As Vice President, Dick Cheney is a policy maker and a politician. Cheney was doing his job.

Scientists who want to do their research independent of politics shouldn't be government bureaucrats and should seek employment elsewhere.

BTW: I read the "uncensored" draft testimony at alt.coxnewsweb.com. This testimony was correctly edited because it is full of speculative science.

Now here's a quote that is definitely not speculative: "Scientific evidence supports the view that the earth's climate is changing."

Of course the climate is changing! The climate is supposed to change and will always change. This is the equivalent of saying scientific evidence supports the sun is going to rise tomorrow and is equally as meaningless.

Now why would someone trot this little diddy out?

Oh yeah... belief and evidence in support of AGW is down recently so someone (Boxer) needs to level some claim to blame the current administration. No, she's not a bit partisan and really, she clearly only CARES about Mother Earth.

And who better to believe other than the Associate Deputy Administrator of the EPA? I mean seriously, if they were merely just an Administrator of the EPA, who could believe them.

And, sure, the EPA is apolitical right?

I would love to know how many of the predictions have any, any, chance of coming to pass?

AS I recall about the "eviscerated" testimony, the good doctor informed us that the world would suffer and that "pigs would fly once the temperature warmed a mere 1.8 degrees C more than now".

Frankly, I don't know why anyone would want to edit such eloquently stated, and most certainly peer-reviewed statements.

I wonder if the Doctor was asked to fully substantiate the claims with proof rather than supposition?

It will be nice to have politicians in office whose constituency extends beyond their contributors and buddies. Maybe even one who'll put public safety, health and welfare ahead of those groups.
We now have two presidential candidates of that mindset. 90% of politicians (of both parties) are more qualified to make such choices than Cheney.

He certainly could not have detracted from anything of importance; he can dress himself and does not appear to need a dribble cup.

More than a cover up - Probably criminal, certainly undemocratic and probably unconstitutional.

VO Cheney doing his job, the liars at the EPA trying to circumvent those policies. No one wants to ask the question, will you stop breathing because you are polluting. Who will decide who breathes and who does not?

Pay higher taxes so government can PRETEND to control the weather -- you didn't fall for that hoax did you?

What is really frightening is that the next administration won't have anyone with the sanity or common sense to do the same.

Let's see how long it takes for our Bush Bashing friends to come out of the woodwork and have a field day with this story (which I might add, is old news)! As for this: "all administrations edit testimony before it is submitted to Congress," Yep. And they all have veto power too, like when Clinton vetoed legislation allowing drilling in ANWR 10 years ago. Let's see. How long did our progressive/tree hugging/cold weather loving friends say it would take before that oil up there would have an effect on the price of gas and the world markets???.....

DENY DENY DENY THE GLO-BULL WARMING LIE!!!!!!

P.S. Still waiting for summer to start. One or two 84 degree days ain't cutting it!...:-(....

If a bureaucratic scientific group generates a report about an issue it is concerned about, as a tax payer I want to see the report myself and make a decision on what it is saying. I paid for it.

I do not want anyone, especially a politician, suppressing that information. Knowledge and the individuals access to it is what democracy is all about. And that is what America is all about.

bill-tb:
Why do you think the EPA is lying? Seems Cheney could be the guilty one for obvious reasons.

John Galt:
You and I agree on your last post. Your right.
KIPP

We should turn the country over to unelected, superstitious, bureaucrats who aren't good enough to get a job in industry.

That is what the founding fathers fought and died for.

After reading the postings both here and the ones in the October 24, 2007 thread, it becomes rather obvious that opinions expressed by the same group of people are basically saying the same things that they did back then.

Brett, instead of concentrating on this old topic of the scientific data censorship of this administration that will obviously go nowhere in changing anyone's opinions, I think a more interesting discussion would be on what T. Boone Pickens is obviously setting up to do with the alternative energy solutions. At least we can talk about what the oil tycoon said about the fact that we can't drill ourselves out this mess that we created for ourselves and that the billions of dollars leaving this country is hurting our economy.

I would be most interested to see if the majority on this site would look at the likely energy alternative proposal of Mr. Pickens would be looked at any differently if it came from a governmental official instead of an entrepreneur. In other words, if the government actually came up with the exact same game plan that Mr. Pickens is likely to suggest, would they accept it or quickly consider it dead in the water?

Seems to me there are just as many, in fact MORE private and independent scientist and scientific bodies/groups out there (I can confidently say the majority) who recognize that the climate is being affected by our CO2 emissions and that this will have a negative impact on our health and society.

Cold at the pole. Note the fresh ice on the surface of the meltwater-
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg

Apparently their thermometer is not extremely accurate.

This adminstration wants science an history to be written their way....no matter how it may conflict with realtity.

From a strictly logical viewpoint, anything coming from the government regardless of who has written it, it should be something the government can honestly stand behind at that time and to the best of their knowledge. So you wouldn't want to minimize a potential risk, but you would not want to put it out as fact to the public that would believe the literature as the gospel truth. I can see making changes to a report submitted if there was just opinion submitted without back-up or something the government felt would cause undo panic. I think it is a hard call, but most importantly it really depends on the intent of the person doing the deleting. The funny thing is if Barack did any editing it would be seen as perfectly o.k., much like his intentional positioning to the middle is perfectly understandable and supported by his party, but let a republican try to do the same and they are intentionally hiding something.

Some years ago, I dealt with the EPA directly concerning deliberate dumping by a large manufacturer into a local river source. As a taxpayer they treated me like some dumb hick that just needed to mind my own business. Of course I didn't and it took another governmental agency siding with me to get them to knock it off. The EPA from my perspective said all the right things to satisfy me and then left and did absolutely nothing to force these two companies to comply with any sort of standard. In the end, I learned a lot about the EPA and how helpful or not they really are. It was a real eye-opener for me. The dumping stopped but certainly NOT because the EPA even wanted it to and ever tried to help me.

Things are rarely as they appear.

OT Alert!!!!

Looks like I'm going to have to get the old diesel F-350 out of mothballs and get some soot into the air. According to this report, the clear skies over Europe since 1980 have strongly contributed to the increase in temps there do to increase solar irradiance. Wait a minute! How can this be? Our resident experts here say that the sun can't cause any warming. This paper is obviously wrong.

Here's a link to her 'edited' testimony:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Draft_CDC_testimony_23oct07.pdf

Hmmm, what I found very odd is she make zero, -0- mention of the 'benefits' of a warmer climate!!!

And yes there would be benefits: cold kills more people the heat does.

That is a BIG MISS!!! By not mentioning to obvious, it hints she intentionally 'stacked' her report without regard to the science.

...from Hoover Inst.>>>

Abstract
A somewhat warmer climate would probably reduce mortality in the United States and provide Americans with valuable benefits. Regressions of death rates in Washington, DC, and in some 89 urban counties scattered across the nation on climate and demographic variables demonstrate that warmer temperatures reduce deaths. The results imply that a 2.5deg. Celsius warming would lower deaths in the United States by about 40,000 per year.
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/health.html

Climate change, especially Anthropogenic Global Warming has always been interesting, but relatively minor scientific debate. It's in the political arena where the debate gets contentious and all proposed solutions are primarily political in nature.

In a true scientific debate, we would first look for evidence that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change and then we look for evidence that human emissions are responsible for the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We would have to consider all natural causes of climate change and systematically eliminate those factors as the cause of climate change.

And we haven't done that. The environmentalists, the activists, the politicians and bureaucrats just accept the premise without any evidence to support it and refuse to even consider any evidence that refutes the hypothesis. It's accepted prima facie that the hypothesis is true. In science, an hypothesis is always considered to be false or untrue until shown otherwise.

Fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine have always been villains to the greens. These people don't like industry, they don't like consumption, consumerism or capitalism and they don't like the American lifestyle. The radical environmentalists want everybody to live as they dictate and BAMM!! --here comes global warming and look what (allegedly) causes it -- fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine. None of those people care if carbon dioxide is really responsible for any changes to the climate. All they know is now they have a "scientific" reason to force their ideals upon the world.

There are quite a few people concerned about AGW and they're scared. They watch the news and they read the paper and wow, it appears that all "scientists" agree. What they don't realize is the "experts" being quoted aren't climatologists or climate scientists but are environmental activists who believe human civilization is destroying the planet and must be stopped by any and all means necessary.

Radicals have never permitted contrary and skeptical views to be expressed. This is now a tenant of today's political correctness movement--silence people whose ideas you disagree with and don't allow them to influence others. Science is supposed to work the exact opposite way -- dissent, debate and discussion are necessary to advance knowledge and understanding. Many of our younger scientists don't understand the difference between science and activism. Scientists are also human and are given to all the sins of ego that everyone else is. Scientists have to eat, too, and if AGW is where the funding is when that's what they're going to research.

Politicians and bureaucrats are more than happy to get involved. The average politician doesn't know any more about the climate (or basic science) than your local barber, but any issue which a politician can get behind that's going to win more votes, well, how can a politician turn away from that? Bureaucrats always want more money and more power and so if AGW is a problem, throwing more money the government's way must be the solution.

If Cheney got caught editing one scientific report how come the 1000's of scientists involved in the vast left-wing AGW conspiracy haven't been caught?

How come not one legitimate scientist has come forward and exposed the conspiracy?

What would the delayers / deniers say if a politician edited a report to Congress saying that the climate is cooling?

I thought Patrick, Oiznop, Darren, etc. have decried the injection of politics into the AGW debate. Is it OK when it is right wing politics?

The parts of the EPA report that were edited out where about about the effect on human health. The health of Americans! Is it OK to ignore issues about disease, heat waves, hunger? Is this what you are denying?

We could give your suggestion a try, Patrick. After all, our barely-elected superstitious career politicians have had their chance.

uh oh, here come the conspiracy theorist loonies. i think cheney was probably behind the jfk and archduke of ferdinand assassinations too.

in other news see the article below from new scientist, "Cleaner skies explain surprise rate of warming". i love this quote, "unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred".

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926634.800-cleaner-skies-explain-surprise-rate-of-warming.html?DCMP=ILC-arttsrhcol&nsref=specrt12_pic

priceless.

poor old richard, i bet he thinks alot about BABBLING "BOXERshorts"...heh, heh, i just wish all those politicians could just get along...however, here is a classic example of one beaucratic organization pointing fingers at the other beaucratic organization with purely political tripe...the ineptness of it all is saddening...here you have senator-D from CA screaming the EPA should get the CDC to handover the documents from the VP so they can assess the implications of CO2...with all the government beaucracies slobbering at the taxpayer trough, we may need a new Alphabet...and to think we have two choices for president who think we need to add yet another pilfering AGW department based on hocus-pocus global meltdown, it may be time to order a shipment of TEA and start all over....have a nice day, dudes!!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the EPA fall under the Executive branch of government? So this story is all about a branch of government controlling what its departments may or may not present as scientific fact before Congress? Where's the beef?

John Galt:

Climate change, especially Anthropogenic Global Warming has always been interesting, but relatively minor scientific debate. ...... In a true scientific debate, we would first look for evidence that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change and then we look for evidence that human emissions are responsible for the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ....

And we haven't done that.

What planet are u from? Maybe in the US, but for the rest of us it is a UN level, G8 level. It involves thousands of scientists. You should research this topic if you are not farmilar with it. There is a lot of material out there.

Like the evidence that human CO2 emissions are driving temperature rise. This is derived from readily available data from a number of different sources. Take this analysis from one individual who just likes to play with numbers at the Natural Variation - Autism Blog...

Anthropogenic Global Warming is Absolutely Occurring

If you review his post I don't see how you can say that its conclusions are false. He has analyzed other data here...