[asa] House Panel Inquiry on Global Warming Research

Since Janice noted a house investigation on Mann's infamous hockey
stick I wanted to note another inquiry into a political appointee with
no scientific experience overplaying the uncertainty in the research.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/science/21brfs-005.html

A House committee will examine accusations that political appointees
in the Bush administration edited government reports on global warming
to raise the level of uncertainty about research that points to a
human cause. The Republican and Democratic leaders on the Government
Reform Committee sent a letter to the White House Council on
Environmental Quality requesting documents by Aug. 11 on the
activities of Philip A. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the petroleum
industry with no science background who edited climate reports while
chief of staff of the environmental council. Mr. Cooney resigned last
year shortly after the revisions were described in The New York Times.
-------
Here's the original revision story last year:

BUSH AIDE EDITED CLIMATE REPORTS

By ANDREW C. REVKIN (NYT) 1397 words
Published: June 8, 2005

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.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote
administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the ''climate team
leader'' and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the
largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A
lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific
training.

The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government
Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for
government whistle-blowers.

The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a
senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate
research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program,
issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.

A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr.
Cooney would not be available to comment. ''We don't put Phil Cooney
on the record,'' Ms. St. Martin said. ''He's not a cleared
spokesman.''

In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published
summary of government climate research, ''Our Changing Planet,'' Mr.
Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word
''extremely'' to this sentence: ''The attribution of the causes of
biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is
extremely difficult.''

In a section on the need for research into how warming might change
water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing
the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in
the margins explained that this was ''straying from research strategy
into speculative findings/musings.''

Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were
part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all
documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a
spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the
administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by
the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long
campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate
policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group,
said such editing was necessary for ''consistency'' in meshing
programs with policy.

But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted
government reports, scientific content in such reports should be
reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of
environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they
illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr.
Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries
that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.

In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with
climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz 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.''

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.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at
the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to
intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has
called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through
2012.

Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the
scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United
States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, ''The scientific
understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify
nations taking prompt action.''

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.

On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some
environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the
science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the
gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.

''They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue
and do nothing about it is to muddy the science,'' said Eileen
Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a
private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting
emissions.

Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For
example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of ''Our Changing
Planet'' originally read, ''Many scientific observations indicate that
the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.'' In a
neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, ''Many
scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be
undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.''

A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003
''Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science
Program,'' a thick report describing the reorganization of government
climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on
the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel
assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists
largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned
that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate
could result in excessive political interference with science.

----
And the story about Cooney going to Exxon:
Former Bush Aide Who Edited Reports Is Hired by Exxon
By ANDREW C. REVKIN (NYT) 372 words
Published: June 15, 2005
Philip A. Cooney, the former White House staff member who repeatedly
revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to
work for Exxon Mobil this fall, the oil company said yesterday.
Mr. Cooney resigned as chief of staff for President Bush's
environmental policy council on Friday, two days after documents
obtained by The New York Times revealed that he had edited the reports
in ways that cast doubt on the link between the emission of greenhouse
gases and rising temperatures.
A former lawyer and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute,
the main lobbying group for the oil industry, Mr. Cooney has no
scientific training. The White House, which said on Friday that there
was no connection between last week's disclosure and Mr. Cooney's
resignation, repeated yesterday that his actions were part of the
normal review process for documents on environmental issues involving
many government agencies.
''Phil Cooney did a great job,'' said Dana Perino, a deputy
spokeswoman for the White House, ''and we appreciate his public
service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private
sector.''
An Exxon spokesman, Tom Cirigliano, declined to describe Mr. Cooney's
new job. Mr. Cooney did not respond to e-mail or phone messages.
Exxon Mobil has long financed advertising and lobbying efforts that
question whether warming caused by humans poses risks serious enough
to justify curbing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by
smokestacks and tailpipes.
Mr. Cirigliano said yesterday that the company was committed to acting
responsibly on the issue.
''Exxon Mobil has taken, is taking and will continue to take tangible
actions to reduce emissions in our operations, as well as in customer
use of our products, and to better understand and prepare for the
risks of climate change,'' Mr. Cirigliano said.
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