Waxman Hearing: Fudging Climate Change Reports

Posted by Richard Blair at 10:15 AM on March 20, 2007.

Rep. Henry "Hammerin' Hank" Waxman (D-CA) has been making a lot of news recently. As the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he's the Democratic Party point man on a variety of corruption issues and investigations. When congress was returned to Democratic Party control this past November, his biggest concern was (paraphrasing) "Where do I start?".

With all of his extraordinary work to date, you can be excused if you missed Waxman's latest investigation hearing: why did the Bush administration change scientific reports on climate change / global warming? The answer isn't particularly surprising...

On the hot seat yesterday: Phil Cooney, the Bush regime's "change agent" on the report, who now (not surprisingly) works for Exxon Mobil. In answer to the question of why he changed the reports, Cooney responded:

A former White House official on Monday defended Bush administration alterations to scientific climate change reports as steps "to align executive branch reports" with administration policies...

..."I had the authority and responsibility to review the documents in question, under an established interagency review process, and did so using my best judgment, based on the administration's stated research priorities, as informed by the National Academy of Sciences," Cooney said...

In otherwords, Cooney modified the reports in order to fit into Exxon Mobil / BushCo's narrative that fossil fuel emissions did not contribute significantly to climate change - and indeed, that the entire climate change debate was overblown.

It's doubtful that there's any underlying crime here - at least to the letter of the law. There's an obvious moral crime, but that's never seemed to stop the Bush regime in any manner.

All Spin Zone previously reported on the controversial changes here, here, and here. Yesterday, Cooney simply affirmed what anyone who's been paying attention knew all along. The Bush regime was complicit with companies like Exxon Mobil, who were trying to rig the debate on climate change, and actually continue to do so today. Kind of like the tobacco companies rigged the debate on smoking / cancer causality for decades.

At this point, it's hard to predict whether or not Waxman's latest investigation will uncover anything illegal, but the hearings continue to expose the liars and spinners for what they are, and how the game is rigged. But it sure is good to have a guy like that on our side.

Tagged as: climate change, waxman, henry waxman

Richard Blair is a Philadelphia area freelance writer, and the blogmaster of All Spin Zone.