No wonder Bush likes to pretend there is still a debate on climate change. It's easy to do when Bush has been doctoring government reports on global warming to gut the scientific fact and increase doubt. According to the NYT,
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
I love that the guy in charge of developing environmental policy was a lackey of the oil industry. Meanwhile, scientific groups from around the world (including the US National Academy of Sciences) just released an unprecedented statement reiterating the obvious: climate change is real, the evidence is overwhelming and the if we don't act now the effects could be catastrophic.
Bush's record on combatting this danger? Not so good.
Between 1990 and 2002, the carbon dioxide emissions of the US increased by 13 per cent, which on their own were greater than the combined cut in emissions that will be achieved if all Kyoto countries hit their targets, said Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society.
