60 minutes rewind
as a government scientist james hansen is taking a risk he says there are things that the white
house doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway hansen is arguably the world's
leading researcher on global warming he's the head of nasa's top institute studying the climate
but this eminent scientist says that the bush administration is restricting who he can talk to
and editing what he can say politicians he says are rewriting the science well
there'll be none of that tonight because james hansen is telling what he knows on 60 minutes
you believe that the administration is censoring what you can say to the public
well they're censoring whether or not i can say it
i mean i i say what i believe if i'm allowed to say it
what james hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating he points to the melting arctic
and to antarctica where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea
is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate is that possible there's no
doubt about that the natural changes the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes
that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface those human changes he says are driven
by burning fossil fuels which pump out greenhouse gases like co2 carbon dioxide hansen says that his
research shows man has just 10 years to begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or global warming
will reach what he calls a tipping point and will become unstoppable he says the white house
is blocking that message in my more than three decades in the government i've never
witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public
restrictions like this email that hansen's institute received from nasa in 2004 there
is a new review process the white house is now reviewing all climate-related press releases
why the scrutiny of hanson's work well his goddard institute for space studies is the
source of respected but sobering research on warming it recently announced 2005 was the
warmest year on record hanson started at nasa more than 30 years ago and spent nearly all of
that time studying the earth how important is his work we asked someone at the top
ralph cicerone president of the nation's leading institute of science the national academy of
sciences i can't think of anybody who i would say is better than hanson you might argue that
there's two or three others as good but nobody better and cicerone who's an atmospheric chemist
said the same thing that every leading scientist told us climate change is really
happening so what is causing the changes well the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane and
chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others which are all the increases in their concentrations in
the air are due to human activities it's that simple but if it is that simple why do climate
science reports look like this after they've been edited at the white house with science labeled
not sufficiently reliable it's a tone of scientific uncertainty that the president set in
his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
we do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future
we do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions could impact it
that ambiguity annoyed hansen so he went public a year and a half ago saying this about the bush
administration in a talk at the university of iowa i find a willingness to listen only
to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions this i believe
is a recipe for environmental disasters ever since he said that nasa's been keeping an eye
on hansen nasa let us sit down with him but only with a nasa representative taping the interview
other interviews have been denied and i object to the fact that i'm not able to freely communicate
via the media national public radio wanted to interview me and they were told that they
would need to instead interview someone at nasa headquarters and and the comment was made that
they didn't want jim hanson going on the most liberal media in the nation so i i don't think
that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis i think that we should be able to
communicate the science politically hansen calls himself an independent and he's had trouble with
both parties he says from time to time the clinton administration wanted to hear that
warming was worse than it was but hansen refused to spin the science that way should we be simply
doing our science and reporting it rigorously or to what degree the administration in power has
the right to assume that you're should be a spokesman for the administration
i've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best i can
dozens of federal agencies report science and much of it is edited at the white house before
it's sent to congress and the public it appears that climate science is edited with a heavy hand
these drafts of climate reports were co-written by rick piltz for the federal climate change science
program but pilt says his work was edited by the white house to make global warming seem
less threatening the strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say
there's so much to study way upstream here that we can't even begin to discuss impacts and response
strategies there's much too much uncertainty and it's not climate scientists who are saying that
it's lawyers it's politicians pilts worked under the clinton and bush administrations and each year
he helped write a report to congress called our changing planet you're responsible for editing
our changing planet and you send a review draft to the white house what happens uh it comes back
with a large number of edits handwritten on the hard copy by the chief of staff
of the council on environmental quality and the chief of staff is whom phil cooney he
is a scientist no he's a lawyer it was a lobbyist for the american petroleum institute before going
into the white house phil cooney the former oil industry lobbyist became chief of staff at the
white house council on environmental quality pilt says cooney edited climate reports in his own hand
here a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes maybe undergoing change
uncertainty becomes significant remaining uncertainty this line that says energy production
contributes to warming is just crossed out he was obviously passing it through a political screen he
would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely
consequences of climate change here pilt says that cooney added this line the uncertainties remain so
great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision-making references to human health
are marked out we obtained the drafts from the government accountability project the
edits you're seeing made it into the final report here's that phrase earth may be undergoing change
in the report to congress pilt says there wasn't room at the white house for those who disagreed so
he resigned i mean even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting that's why you will
find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they
know unless they're retired or unless they're ready to resign the story will continue after this
jim henson isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return
he urged us to look north to the arctic where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest
of the world we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north here
in greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where i'm standing now
today it's back there between those hills in that shaded area glaciologists call this a melt stream
but these days it's more like a melt river the bush administration doesn't deny global warming
or that man plays a role the administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research
hanson gives the white house credit for the research but he says what's urgent now
is action we have to in in the next 10 years get off of this exponential curve
and and begin to decrease the rate of growth of co2 emissions and then flatten it out and before
we get to the middle of the century we've got to be on a declining curve and if that doesn't start
within 10 years what happens if that doesn't start within 10 years then i don't think we can
keep global warming additional global warming under one degree celsius and that means we're
going to that there's a great danger of passing some of these tipping points if the ice sheets
once begin to disintegrate what can you do about it you can't tie a rope around the ice sheet you
can't build a wall around the ice sheets it will be a situation that is out of our control
but it's not a situation you'll find in this federal report government scientists wanted to
tell you about the ice sheets but before this draft left the white house the paragraph on
glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added straying from research strategy
into speculative findings and musings here hanson says that kind of editing happened to him once
during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger i think we know
a lot more about the tipping points i think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree
of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects
on the ice sheets you just use that word again that you're not supposed to use danger
yeah it is a danger for months we've been trying to talk with
the president's science advisor but we were finally told that he would never
be available phil cooney the editor at the council on environmental quality
didn't return our calls but in june he left the white house and went to work for exxon mobil