All will spread the message that the government must act to curb carbon dioxide emissions, preferably by “cost-effective, market-based mechanisms”.That last is a nod in the direction of the business community, which evangelicals have generally supported in the past. Eighty-six prominent figures in the movement, among them leading pastors, the heads of evangelical colleges and the Salvation Army, released a statement yesterday warning that “millions of people could die this century” because of global warming – most of them in the earth’s poorest regions.
Until recently global warming has not been a priority for evangelicals, most familiar for their uncompromising stances on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and their emphasis on the family. “Scientists should not be reviewing their statements to make sure they are consistent with the current political orthodoxy.”. Evangelical Christians, pillars of the Bush presidency and the Republican majorities in Congress, are increasingly breaking with the White House and demanding real action to tackle climate change and avert a global disaster. “Political figures ought to be reviewing their public statements to make sure they are consistent with the best available science,” the letter read. The chairman of the House of Representatives’ Science Committee, the New York Republican Sherwood Boehlert, wrote a letter to Nasa last week denouncing what he called “an atmosphere of intimidation”.
Dr Hansen, who directs Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said the Bush administration appointee had demanded to review his lectures and publications in advance.After he gave a speech highly critical of the administration’s global warming policies last year, he told The New York Times, he was warned that there would be “dire consequences” if he continued to make similar criticisms.His complaints have drawn sympathy from Republicans as well as Democrats. If he was anything at all in the realm of ideas, principles, doctrines, he was a species of nihilist; he was an essentially destructive force, a revolutionist without any revolutionary vision, a rebel without a cause.”. A Bush administration appointee at Nasa has been forced to resign after accusations that he tried to censor scientists who took issue with the White House line on global warming and the origins of the universe. George Deutsch, a public relations officer at Nasa who previously worked on President George Bush’s re-election campaign, was accused of trying to keep the media away from the agency’s chief climate change scientist, James Hansen, after Dr Hansen called publicly for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
According to an e-mail shown to The New York Times, he also told a Nasa web designer to add the word “theory” to every reference of the Big Bang – the most prevalent scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, which is hotly contested by creationists, including many right-wing Christian supporters of the President.Mr Deutsch’s resignation appeared to have as much to do with the fact that he lied on his job application – he said he had a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M University, when in fact he never graduated – as with the way he did his job.Nasa officials refused to be drawn on the reasons for his resignation, but its chief administrator recently sent an e-mail to all his staff assuring them it was not the job of public affairs officers “to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by Nasa’s technical staff”.Dr Hansen and others have argued that Mr Deutsch was only part of a much broader problem of political interference at the agency.
But the best summation is from his biographer, Richard H Rovere: “He was not totalitarian in any significant sense, or even reactionary The social and economic order didn’t interest him. To Anatole Lieven, the historian of modern US nationalism, he nursed an Irish-Catholic hatred of the intellectual ?tes of the Wasp establishment. A chronic heavy drinker, he suffered from cirrhosis and died of hepatitis in May 1957 at 48.What had it all been for? To modern-day supporters, like the right-wing pundit Anne Coulter, he represented an expression of popular dissatisfaction. On 2 December 1954, the Senate voted to “condemn” McCarthy by 67 votes to 22. He lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee that had been his throne since 1950 His power base had vanished His public support dwindled away The press wouldn’t touch a McCarthy story He was finished.
In July, a senator accused McCarthy of 46 counts of “conduct unbecoming a member of the US Senate”, a rap-sheet later reduced to two It was enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?”By now the American media had stopped being too frightened of McCarthy to speak Columnists went on the offensive. Ed Murrow openly criticised McCarthy’s methods on See It Now on 9 March 1954. Three weeks later, McCarthy responded by attacking Murrow on the programme.
The public, seeing their anti-Red champion as a sneering roughneck, withdrew their support. They were especially struck by one interchange, when the Army’s attorney-general Joseph Welch listened to McCarthy bad-mouth yet another junior lawyer and exploded: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator You’ve done enough. The Army retaliated by feeding journalists with stories that would embarrass the senator – such as, that he and his Committee sidekick Roy Cohn had conspired to prevent their friend David Schine from being drafted, and that Cohn had put pressure on Army personnel to give Schine special privileges.The Army-McCarthy Hearings lasted 36 days and were watched on new-fangled televisions by 20 million Americans. Truman lost the 1952 election, and the Republican Eisenhower moved into the White House.
