Vulnerability: ScienceWhen we compiled our vast catalog of the Bush Administration’s war on information, we had to devote a whole section on global warming, so unrelenting was the administration’s effort to stifle dissent.
Well, today House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released the results of the panel’s 16-month investigation into political interference in government climate change science. You can see the 37-page report here. It details how the administration censored climate scientists, edited climate change reports, and involved itself in the Environment Protection Agency’s legal opinions.
The takeaway? “The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.”
My favorite part, from the committee’s summary of its report:
The White House played a major role in crafting the August 2003 EPA legal opinion disavowing authority to regulate greenhouse gases. [Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality] James Connaughton personally edited the draft legal opinion. When an EPA draft quoted the National Academy of Science conclusion that “the changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities,” CEQ objected because “the above quotes are unnecessary and extremely harmful to the legal case being made.” The first line of another internal CEQ document transmitting comments on the draft EPA legal opinion reads: “Vulnerability: science.” The final opinion incorporating the White House edits was rejected by the Supreme Court in April 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA.
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