White House Edits Another Memo to Minimize Global Warming
The Bush White House has once again (see here and here) edited a climate change document to delete references to adverse effects, to question certainty and to directly challenge scientific warnings.
In a fax copy of the edited EPA document (attached), made public by the Environmental Defense Fund, editors at the White House Office of Management and Budget inserted the word "may" in place of "will," promoted research into the "benefits" of global warming and dismissed warnings of devastating storms with the question: "Is this relevant to the U.S."
Amnesia about Katrina notwithstanding, the memo's editors also insist that no amount of storm-driven flooding will ever affect American drinking water because "we have a regulatory structure in place to ensure quality."
The edits and comments range from the dishonest (changing "will" to "may") to the dunder-headed. For example, in response to an EPA paragraph that reads: "Abrupt climate changes are an important consideration because, if triggered, they could occur so quickly and unexpectedly that human or natural systems would have difficulty adapting to them," the White House editors interjected, "If referring to changes that take decades, one would think that human systems could adapt."
Given that the White House has been caught doing this kind of thing twice before, it appears that certain Americans are woefully slow to adapt.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318-0102.pdf | 2.49 MB |
the lesson learned from Katrina and Ike should be:"Don't build towns below sea level"
It should Not be: "we can fix the climate and lower the sea level" - thats nuts.
Do the lessons learned also include, "Don't place your offshore oil rigs in the gulf?" Do they include don't put 45% of your refining capacity on the gulf coast near your only deep water ports where the oil tankers dock?" Does it also mean, "Don't get your natural gas from the gulf and armstrong the Canadians for the balance you've lost?" Hmmmm, one wonders.
and yes politicians are evil - what are you gonna do about that? change the governing party? it's been tried - same old same old
... why nihilists suck up to big industry "conservative" parties.
I think of myself as an outside observer. Canada is staying with the conservatives and the US is heading left. Lets see how it works out.
If the US were to crank up a big carbon program ... and it actually worked out well economically. Canada would follow in lock step. Conservative Gov or not.
I don't support any side but in fiendish way, I'm quite interested to see these big anti carbon ideas put through their paces to see what happens. Not expecting things to go well.
Liberals suck up to big business more than conservatives do. When Harper changed the donation rules who got nailed the worse? The Liberals, because most of their finacial backing came from corporations. Most of the funding for the NDP and Conservatives is from the grass roots.
Thanks for the great post, Richard, and helping to spread the word!
Lauren Guite
Environmental Defense Fund
Censor girl looks so sad up there - breaks your heart. The evil government is so mean.
In fact it's my understanding that the Bush regime is going to round up all the scientists and lock them up at gitmo next month along with all the editors of pro AGW websites. It won't be pretty.
Censor girl looks sad alright. But, it may be more than that though. I think I may have seen her at a BDSM site.
Dill Weed
Watch Lou Dobbs any night and he take aim at the THOUSANDS of paid lobbyists from corporations who's job it is to change the minds of any politician it can, of any political stripe. It will happen even when Obama gets it. Such things never change.
Is Littlemore telling us he is outraged at what he fancfully imagines to be "censorship"?
[Comment reposted. Hilariously, Littlemore has censored this. 14 times. So far.]