We have up on our website a transcript of our 14 February 2005 public interview with John Marburger, science advisor to President George W. Bush. Here are some excerpts:

On climate change:

“After the President announced that he would not support the Kyoto Protocol early in 2001, there was a lot of criticism and the President turned to the National Academies and asked them to make a study, which they did in record time, informing him about the validity of the science in the documents that supported the Kyoto Protocol. And before his first trip to Europe in 2001, in July, I guess, or June, the President made a speech to which I commend to all of you. You should go on the White House website and look at the President’s speech of June 11, 2001 where he states what the policy is very, very clearly. And he states in his speech, number one, the climate is changing, the surface temperature of the earth is warming, there is a greenhouse effect, Co2 is a greenhouse gas, it has increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and it is caused by human activity. He goes on to say that the connection between this massive increase in Co2 and specific aspects of climate change that may impact humans is difficult to infer from the existing things. It requires modeling, the Earth’s system. But, he goes on to say that is no reason not to take action. He says the U.S. is prepared to take responsibility for its emissions, and he announces the formation of two programs: one climate change science program, which re- focuses the climate change science activities that had existed there before that, into a sort of a goal- oriented program, and a second one, which is very little acknowledged but which is more important, to invest in a climate change technology program to develop technologies that will replace our existing energy technologies and reduce or eliminate the emission of Co2 into the atmosphere. All of those things are in the speech, and subsequently he has made proposals that have turned into approximately $2.9 billion dollars per year of investment in new technologies to reduce or eliminate the emissions of Co2 into the atmosphere. And yet people can talk about nothing but the Kyoto Protocol, and I think that’s very frustrating to him. It’s frustrating to me, because if the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol were totally implemented, even if the U.S. participated, it would make negligible difference to the climate by the end of this century that we’re currently living in. In order to make a difference to the climate, you have to introduce a very different way of generating and using energy than we do now. There simply isn’t any way to do it. You have got to change things very dramatically. We have a very big job ahead of us. Every country is going to have to use new technology, either to remove the Co2 from emissions from hydrocarbon burning power plants or to use some other way, some alternate method, of energy generation. So, this is what we have got to do and I think that we should get on with it and not get hung up over the Kyoto Protocol.”

On the UCS and Waxman reports on the misuse of science:

“I didn’t like the allegations. I thought they wrapped up a large number of disparate complaints into a, what I called at the time, a conspiracy theory. And that was my biggest objection. I just didn’t think it made sense to wrap all of these things up into one big ball and try to draw a conclusion from it. It was not a scientifically — it was certainly not a study that would have qualified for a good grade in a college seminar. It was not a thoughtful or complete study in any sense, and my response to it was an effort to indicate that there were lots of other things that were omitted from that study and that we needed to address these issues one by one in their context and try to understand them and deal with them. They were all over the map, and I was just offended by the statement.”

On asking about voting in advisory committee empanelment:

“I think that it doesn’t make sense to ask somebody who they voted for. We have secret ballots in this country, and I don’t think that’s a very good practice and I wouldn’t advise it.”

On the role of Scientists and Engineers for Change in the 2004 election:

“… to the extent that people use their common identifier as scientists to justify a non-scientific position, or a position that doesn’t have too much to do with science, then that’s — I would question that. Before I would join such a group, I would want to know if, you know, are we saying that this is a position, the position we advocate is based on science or is that what we want people to believe? And so there is a little bit of a problem there, I think, and scientists have a responsibility to try to avoid misleading the public about the basis for their political or religious or ideological beliefs. I mean, that’s separate from science. So we do have a responsibility, the scientific community, to try to separate the science from our beliefs or from non-scientific issues.”

On the role of the public in science policy:

“… you don’t want the public to be involved in telling scientists how to do their work. And, in general, I don’t want the public to be telling us about discovery science and basic science and topics in basic research — only the science community can say that. But the more applied the science is, and the more it relates to things like public health or environment or even military or Homeland Security, then I think that the public has more of a responsibility in defining its expectations. So there’s clearly a gradation of types of science that the public should be involved in.”

On the move of OSTP from the Old Executive Office Building to the New Executive Office Building:

“I don’t think that where we are makes much difference. We are not, after all, in a day-to-day support mode for the President. The President needs people close to him who will support his activities during the day every day as he is challenged. That’s not — science is not a necessary part of that on a day-to-day basis. The time scale of science advice is much longer than that, and we tend to work out science issues with the other staff of people and the Agencies long before they every get to the President.”

Other comments:

“I think it’s very important for science advisors, the science advisory apparatus, and the image of science to be as non-political as possible.”

“I really do think that while there are many societal implications of science and there are many issues, philosophical and ethical issues, associated with applications of science, at the core of it, science really is a method for continually making our ideas about how nature works or how things work around us less and less wrong.”

“I wish that we had designed Hubble so that it didn’t have to be serviced by a shuttle. We probably could have launched several Hubbles for the cost that we have invested in this one.”

“DR. PIELKE: This next question has one word at the top, and would probably be enough to get a response, but I’ll read the question. The one word is “evolution,” and it says “Why doesn’t the White House play a more active role in articulating evolution as good science?”

DR. MARBURGER: Can you really see any White House doing that? Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Period. What else can you say?”

Read the whole transcript here.