The "powers that be" continue to try to suppress scientific findings when it contradicts their narrow view of the world. Here is a good example:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080708/ap_on_re_us/cheney_climate
Ross Mayhew
Cheney wanted cuts in climate testimony
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 8, 9:53 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major
deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences
of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health
official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a
former EPA officials maintains.
When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public
health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because
of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of
the science.
But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate
change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen
Johnson, says that Cheney's office was deeply involved in getting
nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony removed.
"The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice
president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ...
any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,"
Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The three-page letter, a response to an inquiry by Sen. Barbara Boxer,
D-Calif., the panel's chairwoman, was obtained Tuesday by The
Associated Press. Boxer planned a news conference later in the day.
Burnett, 31, a lifelong Democrat who resigned his post last month as
associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the
agency's response to climate change, describes deep political concerns
at the White House, including in Cheney's office, about linking
climate change directly to public health or damage to the environment.
Scientists believe manmade pollution is warming the earth and if the
process is not reversed it will cause significant climate changes that
pose broad public health problems from increases in disease to more
injuries from severe weather.
Senate and House committees have been trying for months to get e-mail
exchanges and other documents to determine the extent of political
influence on government scientists, but have been rebuffed.
The letter by Burnett for the first time suggests that Cheney's office
was deeply involved in downplaying the impacts of climate change as
related to public health and welfare, Senate investigators believe.
Cheney's office also objected last January over congressional
testimony by Administrator Johnson that "greenhouse gas emissions harm
the environment."
An official in Cheney's office "called to tell me that his office
wanted the language changed" with references to climate change harming
the environment deleted, Burnett said. Nevertheless, the phrase was
left in Johnson's testimony.
Cheney's office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality
worried that if key health officials provided detailed testimony about
global warming's consequences on public health or the environment, it
could make it more difficult to avoid regulating carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases, Burnett believes.
The EPA currently is examining whether carbon dioxide, a leading
greenhouse gas, poses a danger to public health and welfare. The
Supreme Court has said if it does, it must be regulated under the
Clean Air Act.
Nowhere were these White House concerns more apparent than when CDC
Director Julie Gerberding, the head of the government's premier public
health watchdog, testified about climate change and public health
before Boxer's committee last October. The White House deleted six of
the original 14 pages of Gerberding's testimony, including a list of
likely public health impacts of global warming.
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 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.
But he said he refused to press CDC on the deletions because he
believed the CDC's draft testimony was "fundamentally accurate."
Burnett, in a telephone interview, said he opposed making the
extensive deletions because "it was the right thing to do." He
declined to elaborate about White House involvement beyond his July 6
letter to Boxer.
As a Democrat, Burnett, seems to have been an odd choice as a senior
policy adviser and key liaison with the White House in Bush
administration's EPA.
Over the last eight years, he has contributed nearly $125,000 to
various Democratic politicians, starting with Al Gore's 2000
presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive
Government. He supports Democrat Barack Obama for president.
Burnett caught the attention of Bush administration insiders as a
researcher at the Center for Regulatory Study, a joint effort by the
American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, where he
co-authored a number of reports on regulation including one
criticizing a ban on using cell phones while driving and another
criticizing the EPA regulation of arsenic as too expensive with
limited benefits.
posted to ClimateConcern
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