U.S. scientists have been pressured to make their writings on global warming fit with the Bush administration's skepticism on the topic, a U.S. Congressional committee has been told.
A survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists found 150 climate scientists had personally experienced political interference in their work over the past five years. The survey had 279 respondents.
At least 435 incidents were recorded, representatives of the watchdog group told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," said Francesca Grifo.
The committee heard from former U.S. government scientist Rick Piltz, who said he quit in 2005 after coming under pressure to dampen findings on global warming.
Phil Cooney, the White House Council on Environmental Quality official pressuring him, went to work for ExxonMobil in 2006.
"His edits of program reports, which had been drafted and approved by career science program managers, had the cumulative effect of adding an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about global warming and minimizing its likely consequences," Piltz said.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the committee, said the White House isn't co-operating in supplying documents necessary to investigate such claims.
"The committee isn't trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security," he said in opening the hearing. "We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House's political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists."
The council's Kristen Helmer said they have been co-operating with Congress.
"We do have in place a very transparent system in science reporting," she said after being asked about allegations of interference in scientific documents.
Bush and Kyoto
When U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2001, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Accord, the global climate-fighting treaty that would have required the U.S. to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to seven per cent below its 1990 levels.
However, his stance appeared to moderate somewhat at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005.
On Jan. 10, the New York Times reported that the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2006 was the warmest year in the U.S. since records were kept in 1895. The release also said, "A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases." That statement was qualified somewhat, with the NOAA saying the relative contributions of El Nino and human influence couldn't be determined.
"... The climate agency's shift in language came as a surprise to several public affairs officials there. They said they had become accustomed in recent years to having any mention of a link between climate trends and human activities played down or trimmed when drafts of documents went to the Commerce Department and the White House for approval," the article said.
Many observers also considered it significant when Bush talked in his Jan. 23 State of the Union speech about the "serious challenge of global climate change."
However, his remarks were made in the context of energy security for the U.S. Bush stopped short of calling for a cap or cuts on greenhouse gas emissions.
The backdrop to the testimony is that a major report on the science of climate change will be released Friday in Paris.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to report that human influence on climate change is real and that it is serious.
With files from The Associated Press
