Union of Concerned Scientists looks at latest Bush administration abuses of science; serious consequences for public health & environment

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists has undertaken a campaign to restore scientific integrity into federal policy making. Last February, 62 prominent scientists and science advisors released a statement along with a detailed UCS report charging the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented manipulation, distortion, and suppression of government science on a wide range of issues. Since the statement was created, more than 4,000 scientists have signed on, including 48 Nobel laureates and 61 National Medal of Science winners.

Despite considerable media coverage of this issue, the Bush administration's suppression and distortion of scientific analysis has continued seemingly unchecked.

In addition to citing the administration's well-established failure to act on the major issue of global warming, its systematic weakening of the Endangered Species Act, and its overruling of a $12 million science-based plan for managing old-growth forest habitat, the UCS recently released several new cases that document continued manipulation and abuse of science in federal policymaking. For example, according to report sources:

• Administration officials purposely disregarded extensive scientific studies conducted by five federal and state agencies designed to minimize environmental damage from mining in Appalachia .

• The director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based decisions on the protection of rare trumpeter swans on a scientifically flawed, non-peer-reviewed report and seriously misrepresented another study.

• Scientific advisory panel members continue to be dismissed or rejected based not on their scientific credentials and technological expertise, but on their political views.

The UCS continues to investigate and publicize cases of scientific abuse. At the same time, the organization is convening groups of scientists and congressional representatives to create and advance real solutions that will protect independent science from political tampering.

According to the UCS, across a broad range of issues -- from childhood lead poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health, and nuclear weapons -- the Bush administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; is manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions; is undermining the independence of science advisory panels by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little or no bearing on their expertise; is nominating non-experts or underqualified individuals from outside the scientific mainstream or with industry ties; and is disbanding science advisory committees altogether.

The UCS feels these activities are of grave concern to members of the scientific community as well as to those who rely on government information to inform policy decisions. The UCS says these are also issues of concern to the American public, which places its trust in the government as an honest broker of scientific information and one that will protect our health and safety.

Regarding global warming, the UCS says that since taking office, the George W. 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.

After coming to office, the administration asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and provide further assessment of what climate science could say about this issue. The NAS panel rendered a strong opinion, which, in essence, confirmed that of the IPCC. The American Geophysical Union, the world's largest organization of earth scientists, has also released a strong statement describing human-caused disruptions of Earth's climate. Yet Bush administration spokespersons continue to contend that the uncertainties in climate projections and fossil fuel emissions are too great to warrant mandatory action to slow emissions.

In May 2002, President Bush expressed disdain for a State Department report to the United Nations that pointed to a clear human role in the accumulation of heat-trapping gases and detailed the likely negative consequences of climate change; the president called it “a report put out by the bureaucracy.” In September 2002, the administration removed a section on climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency's annual air pollution report, even though the climate issue had been discussed in the report in each of the preceding five years.

In an incident involving the management of national forests, the Bush administration created a “review team” made up of predominantly nonscientists who proceeded to overrule a $12 million science-based plan for managing old-growth forest habitat and reducing the risk of fire in 11 national forests. This so-called Sierra Nevada Framework, which was adopted by the Clinton administration in 2001 after nine years of research by more than 100 scientists from the Forest Service and academia, had been viewed by the experts who reviewed it as an exemplary use of credible science in forest policy.

The Bush administration's proposed changes to the plan include harvesting more of the largest trees, which may double or triple harvest levels over the first 10 years of the plan. Other changes call for relaxing restrictions on cattle grazing in some areas where the original plan significantly reduced grazing due to the potentially critical impact on sensitive species.

Forest Service officials justified these changes in part by stating that the original plan relies too much on prescribed burning and would fail to “effectively protect the general forest areas from fire.” Indeed, ecologically sustainable thinning that minimizes risks to threatened and endangered species may also be an appropriate tool for reducing risk of catastrophic fire in these forests. The Forest Service claims that these changes are “grounded in the best available scientific information.” However, according to the UCS, a scientific review panel put together by the Forest Service found that the revisions failed to consider key scientific information regarding fire, impacts on forest health, and endangered species.

A wide array of scientists, government officials, and environmental groups has charged that the Bush administration is engaged in a systematic attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act by supporting pending amendments before Congress that would make it harder to list threatened species, in particular by greatly limiting the use of population modeling, the most credible way to assess the likelihood that a small species population will survive in a given habitat.

According to the UCS, one of the best documented cases in which the Bush administration blatantly tampered with the integrity of scientific analysis at a federal agency was the June 2003 efforts in which the White House tried to make a series of changes to the EPA's draft Report on the Environment. A front-page article in the New York Times broke the news that White House officials tried to force the EPA to substantially alter the report's section on climate change. The EPA report, which referenced the NAS review and other studies, stated that human activity is contributing significantly to climate change.

Interviews with current and former EPA staff, as well as an internal EPA memo reviewed for this report, revealed that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget demanded major amendments including:

• The deletion of a temperature record covering 1,000 years in order to, according to the EPA memo, emphasize “a recent, limited analysis [that] supports the administration's favored message.”

• The removal of any reference to the NAS review -- requested by the White House itself -- that confirmed human activity is contributing to climate change.

• The insertion of a reference to a discredited study of temperature records funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute.

• The elimination of the summary statement -- noncontroversial within the science community that studies climate change -- that “climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.”

According to the internal EPA memo, White House officials demanded so many qualifying words such as “potentially” and “may” that the result would have been to insert “uncertainty . . . where there is essentially none.”

In a political environment described by now-departed EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman as “brutal,” the entire section on climate change was ultimately deleted from the version released for public comment. According to internal EPA documents and interviews with EPA researchers, the agency staff chose this path rather than compromising their credibility by misrepresenting the scientific consensus. Doing otherwise, as one current high-ranking EPA official puts it, would “poorly represent the science and ultimately undermine the credibility of the EPA and the White House.”

The EPA's decision to delete any mention of global warming from its report drew widespread criticism. Many scientists and public officials -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- moved to decry the administration's political manipulation in this case.

Notably, the incident drew the ire of Russell Train, who served as EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford. In a letter to the New York Times, Train stated that the Bush administration's actions undermined the independence of the EPA and were virtually unprecedented for the degree of their political manipulation of the agency's research. As Train put it, the “interest of the American people lies in having full disclosures of the facts.” Train also noted that, “In all my time at the EPA, I don't recall any regulatory decision that was driven by political considerations. More to the present point, never once, to my best recollection, did either the Nixon or Ford White House ever try to tell me how to make a decision.”

Were the case an isolated incident, it could perhaps be dismissed as an anomaly. On the contrary, the Bush administration has repeatedly intervened to distort or suppress climate change research findings despite promises by the president that “my administration's climate change policy will be science-based.”

Despite the widespread agreement in the scientific community that human activity is contributing to global climate change, as demonstrated by the consensus of international experts on the IPCC, the Bush administration has sought to exaggerate uncertainty by relying on disreputable and fringe science reports and preventing informed discussion on the issue. As one current EPA scientist puts it, the Bush administration often “does not even invite the EPA into the discussion” on climate change issues.

“This administration seems to want to make environmental policy at the White House,” the government scientist explains. “I suppose that is their right. But one has to ask: on the basis of what information is this policy being promulgated? What views are being represented? Who is involved in the decision making? What kind of credible expertise is being brought to bear?”

Dr. Rosina Bierbaum, a Clinton administration appointee to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) who also served during the first year of the Bush administration, offers a disturbing window on the process. From the start, Bierbaum contends, “The scientists [who] knew the most about climate change at OSTP were not allowed to participate in deliberations on the issue within the White House inner circle.”

Through such consistent tactics, the Bush administration has not only distorted scientific and technical analysis on global climate change and suppressed the dissemination of research results, but has avoided fashioning any policies that would significantly reduce the threat implied by those findings.

In the course of this investigation, the UCS learned of the extent to which these policies seem to extend. In one case that has yet to surface in the press, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sought in September 2003 to reprint a popular informational brochure about carbon sequestration in the soil and what farmers could do to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. According to one current government official familiar with the incident, the brochure was widely viewed as one of the agency's successful efforts in the climate change field. The NRCS had already distributed some 325,000 of the brochures and sought a modest update, as well as proposing a Spanish edition.

Notably, even this relatively routine proposal was passed to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) for review. William Hohenstein, director of the Global Change Program Exchange in the office of the chief economist at the USDA, acknowledged that he passed the request on to the CEQ, as he says he would “for any documents relating to climate change policy.” While Hohenstein denied that he had been explicitly ordered to do so, he said he knew the White House was concerned “that things regarding climate change be put out by the government in a neutral way.”

As a result of CEQ's objections about the brochure, staff at the NRCS dropped their proposal for a reprint. “It is not just a case of micromanagement, but really of censorship of government information,” noted a current government official familiar with the case. “In nearly 15 years of government service, I can't remember ever needing clearance from the White House for such a thing.”

The United States has an impressive history of investing in the capabilities and respecting the independence of scientists. This legacy has brought us sustained economic progress, science-based public health policy, and unequaled scientific leadership within the global community. However, actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine this legacy, and as a result, policy decisions are being made that have serious consequences for our health, safety, and environment.

To help the UCS' ambitious campaign to curtail the current censorship and misrepresentation of scientific information by the Bush administration and to reform the process through which science informs public policy decisions, contribute to the effort by calling 1-800-666-8276 or at visiting www.ucsusa.org/form/RSIdonate.html.