Comment by Larry Ross, June 9, 2005
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Terra Daily, June 9, 2005 A White House official with no scientific training edited government climate reports to play down the links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times, the paper said Wednesday. Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, often would subtly alter documents - for example adding "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties" - to create an air of doubt about findings few scientists dispute, said the daily. On one document, Cooney added the work "extremely" to the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult." The alterations Cooney made on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003 often appeared in the final reports, said the daily. Cooney, who before working at the White House in 2001 was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute and led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases, is a lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics and lacks scientific training, the daily said. |