Political Skullduggery

Global warming deniers are often the same kind of people who try to tell the public that there is scientific debate about evolution, too.

As a United Nations panel readied an update on global warming this week, charges erupted in Congress on Tuesday over alleged White House political manipulation of scientific climate-change research.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a hearing that evidence indicated Bush administration officials had tried to "mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."

Two advocacy groups released a survey to the panel in which a number of government climate scientists said either that their research had been edited to change the meaning or that they were told to delete references to "global warming" or "climate change" from reports. ...

The alleged political manipulation of global warming research marked Waxman's first inquiry since he took over as head of one of Congress' premier investigative panels.

Waxman reported that he and the ranking Republican on the panel, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, had unsuccessfully sought documents from the White House on climate-change policy.

He said this effort was based on published reports last year that a Bush aide, Phil Cooney, a former lobbyist for the oil industry who at the time headed the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, had "imposed his own views on the reports scientists had submitted to the White House." Waxman called it an "orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change."