Two years ago this month, a report from the Environmental Protection Agency was going to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist, and how to fill them. Naturally, there was a large section on global warming — right up until the White House stepped in to delete it because it was inconsistent with Bush’s political agenda.
As it turns out, the Bush gang was so fond of editing out information about global warming they don’t like, they’ve done it again.
A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties,” tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Let’s put this in context. Qualified scientists prepared reliable reports based on real information. Before they could be shared, however, the White House turned them over to a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry, to edit to his heart’s content. This is the Bush administration’s approach to quality science.
In one instance, a report noted the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding. Cooney saw a section on projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack, didn’t like it, and deleted it.
Cooney has no background in science — he’s a lawyer by trade — but the Bush gang has made him the chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, [Rick Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research] said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government’s $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.
“Each administration has a policy position on climate change,” Mr. Piltz wrote. “But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program.”
Credibility? Integrity? In the Bush administration?
Then again, maybe the White House is on to something here. Embracing a sense of denial to all inconvenient facts may be a good idea.
* If terrorist attacks increase around the world, the government can simply stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism.
* If the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovers data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration can cancel the report and hide the data.
* If an administration report shows that the feds aren’t doing enough to help states in the midst of fiscal crises, the White House can announce that the report wouldn’t be published anymore.
* If Bush’s Department of Education sees evidence that charter schools are underperforming, the agency can simply stop collecting data on charter schools.
Oh wait, the administration has already done all of this.