U.S.: Hearing on Government Interference in Climate Science

House Oversight Committee Shines a Light on Government Interference in Climate Science. By Cornelia Dean, The New York Times, January 31, 2007.

"Under its new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration's handling of climate change science yesterday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration's actions. The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government climate scientists. Almost to a person, Republicans on the panel introduced themselves by proclaiming their agreement that the earth's climate was warming and that the principal culprit was greenhouse gases generated by people and their machinery... Witnesses spoke about how the administration had delayed, altered or watered down the findings of government scientists, the kind of thing they said they had not experienced in the Clinton administration... Drew Shindell, a NASA scientist who said he was speaking as an individual, not for his agency, described research he and his colleagues did on ozone depletion and greenhouse gases over Antarctica. Dr. Shindell said the findings helped explain recent cooling on the continent, a phenomenon cited by climate dissidents as challenging the mainstream view. And, he said, the findings suggested Antarctica might warm rapidly in the future, melting ice and sharply raising sea levels. By the time the administration had signed off on the work, he said, its importance had been played down and references to 'rapid warming' had been deleted. Another witness, Rick Piltz, said he resigned in protest in 2005 from his job with the federal Climate Change Science Program when he became convinced that the administration's goal was to "impede" the understanding of climate science among the public and even the Congress... Francesca Grifo, [from the] Union of Concerned Scientists, [commented on] a report, made public yesterday, is based [on their] survey of federal climate scientists and interviews and document searches by the Government Accountability Project. It says it is common for scientists to be pressured to eliminate references to climate change, for their work to be changed to misrepresent their findings, and for climate-related materials to disappear from Web sites."