This article is an excerpt taken from the San Diego Union Tribune 7-31-08  by Scott LaFee, Staff Writer

Early in the Bush administration, James E. Hansen recalls being invited to brief Vice President Dick Cheney on the subject of global warming.  Hansen was a vereran NASA scientist, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a widely respected expert on climate change.

In 1998, in testimony before Congress, he had declared himself "99 percent" certain humans were to blame for global warming.  His words carried weight, helping elevate climate change to front-page news and fueling the first international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions.

"So I thought the White House invitation meant the vice president and his advisers would be responsive to the information I had, that they were actually interested in hearing the data," Hansen said during a visit to San Diego to receive the 2008 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest from the Scripps Insitution of Oceanography.

But Hansen said Cheney and others barely paid attention.  "I was naive.  They only listened to the things they wanted to hear.  It seemed like they had already makde up their minds.  The science was irrelevant."

Politics and science butt heads in every administration, but the conflict has been particularly notable in recent years.   Almost from the beginning, relationsh between the Bush administration and the scientific community have been strained, beset by problems far worse than just not paying attention.

Critics have repeatedly accused the White House and federal agencies operating at its direction of ignoring, misrepresenting or suppressing research.  They have complained of censorship and of science policy corupted by political ideology.

"This administration, in my view, has been the worst for science and medicine in the last 100 years," said Dr. Evan Snyder, a renowned stem cell researcher at The Burnham Institute in La Jolla.

To read the full article:  http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080731/news_1c31hansen.html