Is Bush's Administration Anti-Science?

Great Debates
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Well, I think the controversy revved up pretty quickly after the paper came out. Now, one could potentially make the case that the White House would have been within its perogative to strongly suggest that, while the Mann reference and data still be shown, some weak reference be made to the Soon and Baliunas study be made (although my guess is that scientists in the field itself might be less charitable than me on this point). Such an insertion would have left the EPA looking a little stupid but at least not ridiculous.

Well, it is hard for me to tell from this one sentence of a whole paragraph. This is one case where one would clearly want to see more context. But, they certainly took out a sentence that is completely non-controversial and replaced it with a sentence that, at least standing alone, almost appears to say (depending on your interpretation of “scientific challenge”) that we really don’t know anything about what may happen, which would tend to be an exaggeration of the uncertainty.

I would say that we don’t have sufficient firsthand evidence to judge this change. However, we still do have the evidence that the White House was telling the EPA what they should say and that the EPA didn’t think this was a proper representation.

“Staffers” does not exclude “scientists.” It is merely a more general term that can include the scientists, as well for example, as some of their superiors including Whitman.

Well, maybe I was a little confused about what you were asking. To be honest, I don’t think it is your job to defend the administration. You don’t actually have the evidence available to mount a defense. Anyone can come up with hypotheticals here. What we need is someone who has the information to tell us why we should dismiss these charges and not be concerned about them…or why they are untrue. The ball is in the administration’s court, not yours, as far as I am concerned.

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The scientific controversy certainly did. But some of the news I found suggested that the editors resignations, for instance, did not happen until that summer. This would have been well after the April memo. I’m not certain on this point, however.

I can agree with this. Frankly, I’m not too sure that I’d be that charitable. When I looked at the graph that was deleted, my first question was “Why?” I do not see anything in that graph from the Mann study which is incompatible with the proposition that there is still some uncertainty as to the extent of the 20th century warming. It certaintly includes a good representation of the uncertainty inherent in recreating the global temperature record.

This still seems odd to me given that you were willing to accept at face value the interpretation of the phrases in the memo. Not bad or wrong, mind you, just odd.

My bad. I was asking in the context of our debate here. Specifically what would a defence of the administration’s actions have to look like to seem legitimate here. Mind you, I’m not asking what it would have to look like to convince anyone. Merely what would it have to look like to seem ligitimate.

In my enthusiasm I seem to have strayed into the company of the tinfoil hats. I somehow left the impression that I did not believe in science or something like that. Mostly I was asking for my own edification.

Agreed.

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Here is a link to an NPR show (Diane Rehm) in which Marburger (Bush’s Science Advisor) responds to some of the charges in the UCS report. (Neal Lane, who was science advisor under Clinton is also on, more or less giving the other side.)

I don’t find Marburger’s defense to be very convincing. On one example that he himself chose (condom info up on the CDC website), he does at least provide the alternative explanation that he received from the agency which, if true (and that’s a big “if”), would refute that one example.

On the EPA report, he (or those he talked to) just try to rewrite history by arguing that it was just decided that 4 pages couldn’t do justice to the topic of global warming so they decided to take it out since they had some other report coming out that would address it. This argument conveniently ignores the fact of the memo from EPA showing that the EPA considered the “leaving out” option as a response to the mandatory edits from the White House that they felt made the section on global warming scientifically inaccurate. [I also think that the subsequent report that Marburger is referring to really serves a different purpose…i.e., it was directed toward the scientific community rather than the public at large…but I may be wrong on that.]

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Thanks very much for the link. Dr. Marburger suggested that he is preparing a detailed report for congress which will be in the public record. Hopefully we can all meet back here then and go over this again.

I have to laugh a little. You and I seem to be taking the same positions that Dr. Lane and Marburger have taken. I thought the defence was quite well done. He said several times that he has looked into the details of most of the items in the UDC report and in almost every case there is information not presented or a biased interpretation not borne out by the facts. For instance, he pointed out that there is not a single charge in the report which includes a comment from an official in the agency concerned. That is, the UDC did not even bother to make some phone calls to get comments.

Unless I am mistaken, the CDC issue was brought up by Dr. Lane in response to Diane’s question to come up with his own example of something in the report that the signed statement refered to which he though constituted a problem. She brough up several science like issues and it seemed to me (I took notes, but cannot guarantee that they are comprehensive) that for each one, he said that the issue was not referenced by the signed statement. At one point, Dr. Marburger suggested that he understood the scientists who signed the statement had not even seen the full report.

For clarity, I am differentiating between the “statement” signed by 60 prominent scientists which Dr. Lane spent a little time distancing from the full UCS report. Specifically, he suggested that the statement mentioned several issues and the report went into detail on many others. I’m not sure I can find a good copy of the statement signed by the scientists. I seem to only come up with summaries or “the statements includes …”.

I cannot understand why you put the big “if” modifier in there. His explanation is simply that the report was taken off of the website, underwent scinetific review, and was then put back up on the website. Dr. Lane seemed to think there was nothing procedurally wrong with this. They both seemed to agree that it was done all the time. If the report was put back before any of the controversy, then I’d say that there is no need for the “big if”. Especially as Waxman, the UCS et al seem to be making a much bigger deal out of this. There seem to be charges of suppression of science. But if it was just a momentary removal of information, that seems extraordinary. Especially with neither Waxman or the UCS having asked any of the officials involved about it!

I’m not sure he is rewriting history at all. Look again at the NYTimes article. Governor Whitman suggested the same thing there. Further, his accounting of the process has another advantage. It suggests a quite plausible middle ground for the argument over the edits. That being the possibility that administration additions to the report would have made it overly long. At least to simply include them (as I think you suggested earlier). If the administration and the EPA “staffers” differed on how to word the 4 pages, it might happen that the only way to make either office happy was to make the other unhappy. In that case, it might be true that the platform was unsuited for the task.

Is there any way we can let go of the idea that the “EPA” considered the leaving out option? Can we get back to the idea that some staff members of the EPA wrote a memo (or a few memos perhaps) which were then leaked out of context to the NYTimes? You, UCS, Waxman, and the NYTimes have made it sound like the entire scientific staff of the EPA is under assualt of some kind. We have to remember, that the report linked to in the EPA report included input from the EPA and many other scientific bodies. It is not like the Bush administration is putting anyone under house arrest for saying that the earth is warming up.

I don’t think so. It is linked to in the EPA report (as I recall) and is a similar big picture look at the science.
You did not mention the other issue that Marburger brought up. The removal of 2 scientists from the Stem Cell Research panel. Diane characterized the removal as “without warning” and “sudden” apparently from her reading of the UCS report. (Although I’m not sure on that. As I said, every time she asked Dr. Lane about an issue, he said that issue was not mentioned in the statement he signed. It made it seem that she had not read both documents.) Dr. Marburger pointed out that

  1. The panel is an ethics panel, not a scientific advisory panel. While they have had and still do have scientist panel members, they are not exclusively a scientific advisory panel.

  2. The terms for ALL of the members of that panel had expired and that only 2 were replaced. He suggested that there is no evidence that these 2 were the only ones to disagree with the administration, and even offered that one of them had sought to retire from the committee and is still involved with it in an advisory role.

Since Dr. Marburger’s position agrees with mine and he works for the administration, I certainly don’t expect that it will change many minds. But I would like to suggest this little thought experiment. Find some issue in the report, make it one of the less agregious allegations if that helps, and try looking at it more critically. Imagine if there are alternate explantions for any of it. Imagine if the allegation is not true, and see if you cannot write that part of the report in exactly the same way regardless. You don’t have to change your mind, simply use a little more skepticism in reading it.

In the mean while (I can’t seem to get the link to work) but these two gentlemen apperently appeared on Science Friday earlier on the same topic. Perhaps with some additional information. Go to the Science Friday website and search for Marburger (thank heaven for unusual names ;)). You’ll find a link to the show. I’ll try to get the link to work and post it.

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Here is a link to the audio of the Talk of the Nation Science Friday episode featuring Dr. Lane and Dr. Marburger talking about the same issue. It is a little shorter, but does not stray into territory not covered by the report and statement.

It did bring up an interesting issue, though. In the intro to the show it was suggested that the UCS report came out very recently. Like last month recently? If that is so, then maybe we could dial down some of the angst we expressed about the administration not responding to the issues raised in detail. Both guests expressed the opinion that such a response will take some time to put together.

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Thanks for that link. Actually, I think that segment is much better than the one I linked to. They really get right to the meat of the issue. I heartily recommend a listen to it by others reading this thread.

And, I think we really get a feeling for how what has happened has happened. As, Marburger claims, this Administration has a more business-oriented approach of “demanding accountability” from agencies, etc. The problem, though, are twofold:

(1) This accountability is being demanded by the ideologues in the White House who demand it quite selectively.

(2) This accountability is often being demanded in the wrong manner. As Lane notes, science is not amenable to such a top-down approach because the people at the top are usually not qualified on the scientific issues. So, when the Administration didn’t like what they were hearing on climate change from IPCC and went to NAS for a second opinion, that was fine…Likely, ideologically motivated but they went to an organization who was qualified to give them another opinion. But, when they didn’t like what NAS was saying and what the EPA staff scientists were saying and decided themselves what changes should be made to the EPA report, that was not fine.

Honestly, pervert, you seem to bring up things that are new to you that I thought were already clear. The original OP was timely, responding to news reports about the release of the UCS report and statement, and linked to stuff that made it clear that the UCS report was issued February 18th. (The OP started this thread of Feb. 19.)

What I was expressing was angst about was:

(1) that they had never responded to the Waxman report (released like last August or something) even when they were told in a Nature editorial that they ought to.

(2) that their first reaction seemed to be to dismiss the UCS report in a similar manner; but then I noted when I looked at more news stories that in fact Marburger said he was planning a more substantive response and I expressed happiness about this.

(3) that the charges were serious enough that they needed to be dealt with by the Administration in a specific and substantive manner…and that having defenders of the Administration here come up with all sorts of hypothetical scenarios did not constitute such a defense in my view.

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P.S. - After listening to the Science Friday report and “reading between the lines” in what Marburger said, I have a prediction to make which is that either we are going to see a change in this pattern of what the administration is doing in this regard or we are going to see Marburger realizing, like Whitman, a compelling need to spend more time with his family or some such thing. (Remember, by the way, that Whitman resigned a few weeks after the fight over the global warming section in the EPA report.)

You are having chronology confusions here too. It is not possible for the UCS report to have mentioned this incident since it occurred very recently, after the report and statement were released. I think one of the poster brought up this news story on the third or fourth page of this thread and it was pretty much “hot off the press” at that point.

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If you don’t mind, what is the evidence for this? Dr Marburger seemed to indicate that this was definately not the case.

Agreed. But lets be clear on this. The section of the EPA paper in question was not a scientific study. It was a report requested by the administration. I’m not trying to say that it did not or should not have contained science. I’m not even trying to claim that what the administration did (whatever, exactly, that was) was correct. I’d just like to dial down some of the rhetoric from UCS and Waxman (although, not so much from you, jshore) that it constituted ideological suppression of science.

Again, where is the evidence that they did not like what the NAS said? We went over the memo in the UCS report in great detail. I thought it said that the adminstration wanted to alter a reference to the NAS study. Although, I note that the UCS report did claim that it wanted to remove all reference to the NAS study. I seem to remember pointing out a reference by the administration to that NAS study.

I think in some ways I am laboring under a misunderstanding of the rules for this debate. I thought we were discussing the validity of the claims made by the UCS and others. I seem to have overstepped the point of the OP in a few instances. This may simply be another.

Well, one report by an opposition Representitive and one editorial do not make for good reasons to institute a large investigation. Add to them another report and a petition from many leading scientists, and perhaps you have a good reason to do a small investigation and correct any misunderstandings. This is, apperently what we are getting.

Quite so. I remember.

The charges certainly were serious. The evidence, on the other hand…

Right again. I was not trying to pose a defence in place of anything the administration might want to do. I was merely trying to examine the evidence as presented in the Waxman or UCS reports in a critical manner. I don’t think I presented any hypothetical as a fact. I don’t think that I even presented any of them as my own opinion of what happened. I was merely trying to point out what were, in my opinion, deficiencies in the reports. Not, strictly speaking, defences against the charges. As I recall, I was handed a virtual tin hat. In a friendly way, but a tin hat none the less.

At any rate, I don’t suppose many others are following this anymore. So I’ll leave it at this. Thanks once again, jshore and even you, kimtsu for the lively discussion.

My bad. The way Diane presented the issues she did made it seem that they had been mentioned in the UCS report or the statement signed by the scientists. This may not have been one of those incidents.

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The Office of Science and Techology Policy (i.e., the office that Bush’s Science Advisor John Marburger runs) released yesterday a response to the UCS report. Here is a New York Times article about it and here is the OSTP site where you can get both a short and long version of the response.

I’m glad to see that they took it seriously and responded to the points in some detail. On the other hand, in the area that I know about in most detail (climate change), I don’t find the response to be too compelling.

For example, in discussing why the climate change section was deleted from the environmental report, they simply make the argument that it was decided that justice could not be done to the subject in such a short space. They completely ignore discussing the one piece of physical evidence, namely the internal EPA memo that seems to imply that the issue was one of the White House demanding changes to the report that the EPA folks felt made it scientifically unsound. It seems to me that, given the existence of this memo (contained in the appendix of the UCS report and referred to extensively in the body of the report), it needs to be addressed in any claim that it does not do justice to the real reasons why the section was omitted. To simply state an alternative explanation does not seem very compelling to me.

I also found it strange that the response to UCS’s claim that “the Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a
discernible contribution to global warming” seemed to focus primarily on a different issue. I.e., it focusses on the issue of whether the Administration admits that the rise in concentrations of these gases is due mainly to human activities…something that is essentially completely uncontroversial even in global warming denier circles. It does not focus very much on the issue of where the Administration comes out on how the increase in these concentrations is affecting (and will in the future affect) the climate.

On the other hand, I admit that the UCS’s use of the word “consistently” is probably unwarranted. I would say the correct word is “often” since the Administration’s approach on climate policy has been anything but consistent. It seems to be the sort of situation where there is likely in-fighting between the ideologues and the scientists and the results of the fighting have varied. (So, for example, an earlier EPA report on climate change was released apparently without any editting by the White House but was then referred to derisively by Bush as “the report put out by the bureaucracy.”

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Oddly there is a tiny bit more in the summary about that EPA report than in the full report. As we discused earlier, they simply disagree with the characterization of the UCS et al about the review that took place.

The memo you are so worked up about certainly paints the administration in a bad light. However, why are you so sure it accurately portrays the events that occured? Are you certain there were no other memos which might have cleared up the conflicts? Are you certain that no senior staff at the EPA were satisfied with the eventual outcome?

If you look at the release dates of the EPA report and the Strategic Plan for the US Climate Change Science Program, (June 23rd and July 24th 2003 respectively) it does not seem unreasonable that the 5 page summary in the EPA report should point to the 200 page document. While it is certainly possible that the White House tried to cram ideological misinformation down the throats of the EPA staffers, who then forced the White House to accept merely removing the 5 pages of that report, it is also possible that the process was much less nefarious. Unfortunately, the evidence for the nefariousness of the events is limited to one or 2 leaked memos and unnamed sources. The head of the EPA and now the head of the administration science advisors both claim that such is not the case.

As before, why do you attribute the level of credence that you aperently do to the UCS, Waxman and NYTimes? If even a few of the points in the summary accurately reflect the mischaracterizations in those reports, I don’t feel inclined to trust them at all?

I’m sure it is not your bias against the Bush administration right? :wink:

Thanks for updating us on the administration’s response.

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In the continuing saga, here is the UCS’s response to the Administration’s response to the UCS’s original report on the Administration’s abuse of science! (Click on the “Read the Report (PDF)” to bring up their full detailed response…I can’t link to it directly because of the way they made that link with javascript.)

They note pretty much what I noted in regards to the issue of the climate change section of the EPA environmental report. However, they also add some new information, including some that contradicts your assertion, pervert, in regards to what EPA head Whitman says (now that she is out of the Administration and doesn’t have to tow their line…This Administration has probably made liars and deceivers out of more basically decent people than any other in memory, perhaps including Nixon’s):

[There is a cite provided for the New Scientist commentary which is “Going It Alone”, New Scientist (Aug. 16, 2003).]

They also point out, as I think I also did somewhere in this thread, the suspiciousness of the claim that the discussion of climate change in the Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan was a reasonable substitute for the discussion in the Report on the Environment:

They, of course, also respond to Marburger on the many other issues raised in the original UCS report. The basic conclusion that I draw: Marburger made the best case he could for his “client” but he often did so by introducing other essentially irrelevant information or focussing on the parts of the claim that were less germane. He did not refute most of the major claims of the UCS report.

[I’m out-of-town for a few days so I may be slow to respond to responses here.]

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Oh, and while this thread was not of course really directed toward the issue of federal government spending on science, since it did get hijacked that way for a while, I can’t help but point out that the AAAS has released a report on the so-called “out year” projections of federal spending through 2009 contained in the President’s FY2005 budget. And, the picture is not very rosy outside of defense! For example,

Like I said, this is not the main focus of our concern in this thread and I am merely including it here to point out that the claim that “the Bush Administration may distort science and stack scientific committees, but at least he funds science well” seems like it likely will not be so true over the long haul (at least outside of defense R&D) once he actually starts trying to shrink the deficits he has caused.

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Yes, but as usual, you have to follow the link to get the true story. The paragraph in question from that article is:

Hardly a resounding endorsement of the UCS assertions. In fact a reading of the essay seems to me more like she is trying to make the case that the US is doing more about environmental issues than ever before. But now perhaps she is simply defending her record as opposed to “towing their line”? This does not come close to a refutal of her position when she was in the administration. I’m sorry, jshore, I know you are emotionall invested in this issue, but the UCS is distorting the “facts ont he ground”, so to speak, at least as much as the Administration is.

When do you believe anonymous sources and unsubstantiated documents over contradictory evidence by people who were there and involved in the activity in question? It seems inappropriate to do so simply because the news story has “legs”, as they say. I’m sure you’ll agree that doing so because one side or the other agrees with your political beliefs is also inappropriate. Can we rely on the the Scientists who signed the petition attached to the UCS report in the first place? Surely, they did some amount of independant research before agreeing to the assertions made in the report. Or did they?

So, the question remains, when do we believe anonymous sources over those sources who were actually there? What standard do you apply in such cases when scientific questions are at stake?

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Noone claimed that she was resoundingly endorsing the UCS assertions; however, she was confirming the fact that she decided to leave out the part on climate change because the result of the process of process of getting agreement on what it should say ended up with “a watered-down chapter, which would only muddy the waters.” This is, of course, entirely consistent with the EPA memo that the NY Times obtained and the UCS showed in their report, even if the “spin” from Whitman is a little different and the detail of who was disagreeing isn’t in her account.

Well, first off, Whitman does not present any contradictory “evidence”. She presents no evidence at all, and she presents a story with a somewhat different “spin” but nothing in her statement contradicts what we know from the memo; in fact, it tends to corroborate certain aspects of it. But, okay, I’ll tell you when you should believe “unsubstantiated documents”. First, you should take them seriously when they look authentic and when they are verified as authentic to a reputable news organization like the NY Times by people who the Times believes are in the position to know. It is not like this appeared in the National Enquirer.

But, when can we be more sure they are authentic? I think once the Administration has had the opportunity to respond, has taken that opportunity, and has nowhere questioned the authenticity or anything else regarding those documents, then that substantiates them. It is Marburger’s job to defend the Administration and if he had any evidence whatsoever to question the authenticity of that document that appeared in the appendix of the UCS report and was referred to and quoted in the body of the report and yet he did not present it, then the Administration ought to fire him for incompetence. He instead chose to ignore the document completely and just repeat the previously given vague justifications of why the chapter was left out.

I must say, pervert, that if I am ever found with a smoking gun in my hand and a bullet that ballistics matches to my gun in the dead body that I am standing over, I want to have you on my jury. Apparently, I won’t even have to worry about hiring a competent defense team because I can count on you to raise questions that they don’t!

As to the matter of Whitman’s credibility, let me put it to you this way. In that article, she states:

Now, this last statement is extremely deceiving. When she says “reduce annual emissions,” she doesn’t mean reduce in the sense of “make less than before” but merely to reduce relative to some baseline that she doesn’t even explain. As if that alone is not somewhat deceiving, the baseline that is used in these calculations is at best very fuzzy…since it has been shown that the trendline in decrease of greenhouse gas intensity over the years has been such that the White House’s claim that the 18% reduction is off the trendline really depends on the exact years that you look at for the trend. Of course, the Administration chose to extrapolate using years that make their 18% look like it is substantively better than what the trendline shows, but such is not necessarily the case. For example, if you look at the years 1990-2000, greenhouse gas intensity decreased by 17.4% which is to be compared to the Administration’s goal of reduction goal of 17.5% (from 183 metric tons per $million GDP in 2002 to 151 metric tons per $million GDP in 2012…which they then round up to 18% when they discuss it). [See, e.g., here for more details.]

I would argue that Whitman’s description of the issues surrounding the Draft Report on the Environment is actually a lot closer to what we understand from the EPA memo, the NY Times articles, and the UCS report than Whitman’s description of President Bush’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to what we know to be true there!

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Actually, here is an addendum to the Administration’s policy that explains how they arrived at the baseline “business as usual” case to compare to. It seems that it was based on projections, rather than the trendline in the past. Thus, the baseline projection for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions intensity was 14% for 2002 - 2012 and the Administration set a goal of 18% for their policy. (In contrast to my last post based on the link that I cited, it does seem that this 18% really is 18%, and not 17.5%, since they explain that it is the percentage and not the exact numbers for the intensity that they are committing to…as the 2002 emission intensity numbers were themselves preliminary.)

So, here are the numbers in summary:

What the Administration projects emissions intensity would decrease by between 2002 and 2012 under “business as usual” (baseline projection): 14%

What the Administration commits to decreasing emissions intensity by: 18%

What emissions intensity actually decreased by between 1990 and 2000: 17.4%

By the way, Whitman’s statement that the goal is to reduce annual emissions (from business as usual) in the U.S. by the equivalent of more than 500 million tonnes of carbon is incorrect. That is in fact, the cumulative amount of reduction in emissions (vs. baseline) for the years 2002 to 2012, with the estimated amount in 2012 actually being 106 million tonnes. However, this was presumably an honest mistake on her part. What is less than honest is both not making it clear that this is not really reducing emissions at all, but merely reducing them relative to what they projected them to be otherwise, and throwing around these numbers as being much more meaningful than they are, since these baseline projections have a high degree of uncertainty and in fact are more pessimistic than what was actually achieved in the 1990s…which wasn’t exactly a decade that saw great strides in efficiency in the use of energy and such (e.g., SUV sales boomed).

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Well, jshore, that seems to be an entirely unwarrented defence of the UCS’s claims regarding the spin they wish to put on the EPA memo.

Witman did not provide any evidence? Given that the memo purports to make claims about the reasons for a decision she made, I’d say that her claim as to those reasons are in and of themselves evidence. You know, testimony?

And yes, the UCS did claim ( and you did too whith your snide comment about her becoming a liar) that she endorses their position regarding the “spin” of the memo. She says specifically, that this is not the reason for the decision she made, and they chose to offer part of that quote out of context as evidence of exactly the opposite.

Look, please stop trying to make it out that I am claiming that the memo in question was never written by someone at the EPA. Stop trying to make it out that I am claiming that the NYTimes, UCS, or Waxman are lying about particular incidents. I am not. This entire argument is about the interpretation of the actions in question. K? The interpretation, or the spin is the thing and the whole of the thing.

The EPA memo purports to prove a particular interpretation of the decision to leave out the climate portion of the EPA’s report on the environment. NYTimes (or their anonymous sources), the UCS, and representitive Waxman suggest that the decision was made because the whitehouse put undue pressure on the EPA to include unscientific information in it. Marburger, after talking to people involved interprets the event differently. Whitman, after being the one to make the decision, interprets the event differently.

Finally, let me be clear. You believe anonymous memos when they look authentic. I assume this means that they have standard letterhead? And you believe them when they are vouched for by the NYTimes. Even when the exact same NYTimes article included the statement by Ms. Whitman that I alluded to earlier. Namely that the controversy over Whitehouse pressure was overblown? How long do you continue to believe the interpretation offered by this anonymous memo over the testimony of those involved in the decision?

I would too. Especially if such balistic evidence was the whole and sole evidence for 1st degree murder rather than, for instance, self defence. You see, once again, the interpretation of the evidence may be more important that the specifics of it. :slight_smile:

I am quite willing to concede the facts alleged in the Waxman, UCS, and NYTimes. I am unwilling to concede to their interpretation. Especially given the clear bias of the Waxman and UCS reports. As I said, at least the NYTimes included Whitman’s quote about the event. And whatever interpretation they had they puported to come from such anonymous sources as provided the memo.

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I disagree with your interpretation of her statement. Yes, she says, “It is true that I rejected the global climate change section of the report, but not for the reasons our critics cite. The explanation is more prosaic: the more than two dozen government, academic and non-profit sector contributors simply could not reach agreement on what the report should say on this issue. Rather than publish a watered-down chapter, which would only muddy the waters, I opted to leave it out entirely.” You seem to interpret the statement “not for the reasons our critics cite” to refer to the whole issue with the White House edits. However, I don’t think that is tenable because she doesn’t mention that issue at all in that article. That interpretation involves bringing in information we know from other sources that is not discussed in the article at all. Rather, the “reasons our critics cite” seems to refer to this discussion of what the critics are saying:

So, what she is saying is that the fact that they left that chapter out of the report does not prove that the U.S. rejects the notion that the planet is growing warmer and that human activity is contributing to that. The problem is that noone would disagree with this (particularly with the vague use of the “the US…”). She has created a strawman which she calls her critics arguments. Then she explains why they did leave it out and that explanation is not at all incompatible with the explanation that the White House was demanding changes that would have resulted in the chapter being “watered down”.

On one point I agree with you and that is that noone can know Whitman’s exact reasons for making the call. However, what we do know is that there was a process by which this chapter was written, the White House demanded certain changes to the chapter that, at least in the end, were non-negotiable, and that an EPA memo was written explaining that these changes were causing misrepresentation of the science and outlining the options of what might be done and including the option of just leaving out the chapter altogether. (We even know the nature of the changes, such as leaving out reference to the Mann paper and adding a reference to the Soon and Baliunas paper.) In fact, I would argue that this “leave it out” option was probably the most viable option of those presented. And, then we know that in fact Whitman subsequently made the decision to leave out that chapter.

Now, I suppose one can claim that Whitman made the decision to do that for entirely different reasons than the ones presented in that memo. However, that seems rather unlikely to me, particularly since Whitman’s own statement about why she left it out says that not everyone could agree and that she didn’t want to publish “a watered-down chapter”. That last statement in particular is quite compatible with the argument made in the options memo concerning the option of leaving out the chapter entirely. Another reason why this interpretation makes more sense is that I have not previously seen scientists having such a difficult time presenting a few page summary of climate change, so interpretting her statement as meaning that those giving input couldn’t agree but that it somehow had nothing the White House input just doesn’t seem tenable.

As I noted, these give one strong reasons to believe the memos are likely authentic. However, the strongest reason to believe it is the fact that noone, including Marburger and Whitman, have made any claims that they are not authentic.