It seems that a 24 year old writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office was not quite as advertised. He 'resigned' yesterday. From the NY Times: (use BugMeNot for username/password)
A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his r�sum� on file at the agency asserted.
Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.
"Under NASA policy, it is inappropriate to discuss personnel matters," said Dean Acosta, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs and Mr. Deutsch's boss.
The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming.
What you are looking at is an interesting case of willfully not reporting all of the facts. A case of media bias. And Bush Bashing. To be sure, Mr. Deutsch needs to leave -- falsifying your credentials is heinous. BUT -- why didn't NASA's Human Resources department do this most simple check on Mr. Deutsch's background. It is not just one person that is rotten, it is the process. To read the NY Times article, it would seem that Deutsch was in NASA's high-level management. He was not. He was a writer and editor in NASA's PR Department. In the case of the Global Warming "censorship", the NY Times offers this:
Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.
Not just Mr. Deutsch, "political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch" -- some names would be appreciated. I directly addressed Dr. Hansen's claims in my post: Global Warming -- the back story:
Global Warming -- the back story
Last week, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies dropped this little bombshell:"Researchers calculated that 2005 produced the highest annual average surface temperature worldwide since instrument recordings began in the late 1800s"However, according to this article at LiveScience:Conflicting Claims on Global Warming and Why It's All Moot
I also complained about how they are just looking at Northern Hemisphere data. The Arctic may well be warming up (as part of a well known historical trend reported by sea captains for the last three hundred years), but the Southern Hemisphere is cooling down and the Antarctic ice pack is growing. NASA needs to stick to lobbing satellites into earth orbit and outsource the cool stuff to people like Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson. Now that is a team of people who get stuff done. It is a bureaucracy grown way too large.
