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Thu 9 Jun, 2005 01:23 am
Quote:Ex-oil lobbyist watered down US climate research
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday June 9, 2005
The Guardian
A former oil industry lobbyist edited the Bush administration's official policy papers on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it was reported yesterday.
Documents released by a watchdog group, the Government Accountability Project, show that as chief of staff for the White House council on environmental quality, Philip Cooney watered down government scientific papers on climate change and played up uncertainties in the scientific literature. Mr Cooney is a law graduate and has no scientific training.
The Bush aide had performed a similar role in his previous job for the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group representing oil giants and focused on countering the virtual consensus among scientists that man-made emissions are rapidly heating the planet.
"Cooney's still doing his old job for the American Petroleum Institute," said Kert Davies, the US research director for Greenpeace. "It's the American Petroleum Institute working within the White House."
The newly released documents, printed in the New York Times, show handwritten notes by Mr Cooney deleting paragraphs and editing others drafted by government scientists.
He inserted "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties" in a section assessing the solidity of the evidence for climate change.
Mr Cooney also introduced the word "extremely"to the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, defended Mr Cooney's editing role as "part of our inter-agency review process. There are more than a dozen agencies involved in the inter-agency review programme," he said.
However, it is customary for scientific papers to be edited by other scientists.
Mr Davies said that Mr Cooney's influence on White House policy went further than manipulating documents, describing him as a "gatekeeper" for White House policymaking on climate change, helping to determine whose views were heard. One of the anti-Kyoto advocates Mr Cooney consulted on policy was Myron Ebell, at the business lobby, the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
In one email from June 2002 acquired by Greenpeace, Mr Ebell wrote to Mr Cooney saying: "Thanks for calling and asking for our help ... it's nice to know we're needed once in a while."
Mr Ebell said Mr Cooney had telephoned him to cool conservative tempers over an administration document which appeared to lend weight to conventional climate change science.
Mr Ebell said he knew Mr Cooney well and denied he had become an agent for the oil industry inside the White House.
"When he works for the president and the CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality) he pursues their policies, regardless of what he did for the American Petroleum Institute," Mr Ebell said.
Bush administration policy on global warming has generally echoed the approach advocated by the oil lobby, emphasising doubts over climate change science and focusing on the need for further research.
In his first few months in office, President George Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which advocated global cuts in emissions, and at Tuesday's White House meeting with Tony Blair, the president underlined the importance of further research.
"I don't know if you're aware of this, but we lead the world when it comes to millions of dollars spent on research about climate change," he said. "It's easier to solve a problem when you know a lot about it."
Source
The "original start" of this nesw, reported in yesterday's
Guardian
Quote:Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush
White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.
Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.
"Potus [president of the United States] rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you [the Global Climate Coalition]," says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.
The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon "among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions".
But in evidence to the UK House of Lords science and technology committee in 2003, Exxon's head of public affairs, Nick Thomas, said: "I think we can say categorically we have not campaigned with the United States government or any other government to take any sort of position over Kyoto."
Exxon, officially the US's most valuable company valued at $379bn (£206bn) earlier this year, is seen in the papers to share the White House's unwavering scepticism of international efforts to address climate change.
The documents, which reflect unanimity between the company and the US administration on the need for more global warming science and the unacceptable costs of Kyoto, state that Exxon believes that joining Kyoto "would be unjustifiably drastic and premature".
This line has been taken consistently by President Bush, and was expected to be continued in yesterday's talks with Tony Blair who has said that climate change is "the most pressing issue facing mankind".
"President Bush tells Mr Blair he's concerned about climate change, but these documents reveal the alarming truth, that policy in this White House is being written by the world's most powerful oil company. This administration's climate policy is a menace to humanity," said Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace's executive director in London last night.
"The prime minister needs to tell Mr Bush he's calling in some favours. Only by securing mandatory cuts in US emissions can Blair live up to his rhetoric," said Mr Tindale.
In other meetings documented in the papers, Ms Dobriansky meets Don Pearlman, an international anti-Kyoto lobbyist who has been a paid adviser to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments, both of which have followed the US line against Kyoto.
The purpose of the meeting with Mr Pearlman, who also represents the secretive anti-Kyoto Climate Council, which the administration says "works against most US government efforts to address climate change", is said to be to "solicit [his] views as part of our dialogue with friends and allies".
ExxonMobil, which was yesterday contacted by the Guardian in the US but did not return calls, is spending millions of pounds on an advertising campaign aimed at influencing politicians, opinion formers and business leaders in the UK and other pro-Kyoto countries in the weeks before the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.
So, the question is: Bush and Exxon: Who Makes US Policy?
Bush makes nothing but trouble. Corporations have always had the upper hand in American gov't. It has to do with how campaigns are funded and the fact that a large section of Americans think their gov't is out to get them, but their national corporations are just being good capitalists by screwing the country.
Hey world! - we are going to stuff our frickin' FREEEDom down you throat and you better be grateful for it.
Walter, There used to be a maxim that implied " What is good for big business in America is good for the people of America." That no longer applies.
What does it take for all of us to get the picture? More tsunamis--a hurricane season like the one that we had last year--icebergs breaking away?
White House defends editing of climate reports
USATODAY.com - Thu Jun 9, 7:51 AM ET
WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday defended the actions of one of its key staffers who's publicly accused of editing government reports to downplay the link between "greenhouse" gases and global warming. But some scientists reacted angrily. It's "par for the course from the administration, in terms of interfering with science for political ends," said Luke Warren of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has criticized the Bush administration's science policies.
Climate Reports Linked Politically at Whistleblower.org
Ok, rant over!
Ever notice that only scientists who agree with your point of view are right and all others are liars?
And that's the reason for changing the original report?
No, the reason for changing the report seems so it fits better with the Bush administration's environmental policy that is based on information from various scientists and organizations.
I am confused though Walter, the title and links seem to reflect an anger that someone who was once a lobbyist for the oil industry is now working on something else. Bothe the President and Vice-President also have a history in the oil industry. I don't know if that has any corellation with some of the throeies running around, but thought I'd point that out.
McGentrix wrote:I am confused though Walter, the title and links seem to reflect an anger that someone who was once a lobbyist for the oil industry is now working on something else.
Could it be that you answered before reading the above quotes? :wink:
Quote:Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.
I am very much afraid that Walter Hintler has not read or is not familiar with the myriad comments made by respected scientists who disagree on the extent of "global warming"; its causeS(note the plural); measurements made of "global warming" by computer simulations, and, the history of the earth with regard to climate change.
It appears that Walter Hinteler does not know that the Kyoto Treaty was placed before the US Congress in 1997 for possible ratification. The US Senate voted against the ratification of the Kyoto Treaty 98-1.
Apparently, if Walter Hinteler is correct, Exxon got to all of the Senators--even Ted Kennedy- the incorruptable one.
It appears that you, chiczaira, know me not only better than most and anyone but better than I do myself.
It further appears that you haven't read anything what I wrote - you even didn't notice that I was quoting sources, clearly marked as such.
Besides, I neither wrote anything about global warming or the Kyoto treaty nor was it a topic in the quoted sources.
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