The Pacific Institue’s Integrity of Science blog has moved! A long time in the making, we have now officially moved this blog over to ScienceBlogs.

Please bookmark and update your feeds to reflect the new site: http://scienceblogs.com/integrityofscience/

See you there!

The Management

The good news is that we’ve made it through 12 straight months without a carbon-amped Mother Nature laying waste to another great American city. Beignets all around. The bad news is that we didn’t make it to Hump Day without another allegation of the Bush administration tampering with scientific findings. Maybe next week. The AP reports:

The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.

The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — part of the Commerce Department — in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.

According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect.

In May, when the report was expected to be released, panel chair Ants Leetmaa received an e-mail from a Commerce official saying the report needed to be made less technical and was not to be released, Nature reported. Source

Not only does the issue of federal tampering and silencing of science fail to go away, it seems that many within the administration are going out of their way to perpetuate it. Science advocate Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ was quick to respond.

“The administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda … the Bush administration continues to censor scientists who have documented the current impacts of global warming.”

Science tampering probably won’t end up being a big campaign issue this fall (if Tip O’Neill’s local maxim holds) but we expect this to add fuel to the fire.

In other news, if you’re keeping score you know we’ve been pretty quiet lately. Don’t fret — more new posts soon — over at ScienceBlogs. Stay tuned.