Cooney quits

[Autoplectic <autoplectic@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Cooney also has a BA in Economics]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1505230,00.html>

US environmental policy chief quits

Gary Younge in New York
Monday June 13, 2005
Guardian

A former oil industry lobbyist has resigned as a White House aide
after being accused of doctoring official US policy papers on global
warming to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and
global warming.

Philip Cooney, who was chief of staff of the White House council on
environmental quality, quit his job two days after a report released
by a watchdog group, the government accountability project, showed he
had deleted some paragraphs and edited others drafted by government
scientists.

The White House said his departure was "completely unrelated" to last
week's disclosure. "Mr Cooney has long been considering his options
following four years of service to the administration," said White
House spokeswoman, Dana Perino. "He'd accumulated many weeks of leave,
and decided to resign and take the summer off."

Mr Cooney, a lawyer with no science background, previously worked for
the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil firms.

The government accountability project was unavailable for comment
yesterday, but revealed last week that he changed the documents in a
way that would be more beneficial to the oil industry. In a section
which gauged how sound evidence was for climate change he inserted
"significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties".

In another sentence which claimed: "The attribution of the causes of
biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is
difficult," he included the word "extremely" before "difficult".

The White House insisted the changes did not violate an administration
pledge to rely on sound science, and defended them as part of the
normal review process.

But environmentalists say Mr Cooney's work is yet more proof that US
policies favour the oil industry. In his first few months in office,
President George Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol on climate change
and at Tuesday's White House meeting with Tony Blair, he underlined
the importance of further research. "I don't know if you're aware of
this, but we lead the world when it comes to millions of dollars spent
on research about climate change," he said. "It's easier to solve a
problem when you know a lot about it."

-- 
"Life sure is weird but what else am I to know?" [Jason Pierce]