Gov. Perry's staff tampered with environmental findings

Scientists take their names off doctored report

A dispute over scientific principles has caused a major rift in the political posture of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Scientists took their names off a report on Galveston Bay after officials of the state's environmental commission struck all references to climate change and a rise in sea level from the document.

Mindful of evidence of global temperature change and its relation to hurricanes, and well aware of the rampant wildfires in Texas over the length of a record drought and heat wave, a co-author of the report delivered a stinging rebuke to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"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.

Every single scientist associated with the findings of the report joined him by requesting their names to be stricken from the record because of the dispute over censorship.

John Anderson, the author of the chapter from which all mention of global warming and sea levels rising were removed, said, “I like to tell people we live in a state of denial in the state of Texas." He is an oceanographer at Rice University.

He added, "The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about how human-induced climate change is a hoax,"

The scientists had originally thought they could avoid a dispute with the commission chairman and the governor's staff by simply including only references to the matter from peer-reviewed scientific publications.

When state officials made numerous unauthorized changes to the 200-plus page report, he said, they went too far.

"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 Mr. Anderson. "That's not scientific review, that's just straight forward censorship."

"It is basically saying that the state of Texas doesn't accept science results published in Science magazine...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 Mr. Anderson noted was a scientific fact.

A spokeswoman for the environmental quality commission disagreed.

"It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it," Andrea Morrow said in an emailed statement. "Information was included in a report that we disagree with."

She said Mr. Anderson's report had been "inconsistent with current agency policy", and that he had refused to change it. Ms. Morrow refused to answer any questions.

Governor Perry made headlines yesterday when he promised in a major policy speech that as president he could create 1.2 million jobs bypassing Congress and the federal bureaucracy and using the power of the executive order to nullify EPA environmental regulations that he says are causing havoc to the American economy because of a dependence on foreign sources of energy.

One may read his energy plan by clicking on the paragraph above this one.