The House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee just released the findings from a 16 month examination of the Bush administration's alleged political interference with government climate change science.
Unsuprisingly, the main conclusion of the report declares massive corruption:
"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."
The report includes the following statements (with evidence to support):
White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy.
The White House exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues. By controlling which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, the White House suppressed dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with Administration policies.
White House officials and agency political appointees also altered congressional testimony regarding the science of climate change.
There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change by editing climate change reports. The White House insisted on edits to EPA’s draft Report on the Environment that were so extreme that the EPA Administrator opted to eliminate the climate change section of the report.
The White House played a major role in crafting the August 2003 EPA legal opinion disavowing authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Via Bad Astronomy
