As Lisa and Andy note below, the fuss du jour is over Philip Cooney's editing of scientific gov't reports on climate change to exaggerate the appearance of uncertainty. Two of the finest science bloggers going, Roger Pielke Jr. and Chris Mooney, have a wealth of interesting material on the subject.
First, Pielke argues that the whole thing is a case of manufactured controversy -- another attempt to play "gotcha" with government documents that just distracts attention from substantive policy debate.
The author of the NYT piece, Andy Revkin, emailed Pielke a congenial response, including this amusing bit: "Sadly, the White House is so hermetically sealed on such matters that it has essentially created such stories by making scraps of tea-leaf-like information noteworthy." It's true -- by playing footsy with the public, with a long history of contradictory and ambiguous statements on climate change, the Bush administration has created a situation where every official word or document on the subject is examined and parsed like the friggin' Zapruder film.
Chris Mooney unearths this tidbit from Cooney's past, revealing that his opposition to CO2 limits is longstanding. He also has an amusing rundown of White House flack Scott McClellan's typically opaque and evasive performance this morning. McClellan made a big deal out of a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report that praised the administration's 10-year climate plan. Mooney points out that the report also "seriously faulted" the plan, and oh yeah, is four years old.
And finally, in a post on The Huffington Post (who doesn't post there? oh, right, me.) Mooney lays out Revkin's history of uncovering Bush administration interference in climate science -- the same story over and over again, just the names and details change. And yet every time the larger media act like it's an isolated event, and the administration goes back to doing it. Sigh.
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Ana Unruh Cohen Posted 8:11 am
09 Jun 2005
The first was the 2001 report, Climate Change Science: an analysis of some key questions, that the Bush administration had the NAS rush out in the aftermath of Bush's reversal of his campaign promise to limit CO2 emissions. The verdict of this All-American scientific team was that the even bigger international team of scientists at the IPCC were right about climate change. The Bushies seized - and continue to use - the generally accepted areas of uncertainties that the scientists mention in the report to justify the administrations inaction.
The second report published in 2004, which Dave links to, was an analysis of the administration's climate research plan. The admin's first draft of this plan was universally panned. They did actually improve it in its final form, which the NAS acknowledges, but it still left much to be desired, which the NAS also points out.
But hey we can't expect Scott to read all of those reports, he might learn something...
"The book of nature is always open." - Louis Agassiz
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odograph Posted 10:53 am
09 Jun 2005
It makes it more tangible to people, more real. And in the environment of other "smoking memos" I don't think it is surprising that it breaks out.
Earlier today I was saying that the worm might turn.
Carl Pope called it better late than never and said:
"My hope is that this better late than never coverage is an indication the tide is turning and that the media may be returning to its role as watchdog."
Worm or tide, I'm catching the same vibe.
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Pamela Posted 5:36 pm
10 Jun 2005
Blogging common sense liberal views daily... http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/
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