Rewriting Scientific Intelligence, Too

...a former employee of the government office that coordinates climate change research has released documents showing that a White House aide has been doctoring official reports on climate change precisely to avoid "acting" on the scientific evidence. The aide, Philip A. Cooney -- chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- is alleged to have made dozens of changes to official reports, inserting qualifiers designed to cast doubt on findings about climate change and to play down the link between climate change and industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

The result, though, is that the White House may soon be the last institution in Washington that doesn't believe that the threat of climate change requires something more than new adjectives.

...Now, however, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), the ranking Democrat on the Energy Committee, has prepared -- in consultation with Republican colleagues -- an alternative amendment, one that would set up a cap-and-trade system, somewhat less rigorously, but far more cheaply, than the McCain-Lieberman bill. It is beginning to attract a surprisingly broad level of Democratic and Republican support.


This new legislation is based on a proposal put together by the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group that includes industry chief executives, environmentalists and scientists. According to a recent Energy Department analysis, that group's cap-and-trade system would cause only a minimal rise in electricity prices, and would not, unlike the McCain-Lieberman bill, lead to a sharp reduction in the use of coal. The legislation would also allow Congress to continually reassess the national cap on greenhouse gases, depending on what measures are being taken in other countries. Those two measures go a long way to answer those critics who claim addressing this issue in any way will render the U.S. economy uncompetitive.

[Thanks to pie at Eschaton for the link.]

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."

A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.

Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home...

The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.

I wonder how much of that $1.8 billion a year finds its way back into private contractor advisory groups too?