While America Slept

The New York Times reports here on yet another clash between scientists and the Bush Administration:

The stipulations that the employees “will not be speaking on or responding to” questions about climate change, polar bears and sea ice are “consistent with staying with our commitment to the other countries to talk about only what’s on the agenda,” said the director of the agency, H. Dale Hall.

One of the two employees, Janet E. Hohn, is scheduled to accompany a delegation to Norway led by Julia Gourley of the State Department at a meeting on conserving Arctic animals and plants.

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The other employee, Craig Perham, an expert on polar bears, was invited by the World Wildlife Fund to help advise villagers along the Siberian coast on avoiding encounters with the bears, said Margaret Williams, director of the Bering Sea program of the fund.

Of course, the Administration has long had this head-in-the-sand attitude toward climate change. There is something sadly ironic here. The Bush folks have long been admirers of Winston Churchill. But history may remember them as much more akin to Chamberlain., temporizing in the face of the greatest challenge of the time rather than confronting it head on.