Investigating Climate Science Manipulations

Investigating Climate Science Manipulations



March 2007 – White House documents 
released Monday by a House committee offer further evidence 
that Bush administration officials with no scientific training 
edited federal scientific reports to inflate uncertainty about 
humanity's role in global warming. 
The documents are part of an ongoing investigation by the 
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform into 
alleged political interference with climate science and 
federal scientists by the Bush administration. 
"Our goal in this investigation is to understand what role the 
White House actually played," Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, 
a California Democrat, said at Monday's hearing. "It would be 
a serious abuse if senior White House officials deliberately 
tried to defuse calls for action by ensuring that the public 
heard a distorted message about the risks of climate change." 
Congressman Henry Waxman of California describes himself as a 
longtime defender of the environment. Today he introduced the 
Safe Climate Act of 2007, which sets binding emissions targets 
for greenhouse gases. 
Waxman said the eight boxes of documents turned over by the 
Bush administration thus far suggest there "may have been a 
concerted effort directed by the White House to mislead the 
public about the dangers of global warming." 
Much of the hearing focused on edits to federal reports by 
Philip Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist who served as chief of 
staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, 
CEQ, from 2001-2005. 
Documents released by the committee show Cooney and other 
administration officials made at least 181 edits to the 
administration's strategic plan for the climate change science 
program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties, 
as well as 113 edits to downplay the importance of humanity's 
role in global warming. 
In addition, White House documents show similar editing by 
Cooney and other administration officials to a U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency report on the health of the 
environment and an annual state of the planet report submitted 
to Congress. 
Cooney, who resigned in June 2005 following reports of his 
controversial editing by the "New York Times," defended his 
actions before the committee. 
Greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming are 
given off into the atmosphere by cars, trucks, boats, 
locomotives and aircraft. 
"I had the authority and responsibility to make 
recommendations to the documents in question, under an 
established interagency review process," said Cooney, a lawyer 
who now works for ExxonMobil. 
Cooney said he relied largely on the findings of the 2001 
report on climate science by National Academy of Sciences to 
"align these communications" with administration policy. 
"I offered my comments in good faith reliance on what I 
understood to be the most authoritative and current states of 
scientific knowledge," Cooney told the panel. 
Cooney's actions were intended to "sow confusion regarding the 
link between climate change and human activity," said 
Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat. 
Representative John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, called 
Cooney "a spin doctor" and raised concerns about his close 
ties to the oil industry. 
Cooney joined the CEQ after for more than a decade as a 
lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, API, an 
organization that has cast doubt on the human role in climate 
change. 
The role Cooney played at API and at the White House "seem 
virtually identical," Waxman said. "In both places, you seem 
to seed doubt on global warming," he told Cooney. 
The Mandalay power plant in California burns oil and natural 
gas. 
Democrats also questioned a memo between Cooney and an aide in 
Vice President Dick Cheney's office that suggests an 
administration strategy to promote a study partially funded by 
API that questioned the link between global warming and 
greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. 
The study, published in the journal "Climate Research" in 
2001, was widely refuted by climate scientists and half the 
editorial board of the journal resigned in protest over its 
publication. 
The communication between the CEQ and Cheney's office 
indicates an attempt to incorporate the study into federal 
reports, said Waxman. 
"This sounds like a play right out of the petroleum 
institute's playbook," he said. 
CEQ Chairman James Connaughton rejected Waxman's 
characterization of the administration's actions and called 
the investigation of Cooney's edits "misguided." 
For the documents in question "there was actually massive 
agreement on more than 99 percent" of the text, Connaughton 
told the committee. "[This] is much ado about a very small 
amount of qualification." 
Republicans on the panel spent most of their time grilling Dr. 
James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist who has criticized 
the Bush administration for interfering with climate 
scientists. 
Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space 
Studies, says political appointees tried to stop him from 
speaking to the media after he delivered a lecture in late 
2005 that urged rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions 
to slow global warming. 
Dr. James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space 
Studies), a part of The Earth Institute at Columbia 
University. 
"We've developed this politicization of science," Hansen said. 
"Public affairs offices should be staffed by professionals, 
not political appointees, or they become offices of 
propaganda." 
"I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line," Hansen 
told the committee. "I should give the best information I 
have." 
Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said 
Hansen is "regularly the toast of the town" and is hardly 
having trouble getting his message out to the public. 
Issa questioned Hansen's motivations, noting that he supported 
2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and also 
received a $250,000 prize from the Heinz Foundation in 2001. 
The Heinz Awards are given annually to honor individuals 
working in areas important to the late Senator John Heinz, a 
Pennsylvania Republican, and are awarded by Heinz's widow, 
Teresa Heinz, who is now married to Kerry. 
"His political activism is well-defined," Issa said of Hansen, 
adding that the climate scientist "clearly dislikes" the Bush 
administration." 
Issa's comments drew a rebuke from Waxman. 
"I think you are smearing Dr. Hansen's reputation," Waxman 
said. "I think you are being unfair to him." 
Hansen noted that he is a registered Independent, adding that 
he would have voted for Senator John McCain in 2004 if the 
Arizona Republican had run for president. 
Issa and other Republicans also questioned Hansen for 
previously equating the administration's efforts to control 
information echoed Nazi Germany. 
Hansen has raised specific concerns about political appointees 
insisting they be allowed to review requests for interviews 
and monitor conversations with reporters, among other 
restrictions. 
"Do you think Nazi Germany would have let you get away with 
ignoring these restrictions?" asked Mark Souder, an Indiana 
Republican. 
Souder said the policy conclusions with regard to climate 
change have serious political overtones and consequences, 
adding that elected officials thus "do have some rights." 
Hansen said he regretted the Nazi Germany comment, but 
defended his position on the administration's tactics. 
"When you tell scientists they can't speak … it doesn't ring 
true, it is not the American way and it was not 
constitutional," Hansen said. 
"I do not specify policy - I do try to make clear the science 
that is relevant to policy … and some of the implications of 
global warming for policy," Hansen added. "We cannot burn all 
the fossil fuels without producing a radically different 
planet." 





 

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