Political Science

In an unusually frank NASA press release (see: "NASA Survey Confirms Climate Warming Impact on Polar Ice Sheets"), the space agency reports:

In the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the massive ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, NASA scientists confirm climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth's largest storehouses of ice and snow.

"If the trends we're seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically," said survey lead author Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century."

That blunt assessment stands in contrast to previous releases that took pains to downplay global warming or avoid the subject altogether.

Zwally told MSNBC reporter Miguel Llanos that the change reflects a recent shake-up at NASA, saying, "A few months ago this press release might have been seriously edited or not approved." Recently, however, after Dr. Jim Hansen, NASA's leading climatologist, complained of being censored by a White House political appointee, the agency declared a policy of increased openness, actually flirting with old-fashioned American values regarding freedom of speech.