all facts which fail to fit their version of reality. BushCo is doing real and lasting harm to science, to our culture, to society, democracy, and to the planet. ITMFA
This President is an ass. From no child left behind to stem cells to global warming to Iraq to pick whatever issue you want, he oversees a corporate culture expert in ignoring all facts which fail to fit their version of reality. BushCo is doing real and lasting harm to science, to our culture, to society, democracy, and to the planet. ITMFA
NOTE: eRobin has a much more subtle and effective critique on this same topic.
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