Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
government, climate scientists appeared to be on their way to creating
meaningful policies on CO
2
and climate change for the 1980s.
But climate scientists' commitment to working within government
bureaucracies left them vulnerable to political change. Slade's program,
like Carter's second term, was not to be. Despite strong talk of a respon-
sible renewable energy program, Carter's troubles in the Middle East led
him to back CO
2
-producing synthetic fuels made primarily from coal.
Carter's commitment to such fuels put Slade in an awkward position vis-
à-vis presidential energy policy. When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated
in January 1981, Slade's influence within the DOE decreased even further.
Amid the new president's severe budget cuts to government-funded social
science and environmental research, the director of the DOE's Division of
Carbon Dioxide and Climate Research found himself isolated within an
agency whose mandate under Reagan would be “cheap energy now!” “I
am not paranoid,” Slade quipped to David Burns in the fall of 1980, “but,
besides wrapping my head in silver foil before retiring so as to ward off
the rays the CIA beams at me nightly, I carefully review publications sent
to me to see how 'they' are cutting off my information sources. . . . As the
high priest of CO
2
for the federal government I view it as more than just
a coincidence that my copy of science
[sic]
is missing the article on CO
2
.”
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