There is a difference between an honest difference of opinion and a deliberate effort to hide facts which might change or inform those opinions.

A recent report by the inspector general’s office at NASA concludes that while the Bush administration would have liked you to believe doubts about the veracity of global warming were a difference of opinion among experts, they were part of a desperate effort to keep us from hearing what those experts had to say.

As amazed as some of you might be to learn that an administration led by two former oil executives would appoint to the NASA press office flunkies who found reason to suppress data about the effects the by-product of the oil industry is having on our world, it now appears that the impossible happened.

Two years after New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin – who spoke this year to students at The Hill School – revealed that science supporting evidence of global warming was being suppressed by the NASA press office, an investigation has confirmed that report.

It further confirmed that that same office restricted the press’s access to James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist and the man who ultimately blew the whistle on the practice.

This is really no surprise to those of us who hold the position that global warming is real – as does the vast majority of the scientific community who studies this very subject.

From war, to torture, to disaster relief, to threats to the entire planet, history shows that the current administration does not believe you should have all the facts, just the facts that fit their needs.

But as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan so famously said, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

In an honest debate, everyone works from the facts, or data, available, and makes their best case. But if you can’t win that debate because the facts are stacked against you, the only solution is to suppress the information to keep the other side from using it to convince the judges (voters).

This brings us to the reason for suppressing those facts – making sure the public didn’t start demanding policy changes on global warming in numbers the vote splitters in the White House could not afford to ignore.

It was not to keep those of us already convinced of the reality of global warming in the dark, it was to prevent those facts from illuminating the opinion of folks who are focused on other priorities.

I e-mail with a man in Berks County who is extremely thoughtful about a good many things. We are of different political persuasions, but have found common ground in any number of unexpected places. We even occasionally admit to each other that we were wrong about this or that.

For example, every day the evidence mounts of the effectiveness of “market forces” in driving Americans to new and better driving and car buying habits no amount of pleading, cajoling or legislating could accomplish, convinces me he was right about that.

He kept telling me, "when gas goes over $3 a gallon, hybrids will sell themselves." He was right.
But when it comes to global warming, he continues to cite evidence of things like sunspots and the possibility that Mars is also warming as reason to refuse to concede we have something to do with what’s happening on Earth.

There is good precedent for “manufacturing doubt.” Just ask the tobacco companies.

Science is an open ended proposition and its proper practice requires the consideration of any plausible theory until it can be proven false, thus opening it up to all sorts of mischief from people whose purpose is not the pursuit of truth, but the delaying of its revelation.

(After all, we’re still debating evolution 100 years later, not because there’s a pile of evidence disputing its tenets, but because there are people who find the facts it presents in conflict with their beliefs.)

So when government scientists with nothing at stake in studying the effects of cigarette smoke concluded it damaged your health, scientists paid by companies with everything at stake began unraveling those conclusions any way they could.

The result? Millions of people died who might have made a different choice if they had known all the facts.

Was that criminal?

A raft of state attorneys general thought it sounded an awful lot like fraud and sued to punish those who perpetrated it.

If you are in possession of information that can save someone’s life and you knowingly withhold it, is that not criminal as well?

Predicting the future is always a tricky business, but there are many global warming models which suggest effects of a warming planet will include the northward progression of deadly tropical diseases, a decline in food production and more drought and more flooding of coastal areas.

The suppression of information supporting the reality of global warming meant seven years of inaction by the global leader in greenhouse gas emissions; seven years during which nothing was done; seven years in which the risk of death from disease, famine or flood increased while millions were prevented from making an informed choice to try to head it off.

Now that it’s too late for The White House to show leadership on an issue which threatens the only planet on which we know we can survive, even the Oval Office has grudgingly given way to the mountains of evidence.

But isn’t the harm already done?

Resolve can quickly (and often does) cross the line into willful stubbornness, but the willful suppression of information every resident of Earth has a right to consider in making daily decisions about how to preserve their lives is as criminal as shouting “fire” in a crowded movie house.

But of course, we could just have a difference of opinion on that.