Former White House Climate Czar Part Of Same Crowd That Says Global Warming “Is A Gift”

By Todd Wilkinson, 8-04-06

By mid August, the House Government Reform Committee could begin holding some of the most significant public hearings ever aired on climate change in the U.S.

The purpose is not to re-review or pick apart the existing prevailing science on global warming. This inquiry, instead, will attempt to get to the bottom of alterations in an official government policy document made by a former petroleum industry lobbyist then advising the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

The hearings would mark a momentous breakthrough on a number of fronts. First, they could represent the first serious effort made by Congress to examine the distortion of science that has been alleged to occur during the tenure of the Bush Administration. Second, their tenor could suggest that a turning point might be nearing where growing public alarm over the veracity and future impacts of climate change finally ushers politicians from both major parties toward taking legislative action. Third, they might mean that the United States and Australia, the only two significant holdouts in meaningfully entering the international discussion on climate change, may be shifting course.

Or, they could signal nothing at all and respresent little more than a wasted opportunity.

This week, President Bush was told by scientists at the National Hurricane Center in Florida that it was inconclusive whether 2005's epic hurricane season could be linked, positively, to climate change. However, many independent experts remind that while a couple of strong Atlantic storm years do not prove climate change, it's the overall pattern taking shape—coupled with higher-climbing overall mean temperatures on Earth and in the ocean—that indicate devastating storm years like 2005's are likely a sign of things to come.

Were They Duped?

In response to the the claim that the Anti-Global Warming Petition Project had gathered 19,000 signatures of scientists who allegedly downplay the significance of climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote this response to suggest that many of the signees might have been duped. "In the spring of 1998," the Union writes, "mailboxes of US scientists flooded with a packet from the 'Global Warming Petition Project,' including a reprint of a Wall Street Journal op-ed 'Science has spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth,' a copy of a faux scientific article claiming that 'increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have no deleterious effects upon global climate,' a short letter signed by past-president National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz, and a short petition calling for the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that a reduction in carbon dioxide 'would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.' "The sponsor, the little-known Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, tried to beguile unsuspecting scientists into believing that this packet had originated from the National Academy of Sciences, both by referencing Seitz's past involvement with the NAS and with an article formatted to look as if it was a published article in the Academy's Proceedings, which it was not. The NAS quickly distanced itself from the petition project, issuing a statement saying, 'the petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.' "The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science. In fact, the only criterion for signing the petition was a bachelor's degree in science. The petition resurfaced in early 2001 in an renewed attempt to undermine international climate treaty negotiations."

For now, this month, the focus turns to one of the very reasons the Bush Administration has cited for not engaging on the issue—the alleged confusion within the scientific community that is said to exist. It now appears—and hearings may prove— that much of the confusion has been deliberately self-generated by the president's own top environmental advisors with far more than an ephemeral connection to Big Oil.

Philip A Cooney, a lawyer who holds a degree in economics and who also served as an influential lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, had been tapped by President Bush and Vice President Cheney earlier in their first term to be CEQ's chief of staff.

Cooney arrived around the same time allegations began to swirl that Mr. Cheney had allowed energy industry friends, lobbyists and senior oil, gas, and coal industry executives, to help his staff, behind closed doors, write the National Energy Strategy, which, over the last few years, has lead to a historic proliferation of natural gas and oil drilling on lands in the American West. The policy document also strongly pushes for opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development—a position also supported previously by Mr. Cooney.

In 2005, New York Times staffer Andrew Revkin was given documents from the Government Accountability Project showing that Cooney had played a forceful hand in personally editing a scientific manuscript that laid the foundation for how the U.S. government approaches —i.e. dismisses—climate change as a serious matter. To be sure, it's a problematic position for a fossil fuel industry that has largely had its way with writing favorable regulations, weakening environmental laws, securring subsidies and tax breaks to expand its footprint on the land, in some cases winning lucrative contracts relating to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, and notching huge unprecedented profits from escalating oil prices caused by disruptions in the supply pipeline—disruptions that in terms of oil production from the Gulf of Mexico may be linked, ironically, to warming oceans; and, abroad, ironically, to growing civil unrest around the world relating to U.S. foreign policy.

In a letter to CEQ Chairman James L. Connaughton dated July 20, 2006, Congressmen Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and House committee chair, and Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat, requested "documents that would shed light on interactions between the Council on Environmental Quality and other government agencies and outside parties relating to the Administration's position and public communications on climate science." What Davis and Waxman are fishing for, more specifically, are any official or unofficial correspondence Cooney might have had with his old friends in the oil, gas, and coal industries, and perhaps with right wing thinktanks, around the time he was editing the climate change documents. Davis and Waxman also noted that " Mr. Cooney, who is not a scientist, was reported to have been active in editing scientific reports on global warming produced by other government agencies" being informed by the work of distinguished scientists who have an intimate knowledge of the emerging picture of climatic change.

One veteran government scientist involved with amassing the compelling evidence about human-caused climate change, Rick S. Piltz, said that Cooney deliberately altered parts of the document he had authored to convey the public impression there were questions about the science where none actually existed. When it was publicly revealed what Cooney had done, Cooney resigned from CEQ. After the official document later appeared with Cooney's changes re-framing the reality and softening or obliterating Piltz's own straightforward statements, Piltz resigned in protest.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Piltz, who was appalled by the level of heavy-handed intrusion carried out by the Administration, 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."

Today, Mr. Piltz is founder and executive director of an organization called Climate Science Watch that will serve as a monitoring organization on how science is interpreted, used, and dispensed. "Climate Science Watch will investigate and call public attention to the censorship and misuse of climate-related research and assessments,” Piltz said in founding the organization that is partially sponsored by the Government Accountability Project. “We will communicate with scientists, policymakers, the news media and the public, serving as a bridge for more effective communication between scientists and non-scientists. Public controversy, limited understanding, and misuse of climate science are not going to end in the near term. But the problem of climate change is not going to disappear, either. It must be confronted.”

The House hearings, scheduled later this month and being carried out with bi-partisan cooperation, will examine not only the impetus for Cooney, who, again, had no professional scientific expertise on climate in making the changes but whether his actions constituted an ethical conflict of interest given his professional resume. While climate change scientists themselves have all had their work undergo rigorous peer review in which dissenters are invited to challenge their conclusions, Cooney's tinkering was subjected to no such scrutiny by anyone who would dispute his editorial changes.

In another matter relating to how the science of climate change has continuously been misrepresented by individuals with direct or indirect connections to the oil, gas, and coal industries, New West below, as promised, is delivering the entire list of individuals who signed the Anti-Global Warming Petition Project which claims that greater carbon dioxide emissions is good for the planet. The list is purported to hold 19,000 names. [NOTE TO READERS: READ SIDEBAR]

Those who signed the document are presumed to agree that increased levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases now being emitted into Earth's atmosphere from the burning of coal, natural gas, and auto emissions are "a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution." That's what the petition pronounces.

Signers also apparently endorse the statement that "there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."

And that nations taking unified worldwide action on dramatically regulating carbon dioxide and other emissions "would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind".

Such are the controversial declarations of those, like scientist Frederick Seitz who helped to draft the "Anti-Global Warming Petition Project," a document heavily promoted by free-market think tanks and the oil, gas, and coal industries that suggests human-induced climate change, far from being a grave environmental issue, is a blessing.

This document has been referenced in the past by certain lawmakers from oil and gas producing states on Capitol Hill, like Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, to assert that global warming is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated against humanity.

In 2000, Business Week published a story which identified Seitz as "the granddaddy of global-warming skeptics" and whose opinions have been used by Inhofe and others as a reason for rejecting U.S. engagement in signing on to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. In the chatter used by climate change skeptics, the same rhetoric used by Seitz also showed up in Cooney's changes handwritten into the margins of the government's climate change document when he was at CEQ.

A coincidence?

As Revkin reported, Cooney had previously been one of the oil industry's point men involved with waging a rhetorical campaign in the public to say that greenhouse gas emissions were not a problem or too costly to address and that the U.S. should not even consider signing onto the Kyoto accord. Note: The Clinton Administration rejected Kyoto, too.

Talk to any credible climate scientist today and they will tell you that because of accelerating change, confirmed by experts such as James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science, the discussion has moved far beyond Kyoto. This week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the leaders of two dozen multi-national companies to discuss how the Golden State and England could agree on carbon emission caps.

The Bush Administration's new point man on climate, who was invited to the meeting, said that due to scheduling conflicts he would not attend.

During the past year, NASA scientist Hansen has been featured on an episode of 60 Minutes, noting how the Bush Administration imposed an unofficial gag order on him and how Cooney re-wrote the policy document. “Scientific free speech is key to society’s ability to make informed decisions about matters affecting our future and survival," Piltz said. "Those who work to move the United States toward honest discussion, the adoption of new policies, and taking action to address the challenges of global warming and climate change will find a new and valuable ally in Climate Science Watch.”

An absence of absolute certainty about climate change should not be misconstrued, as it frequently has by the fossil fuel industry, as an absence of evidence that climate change is certainly happening. This has not prevented some individuals and organizations from using the same kind of ploy adopted infamously by the Anaconda copper mining company around Butte, Montana at the turn of the 19th century. Miners and their families, who were getting deathly sick from exposure to arsenic and heavy metals belching out of smelter smokestacks, were told, with a straight face by company officials, that the toxic fog clouding the town was actually good for one's skin complexion. Not to worry.

What are some of the Anti-Global Warming Project's more radical pronouncements that conflict with the growing scientific evidence and predictions of more severe heat waves, droughts, rising seas, more violent storms, water shortages, crop failures, staggering economic impacts, spreading diseases, loss of species, the creation of environmental refugees and an assortment of other dramatic impacts specific to the American West?

Here are three:

"Human use of coal, oil, and natural gas has not measurably warmed the atmosphere, and the extrapolation of current trends shows that it will not significantly do so in the foreseeable future. It does, however, release CO2, which accelerates the growth rates of plants and also permits plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life, which depends upon plants, also flourishes."

"As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people."

"Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

The following is what Tim Flannery in his critically acclaimed book The Weather Makers writes about those who are aligned with skeptics like Frederick Seitz and Phil Cooney:

"The coal industry has not acted alone in misrepresenting the dangers of climate change. Perhaps the greatest damage was done by the Global Climate Coalition, an industry lobby group founded in 1989 by fifty oil, gas, coal, auto, and chemical corporations. During the eleven years of its existence [until the start of the Bush Administration], the organization gave $60 million in political donations and spent millions more on propaganda. The stated purpose of the Global Climate Coalition was to 'cast doubt on the theory of global warming.'''

In response to lawmakers like Inhofe who claim global warming is a hoax, Flannery adds, "Such gobbledygook is frequently employed to bewilder the general reader, though at times these groups will push it much further. The Leipzig Declaration [which Seitz, one of the masterminds of the Anti-Global Warming Petition Project also signed] is a particularly interesting case in point. This document appeared in 1995, penned by Fred Singer, and purported to have the signatures of seventy-nine scientists from leading universities who subscribe to the view that climate change is not a threat. On investigation, however, the majority of signatories were found not to be scientists or had not signed the declaration."

Flannery notes: "Skepticism is an indispensable element in scientific inquiry, but when the intention is to mislead rather than clarify, we have not skepticism but deceit."

Why is New West publishing the list of those who signed the "Anti-Global Warming Petition", purported to represent the opinions of scientists encouraging the U.S. government not to act? Because we believe those who have lent their backing to the agenda of the Anti-Global Warming Petition Project need to be held accountable and to show the evidence which supports their position, given that the document's assertions radically depart from what the vast majority of those in the scientific community say is supported by facts and analysis. Is your name on the list? Is your neighbor's or someone else you know?

From the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to the leading atmospheric specialists at NASA, from biologists studying effects being documented on the ground to esteemed geologists, corporate CEOS, the insurance industry, and 99 percent of the rest of the nations on Earth, the true startling consensus supports the opinion that collectively governments and industry have a decade to address rising carbon dioxide emissions or face climate changes that will dramatically impair human life in the future.

One way or another, the Anti-Global Warming Petition Project 50 years from now will be regarded as a historic document.

Either those who signed the petition will be regarded in the memory of their survivors as rarefied geniuses who were far smarter than the majority of climate scientists on Earth today or they will be recalled as citizens who deliberately (or by association) distorted the truth to help skeptics thwart meaningful public dialogue and action when there was still time to confront the worst effects.

The following individuals have signed on to the "Anti-Global Warming Petition Project." They are listed state by state. Find yours.

Colorado
Idaho
Montana
New Mexico
Utah
Wyoming
Alaska
Alabama
Arkansas
Arizona
California
Connecticut
Washington, D.C.
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Maryland
Maine
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Mississippi
North Carolina
North Dakota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
Nevada
New York
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Puerto Rico
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Vermont
Washington (state)
Wisconsin
West Virginia
























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