http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,981058,00.html
White House
cuts global warming from report
Environmental study censored, say critics
Duncan Campbell in
Los Angeles
Friday June 20, 2003
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 to 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.
