Then why in the hell would they purposefully change the data:

Official altered reports on links to global warming
U.S. climate research edited to downplay effects of greenhouse gases on
environment
Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times

Wednesday, June 8, 2005


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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 Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of
climate research that government scientists and their supervisors,
including some senior Bush administration officials, had already
approved. In most 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.

Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental
Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration
policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team
leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest
trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer
with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

The documents were obtained by the New York Times from the Government
Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for
government whistle-blowers.

The group is representing Rick Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior
associate in the office that coordinates government climate research.
That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the
documents that Cooney edited.

A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said Tuesday that Cooney
would not be made available to comment.

Other White House officials said the changes made by Cooney were part
of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents
related to global environmental change.

But critics say that though all administrations routinely vet
government reports, scientific content in such reports should be
reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of
environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they
illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Cooney
and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that
have long fought greenhouse gas restrictions.

In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with
climate change at a dozen agencies, Piltz said the White House editing
and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8
billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate
change.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Piltz
wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed
under this administration during the past four years, in which
politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the
science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and
integrity of the program."

Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in
science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at
odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at
the White House on Tuesday, has been trying for several months to
persuade Bush to intensify U.S. efforts to curb greenhouse gases.

Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions
through 2012.

On Tuesday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the
scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United
States and Britain, released a joint letter saying "the scientific
understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify
nations taking prompt action."