[PAA-Discuss] Rick Perry officials spark revolt after doctoring environment report

[Sarah Gonzales]

The Houston Area Research Center (HARC) is located in the Woodlands.  
All scientists associated with this report have now demanded that  
their names be removed from the report.

and why is this article written in a UK newspaper and not represented  
in the U.S. media? mmm... I wonder.

Rick Perry officials spark revolt after doctoring environment report
Scientists ask for names to be removed after mentions of climate  
change and sea-level rise taken out by Texas officials

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/14/rick-perry-texas-censorship-environment-report
Officials in Rick Perry's home state of Texas have set off a  
scientists' revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea- 
level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental  
report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the  
state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and  
censorship from Perry appointees at the state's environmental agency.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a  
rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report  
has demanded their names be struck from the document. "None of us can  
be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names  
removed," said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice- 
president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre.

"To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility.  
This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does," Lester said.  
"We can't be censored." Scientists see Texas as at high risk because  
of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and  
extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer's season of  
wildfires and drought.

However, Perry, in his run for the Republican nomination, has elevated  
denial of science, from climate change to evolution, to an art form.  
He opposes any regulation of industry, and has repeatedly challenged  
the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Texas is the only state to refuse to sign on to the federal  
government's new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "I like to  
tell people we live in a state of denial in the state of Texas," said  
John Anderson, an oceanography at Rice University, and author of the  
chapter targeted by the government censors.
That state of denial percolated down to the leadership of the Texas  
Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency chief, who was  
appointed by Perry, is known to doubt the science of climate change.  
"The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about  
how human-induced climate change is a hoax," said Anderson.

But scientists said they still hoped to avoid a clash by simply  
avoiding direct reference to human causes of climate change and by  
sticking to materials from peer-reviewed journals. However, that plan  
began to unravel when officials from the agency made numerous  
unauthorised changes to Anderson's chapter, deleting references to  
climate change, sea-level rise and wetlands destruction.

"It is basically saying that the state of Texas doesn't accept science  
results published in Science magazine," Anderson said. "That's going  
pretty far."

Officials even deleted a reference to the sea level at Galveston Bay  
rising five times faster than the long-term average – 3mm a year  
compared to .5mm a year – which Anderson noted was a scientific fact.  
"They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference  
to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to  
human influence – it was edited or eliminated," said Anderson. "That's  
not scientific review that's just straight forward censorship."

Mother Jones has tracked the changes. The agency has defended its  
actions. "It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and  
publish it," Andrea Morrow, a spokeswoman said in an emailed  
statement. "Information was included in a report that we disagree with."

She said Anderson's report had been "inconsistent with current agency  
policy", and that he had refused to change it. She refused to answer  
any questions. Campaigners said the censorship by the Texas state  
authorities was a throwback to the George Bush era when White House  
officials also interfered with scientific reports on climate change.

In the last few years, however, such politicisation of science has  
spread to the states. In the most notorious case, Virginia's attorney  
general Ken Cuccinelli, who is a professed doubter of climate science,  
has spent a year investigating grants made to a prominent climate  
scientist Michael Mann, when he was at a state university in Virginia.

Several courts have rejected Cuccinelli's demands for a subpoena for  
the emails. In Utah, meanwhile, Mike Noel, a Republican member of the  
Utah state legislature called on the state university to sack a  
physicist who had criticised climate science doubters.

The university rejected Noel's demand, but the physicist, Robert  
Davies said such actions had had a chilling effect on the state of  
climate science. "We do have very accomplished scientists in this  
state who are quite fearful of retribution from lawmakers, and who  
consequently refuse to speak up on this very important topic. And the  
loser is the public," Davies said in an email.

"By employing these intimidation tactics, these policymakers are, in  
fact, successful in censoring the message coming from the very  
institutions whose expertise we need."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://paa-tx.org/pipermail/discuss_paa-tx.org/attachments/20111015/11b0bdf4/attachment.htm>