While US House of Representatives' Government Reform Committee Examines Gagging of Federal Scientists, CSIRO Sacks Maarten Stapper. (Mach 19, 2007)

    The New York Times reported today, "Democratic lawmakers released documents today that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty or to play down evidence of a human role in global warming.

Dr Maarten Stapper

Concurrently, the Canberra Times' Rosslyn Beeby reported, "One of Australia's top organic farming experts, Dr Maarten Stapper, has been dumped by the CSIRO, amid allegations he was bullied by executive management for criticising genetically modified crops.

In the hearing by the US House of Representatives' Government Reform Committee the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left US government employment in 2005, defended the changes he made in government reports over several years, saying the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

The NYT reports that before joining the White House, Mr. Cooney was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby in Washington. Then in 2005 Exxon Mobil hired Mr. Cooney  following his 2005 resignation after reports on his editing by The New York Times. The White House told the newspaper that Mr. Cooney's resignation was not related to the disclosures.

Mr Cooney told the Committee that he based his editing and recommendations on what he saw in good faith as the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge.”

The Times also reported:

The hearing also produced the first sworn statements from George C. Deutsch III, now 25, who moved in 2005 from the Bush re-election campaign to public affairs jobs at NASA, where he warned career press officers to exert more control over James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at the space agency.

 

Testifying at the hearing, Dr. Hansen said that editing like that done by Mr. Cooney and efforts to limit scientists’ access to the press and public amounted to censorship and muddied the public debate over a pressing environmental issue.

 

“If public affairs offices are left under the control of political appointees, it seems to me that inherently they become offices of propaganda,” he said.

 

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from Southern California, proposed that Dr. Hansen, by complaining about efforts to present two sides on global warming research, had become an advocate for limiting the debate.

 

“What I’m an advocate for is the scientific method,” Dr. Hansen replied.

 

Mr. Deutsch resigned last year after Web and newspaper reports showed that he never graduated from Texas A&M University, as his resume on file at NASA said he had. He has since completed work for the degree, he said today.

 

Democrats focused on fresh details that committee staff compiled showing how Mr. Cooney made hundreds of changes to government climate research plans and reports to Congress on climate that boosted a sense of uncertainty about the science.

 

The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.

 

“The documents show that Mr. Cooney and other Council on Environmental Quality officials made at least 181 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties,” the memo said. “They also made at least 113 edits to the plan to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming.”

Meanwhile, back in Canberra Dr Maarten Stapper has recently filed complaints alleging instances of bullying and harassment but according to the Chief of CSIRO's Division of Plant Industry, Dr Jeremy Burdon, where Dr Stapper remains employed until the end of the month, these had been " appropriately dealt with and dismissed".

According to Ms Beeby CSIRO sources told her Dr Stapper, "was 'carpeted' by management after he was overheard explaining criticisms of some aspects of GM crops while mingling with audience members after a public forum. They claim he received an official warning after the incident, but had argued he was entitled to express his views as a private citizen as long as he made the clear distinction they were his opinions and not those of the organisation. Dr Burdon said he was unaware of any ill-treatment or antagonism towards Dr Stapper, and 'as far as I'm aware he was not censured for commenting on GM during the 3½ years I have been chief of plant industry'".

There is a key difference between situations of Drs Hansen and Stapper:

Dr. James Hansen --

    1981-present Director: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

    1985-present Adjunct Professor: Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University

 

Dr Maarten Stapper --

    To be retrenched from CSIRO Division of Plant Industry,  March 2007