From today’s Rocky Mountain News still more evidence that the climate debate is spiraling out of control:

A federal climate scientist in Boulder says his boss told him never to utter the word Kyoto and tried to bar him from using the phrase climate change at a conference.

The allegations come as federal investigators probe whether Bush administration officials tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and attempted to censor their research.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement – never ratified by the United States and opposed by the Bush administration – that requires nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Boulder laboratory, said the ban on using the word Kyoto was issued about four years ago.

“We were under instructions not to use the word Kyoto, which of course is absurd,” said Tans, who measures levels of carbon dioxide at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division. He has worked for the agency since 1990.

Tans said the order was issued verbally by his boss, David Hofmann, the division director. Another senior researcher at the Boulder laboratory, NOAA physicist James Elkins, said Hofmann told him the same thing.

Elkins studies greenhouse gases and has worked at NOAA for more than 20 years. He said he can’t remember when the directive was issued, but it was “probably in 2000 or 2001.”

“When I asked why we weren’t supposed to use Kyoto, I was told that we’re not supposed to use it in the policy context,” Elkins said. “I’m not supposed to be talking about policy.”

Hofmann, however, called the allegations “nonsense” and said there was no ban on using the word Kyoto.

“I never said it specifically in those words,” Hofmann said. “I probably said that since the Kyoto Protocol is not ratified – is not part of the U.S. program – stay away from talking about Kyoto when you give a presentation.”

“It has nothing to do with the science we’re doing here,” Hofmann said of Kyoto.

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and went into effect in February 2005, following ratification by Russia.

Elkins said the prohibition against using the word was lifted after Russia ratified the protocol.

“Once Russia signed Kyoto, it was a done deal,” he said.