Climate change science is nothing new, but the level of hostility to the scientists and others who talk about it is. Decades ago, in 1969 no less, aides to President Nixon were warning him about climate change and what it would mean to national security.

Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan . . . urged the [Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public’s attention.

There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo.  “This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit,” he wrote. “This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.“

Moynihan was Nixon’s counselor for urban affairs from January 1969 — when Nixon began his presidency — to December 1970. He later served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before New York voters elected him to the Senate.   Moynihan received a response in a January 26, 1970 memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at.

They are still doing that, except now the Pentagon and others worried about coming wars for resources are also chiming in and trying to warn the President too. In directly correlation to this, the anti-science noise is growing louder. They are also trying to sabotage scientists in anyway they can. Remember the hacked emails?

Dr. Michael Mann

Happy Independence Day — now if we only had some independence from climate change deniers.  At least Michael Mann and his science graph known as the “hockey stick”  got final exoneration from Penn State.

“An Investigatory Committee of faculty members with impeccable credentials” has unanimously “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”

Reported by CLIMATE PROGRESS and DemocracyNow.org

Penn State Panel Clears “Climategate” Scientist

An investigative panel at Pennsylvania State University has cleared a scientist linked to the so-called “Climategate” controversy last year. The scientist, Dr. Michael Mann, was among the authors of emails stolen from the computer system of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. Deniers of global warming had claimed the stolen emails provided evidence of an effort to silence academics who have questioned or downplayed human-driven climate change. In its probe, Penn State said it found no evidence Mann manipulated scientific findings on global warming.

And from Climate Progress, they point out that few [...]