New testimony before the house committee on oversight and reform has brought to light that Bush administration appointees have systematically made changes to scientific reports on climate change before they were released to the public.
The testimony to the house committee on oversight and government reform painted the administration as determined to maintain its line on climate change even when it clashed with the findings of scientific experts. James Hansen, who heads the Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, said in prepared testimony: “The effect of the filtering of climate change science during the current administration has been to make the reality of climate change less certain than the facts indicate, and to reduce concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions.”(via)
The Bush administration had installed political appointees in key scientific agencies to act as monitors and editors. One such appointee was Philip Cooney. Former lobbyist for big oil. Bush had appointed him chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality( another bad choice was a 23-year-old college drop-out who was made a public affairs officer at Nasa after working on Mr Bush’s re-election campaign). Mr Cooney told the committee yesterday: “My sole loyalty was to the president and advancing the policies of his administration.”
Documents released today also show a wide spread pattern of edits, suppressions, and outright lies. 181 in all to multiple scientific studies, made by Cooney and others at the behest of the Bush administration. They made another 113 changes to try and make it look as if humans were not the cause of global warming. What kind of changes you might ask? Well apparently this statement “Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.” was just too controversial, he went on to stifle information about warming trends over the last 1000 years, even inserting information from the American Petroleum Institute (a fake science firm that belongs to big oil) into office reports.
Under heated questioning, Mr Cooney admitted yesterday that the changes were all intended to cast doubt over the impact of global warming. He denied they were directly coordinated with the White House but said he had regular conversations with a senior White House aide. “We got notes from them,” Mr Cooney said.
Control from the White House became the norm, Dr Hansen told the committee yesterday. “Scientific press releases were going to the White House for editing,” he said. “It’s very unfortunate that we developed this politicisation of science. The public relations office should be staffed by expert appointees. Otherwise they become offices of propaganda.” He acknowledged that such interference existed before the Bush administration, though to a much lesser extent.
It’s no wonder then that we have so many people in this country who still to this day do not accept the fact that global warming is caused by humans that its going to get worse, and that we have to do something about it.