Cover Up of Climate Findings? Why?

Scientists Criticize White House Stance on Climate Change Findings

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By CORNELIA DEAN

Published: January 31, 2007

Under its new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration’s handling of climate change science yesterday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration’s actions.

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The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government climate scientists. Almost to a person, Republicans on the panel introduced themselves by proclaiming their agreement that the earth’s climate was warming and that the principal culprit was greenhouse gases generated by people and their machinery.

And when witnesses spoke in defense of the administration, it was often to say only that there were still some scientists who doubted that climate view or that the administration’s approach was not unique.

“Cherry-picking” science to suit policy or political goals is at least as old as the Eisenhower administration, said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado. The committee itself is guilty of it, he added, pointing to a news release linking rising ocean temperatures to bigger and more frequent coastal storms, something about which there is still debate.

But the other witnesses spoke about how the administration had delayed, altered or watered down the findings of government scientists, the kind of thing they said they had not experienced in the Clinton administration