White House cuts global warming from report:
Environmental study censored, say critics
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Friday June 20, 2003
guardian.co.uk The Guardian
The White House has removed damaging references to global
warming from a major US government report on the environment
due to be published next week.
References tob> health threats posed by exhaust emissions that
were part of the draft report by the environmental protection
agency (EPA) have been removed, according to leaked versions
of the report.
White House officials have cut details about the sudden
increase in global warming over the past decade compared with
the past 1,000 years and inserted information from a report that
questions this conclusion and which was partly financed by the
American Petroleum Institute, according to the New York Times,
to whom the draft documents were leaked.
The removal of controversial passages has caused concern
within the EPA. At the end of April a memo circulated among
staff members and also leaked to the paper said the report "no
longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate
change".
Another memo warned of the danger to the agency's credibility
posed by agreeing to the deletions, because the "EPA will take
responsibility and severe criticism from the science and
environmental communities for poorly representing the science".
The report was commissioned in 2001 by the agency's head,
Christie Whitman, who has just announced her resignation for
unrelated reasons. Its aim was to provide a comprehensive
overview of the major environmental issues facing the
government and the scientific community.
One of the most striking changes comes in the report's "global
issues" section.
In the draft version the introduction reads: "Climate change has
global consequences for human health and the environment."
This has been replaced with: "The complexity of the Earth
system and the interconnections among its components make it
a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes
and develop useful projections of how natural variability and
human actions may affect the global environment in the future."
Environmental groups have criticised the changes. Aaron
Rappaport of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington
said yesterday: "It's ridiculous to leave global warming out of a
report on change in the environment."
The references had apparently been "censored out", he said.
"It shows a serious lack of transparency," Mr Rappaport added.
"I regret to say we're not surprised.
"The administration's prejudice against the scientific consensus
around global warming is well known."
Ms Whitman, who will leave office at the end of next week, has
said she is content with the deletions made by the White
House.
"The first draft, as with many first drafts, contained everything,"
she said.
"As it went through the review, there was less consensus on the
science and conclusions on climate change.
"So, rather than go out with something half-baked or not put out
the whole report, we felt it was important for us to get this out
because there is a lot of really good information that people can
use to measure our successes."
The EPA did not return a call yesterday requesting a comment
by time of going to press.
Mr Bush angered environmentalists early in his administration
by declining to endorse the Kyoto international agreement on
global warming, and subsequently expressing doubts about
whether global warming even existed.
His administration has often clashed with environmental groups.
Environmentalists have accused the government of being too
ready to listen to oil and logging interests.
The major environmental clash has centred around the Arctic
national wildlife refuge where the White House seeks to allow
drilling for oil. The issue remains stalled in the legislature. |
