Accepting global warming as a fact

Will affect the way energy and oil companies do business.



So Cheney had the scientific reports severely edited:

In fact, Vice President Cheney called for the deletions because he feared tough testimony by Gerberding might make it harder for the Bush administration to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions:

The White House, at the urging of Cheney’s office, “requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change,” wrote Burnett.

“CEQ [Council on Environmental Quality] contacted me to argue that I could best keep options open for the (EPA) administrator (on regulating carbon dioxide) if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony,” Burnett said in the letter to Boxer.

Fixing facts to fit their own reality

Works until reality hits them square in the face.

Think Progress:

Philip Cooney is the former chief of staff to President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality who made hundreds of edits to government climate reports in ways that played down links between human activity and global warming. He worked for the American Petroleum Institute before coming to the Bush administration, and left the White House for Exxon shortly after his edits were revealed.

Cooney appeared yesterday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Cooney he wanted to determine whether what is “driving the policy of this administration on global warming and climate change is the science or whether it’s something called the politically correct science.”

Cooney admitted it was the latter: “My objective was to align these communications with the administration’s stated policy” of climate skepticism.

And as Think Progress notes, fitting facts to a pretend reality should sound familiar.