ALLEGATIONS OF POLITICAL INTERFERENCE WITH

GOVERNMENT CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 19, 2007

Serial No. 110–21

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

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ALLEGATIONS OF POLITICAL INTERFERENCE WITH GOVERNMENT CLIMATE CHANGE

SCIENCE

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ALLEGATIONS OF POLITICAL INTERFERENCE WITH

GOVERNMENT CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 19, 2007

Serial No. 110–21

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSISGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

——— ———

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 19, 2007 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Connaughton, James L., chairman, White House Council on Environmental Quality .............................................................................................. 369

Cooney, Philip, former chief of staff of the White House Council on

Environmental Quality; James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and George Deutsch, former NASA Public Affairs Officer .................................................................................................... 248

Cooney, Philip ............................................................................................ 248

Deutsch, George ......................................................................................... 318

Hansen, James .......................................................................................... 304

Spencer, Roy, University of Alabama, Huntsville .......................................... 416

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Connaughton, James L., chairman, White House Council on Environmental Quality, prepared statement of ....................................................... 372

Cooney, Philip, former chief of staff of the White House Council on

Environmental Quality, prepared statement of ......................................... 251

Deutsch, George, former NASA Public Affairs Officer, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 320

Hansen, James, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 306

Issa, Hon. Darrell E., a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, exhibits and supplemental minority memorandum ................ 192

Spencer, Roy, University of Alabama, Huntsville:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 418

Prepared statement of Roger Pielke, Jr. ................................................. 437

Waxman, Chairman Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the

State of California, prepared statement of ................................................. 4

(1)

ALLEGATIONS OF POLITICAL INTERFERENCE

WITH GOVERNMENT CLIMATE CHANGE

SCIENCE

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry A. Waxman (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Waxman, Watson, Yarmuth, Norton,

Van Hollen, Welch, Shays, Souder, Cannon, and Issa.

Staff present: Phil Schiliro, chief of staff; Phil Barnett, staff director and chief counsel; Kristin Amerling, general counsel; Karen

Lightfoot, communications director and senior policy advisor; Greg

Dotson, chief environmental counsel; Alexandra Teitz, senior environmental counsel; Jeff Baran, counsel; Early Green, chief clerk;

Teresa Coufal, deputy clerk; Matt Siegler, special assistant; Caren

Auchman, press assistant; Zhongrui ‘‘JR’’ Deng, chief information

officer; Rob Cobbs, staff assistant; David Marin, minority staff director; Larry Halloran, minority deputy staff director; Jennifer

Safavian, minority chief counsel for oversight and investigations;

Keith Ausbrook, minority general counsel; A. Brooke Bennett, minority counsel; Kristina Husar, minority professional staff member;

Larry Brady, minority senior investigator and policy advisor; Patrick Lyden, minority parliamentarian and member services coordinator; Brian McNicoll, minority communications director; Benjamin

Chance, minority clerk; and Ali Ahmad, minority staff assistant

and online communications coordinator.

Chairman WAXMAN. Meeting of the committee will come to order.

Today the committee continues its investigation into whether the

nonpartisan work of climate change scientists was distorted by political interference from the Bush administration. Since our first

hearing on January 30th, we have received over eight boxes of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The document production is not yet complete, but some of the information the committee has already obtained is disturbing. It suggests that there may have been a concerted effort, directed by the

White House, to mislead the public about the dangers of global climate change.

It is too early in this investigation to draw firm conclusions about

the White House’s conduct. But today’s hearing will help us learn

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more about those efforts and provide guidance on whether further

investigation is warranted.

There is a saying in Washington that personnel is policy. The

White House appointed an oil industry lobbyist, not a scientist or

climate change expert, as chief of staff at the Council on Environmental Quality.

We will hear from that former lobbyist, Phil Cooney, today. The

documents we have received indicate he was able to exert tremendous influence on the direction of Federal climate change policy

and science.

One of the key responsibilities given to Mr. Cooney and his staff

at CEQ was the review of government publications about climate

change.

Mr. Cooney and his staff made hundreds of separate edits to the

government’s strategic plan for climate change research. These

changes injected doubt in place of certainty, minimized the dangers

of climate change, and diminished the human role in causing the

planet to warm.

Other key government reports, including an EPA report on the

environment and an annual report to Congress on the changing

planet were subject to similar edits and distortions.

In preparation for this hearing, the majority staff prepared a

memorandum for members analyzing the changes made by Mr.

Cooney and his staff to these government climate change reports.

And I ask that this memorandum and the CEQ documents it cites

be made part of the hearing record. I also ask that Mr. Cooney’s

deposition be made part of the hearing record as well.

Another facet of the White House campaign involved controlling

what Federal scientists could say to the public and the media about

their work. NASA scientist James Hansen is one of the Nation’s

most esteemed experts on climate change. George Deutsch is a

young and inexperienced former NASA public affairs officer who

was tasked with managing the public statements of Dr. Hansen

and other NASA scientists. Today we will hear from both of them

about their experiences.

There is even evidence in the documents we have obtained that

the White House edited an op-ed written by former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to ensure that it followed the

White House line about climate change.

Our goal in this investigation is to understand what role the

White House actually played. It would be a serious abuse if senior

White House officials deliberately tried to defuse calls for action by

ensuring that the public heard a distorted message about the risks

of climate change.

In addressing climate change, science should drive policy. The

public and Congress need access to the best possible science to inform the policy debate about how to protect the planet from irreversible changes. If the administration turned its principle upside

down with raw political pressure, it would put our country on a

dangerous course. Today’s hearing should bring us closer to understanding whether that is suspicion or fact.

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I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses and thank them

for their cooperation. I want to recognize members for opening

statements and to recognize Mr. Issa first.

[NOTE.—The CEQ Documents may be viewed in the committee’s

office.]

[The prepared statement of Chairman Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also would ask that

the exhibits that go with Mr. Cooney’s deposition be entered into

the record.

Chairman WAXMAN. Without objection, the documents that I requested and the documents you requested will be part of the

record.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. And I also would like to ask that the Supplemental Minority Memorandum be entered into the record.

Chairman WAXMAN. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad to have the opportunity to continue today with the committee’s inquiry into political interference with science. As you know, this investigation began

under Chairman Davis. And it is good to see that some projects

have carried over to the new Congress.

I want to take a moment to point out the title of today’s hearing

is political interference with science: global warming. I am glad the

chairman has made clear from the onset that this investigation is

related to process and not the substance of global change science.

Today we are not attempting to establish which scientific facts

are correct or which policies are better. I commend you for this approach. As you know, this committee has done its job to conduct

oversight in an independent and bipartisan way in the past, and

I hope we will continue to in the future.

But even though this hearing isn’t about substance, let me be

clear from the beginning. Climate change is an important issue and

deserves our level-headed attention.

I believe that climate change is happening. I believe global mean

temperatures have increased over the past century, and I believe

that carbon dioxide is a contributing factor.

It wasn’t very long ago that scientists were unable to make this

statement with certainty because we simply didn’t have a sufficient

body of knowledge, and it is important to acknowledge that American ingenuity, know-how, and resources make up the foundation

of the ever-expanding body of knowledge of climate change.

Climate change is too important an issue not to continue backing

the research in the billions of dollars that we have done so on a

bipartisan basis in the past.

And it is essential that policymakers have the absolute best

available science to support policy decisions that will impact future

generations of Americans and citizens around the world. But,

again, we are looking at this as a process issue.

So let’s turn to the allegation that the Bush administration has

silenced scientists and rewritten the science.

Dr. Roger Pikey, Jr., testified at our last hearing that the Bush

administration probably hasn’t done itself any favors with the term

‘‘hypercontrolling strategies’’ for the management of information.

I would probably agree.

Yet it remains the prerogative of the Bush administration—as

with every administration before it and likely after it—to establish

policies to ensure that whatever is coming out of Federal agencies

is consistent and coordinated.

Submitting to those rules is in fact—is a fact of life every Federal

employee enjoys or chafes at.

I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in

political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cell, teaching evolution,

and climate change. I hope we will keep our observations in mind

during these hearings and the investigation into allegations of silencing and editing by the Bush administration and Mr. Cooney.

I look forward to this hearing and to our witnesses and especially

I look forward to hearing from NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen.

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Doctor Hansen, we recognize that you are the preeminent climate change scientist and one of the leading researchers on these

issues. We value your contribution to science and the understanding of global climate change. I want to hear about your experience—I want to hear about your experiences with the

politicalization of science.

However, I also plan to discuss with you your efforts to

politicalize science.

Mr. Chairman I recognize that I have gone over my intended 5

minutes so I will put the rest of my opening statement in for the

record because I see we have a lot of Members here. I will yield

back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you. Without objection, your statement and all the opening statements from members of the committee will be permitted to go into the record in their entirety.

I would recognize Members if they feel that they want to make

an oral presentation. Without objection, we will limit it to 3 minutes so we can get on to our panels.

Any Member here—Mr. Yarmuth, do you have an opening statement?

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a brief one. I appreciate that we are renewing these hearings, because in the first

hearing we had what we saw was evidence of a clear and disturbing trend in this administration, which is that in many instances

commitment to ideology and philosophy and maybe even corporate

interests always seems to trump truth.

And that is something that should disturb all of us, and I hope

that this hearing brings us closer to understanding that we need,

in all of our government operations, to have transparency and

truth, and that those who would put these other interests ahead

of the search for truth are doing this country a great disservice. So

I thank you once again, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing the witnesses.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cannon, do you wish to make an opening statement?

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will submit my statement for the record.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Welch.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for convening the hearing. The questions before the committee are clear. Are the American people entitled to the benefits of sound scientific research to

solve the challenges before us? And is it acceptable for any administration—in this case the administration of George Bush—to alter

scientific conclusions by allowing political appointees to edit and

alter the independent conclusions of independent scientists?

We heard, Mr. Chairman, to our dismay 2 months ago, evidence

that the Bush administration, through political appointees, have

systematically and relentlessly interfered with independent scientific conclusions, altering them to conform with the political

views of their supporters.

Dr. Griffo the Union of Concerned Scientists testified that at

least 150 Federal climate scientists personally experienced at least

one incident of political interference during the past 5 years and

received reports of at least 435 specific incidents overall. That inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00254 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
247

terference is unacceptable. That interference must end. While political interference in science may serve the interest of the American

Petroleum Institute and others who peddle the notion that climate

change is a political argument, not a scientific fact, it underestimates the American people. Politically motivated suppression of

science is not only irresponsible, but highlights a careless and reckless disregard for the public that we serve.

The country knows that the climate change is real, urgent, and

requires immediate action. Science must be our friend to help us

address global warming directly. Moreover, in facing directly the

issue of climate change, we can have a pro-growth, pro-high-tech,

pro-environment economy that will benefit all the people of this

country.

The Bush administration attack on sound science is a loser’s

game. The job of this Congress and this committee is to restore the

full confidence to our scientific community that we need and value

their work. They are our partners in facing the problems that confront us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you.

Mr. Welch. Mr. Souder, do you wish to make an opening comment? Mr. Souder. OK, thanks. Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you, very much, Mr. Chairman, for today’s

hearing. And while I am happy we are holding our second hearing

of the year on this issue, I am appalled at the fact that the administration interfered with studies in key departments within our bureaucracy, one of which is NASA, who depends on accurate and

concise scientific studies to protect the lives of our astronauts.

The administration announced in 2002 that reducing green house

gas emissions and increasing spending on climate research to reduce emissions 18 percent by 2012 was a top priority. But their actions have not matched that pledge.

Funds have been redirected for these purposes to spend on nuclear power and other nonrenewable programs that do not reduce

emissions. In addition, this allegation of political interference with

the work of government scientists is an additional example of how

this administration is not taking this threat of global warming seriously.

Global warming is occurring at a rapid pace today, and the consensus of the world’s scientific community is that it will accelerate

during the 21st century. Global warming and our related energy

policies also raise national security concerns.

One such concern is the prospect of international destabilization

caused by the consequences of global warming, such as the loss of

land area or the loss of water resources. Mr. Chairman, we must

start again to create adequate climate change research and development that can help our world in the future.

Political interference on this critical issue is unacceptable. And

we are here today to investigate and resolve these allegations.

Again, thank you for this hearing.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much Ms. Watson.

We are pleased to have three witnesses for our first panel, and

I want to welcome them to our hearing today. Philip Cooney was

chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

from 2001 until 2005. Before that he worked at the American PeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00255 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
248

troleum Institute for 15 years. He is now a corporate issue manager at ExxonMobil.

Dr. James Hansen is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute

for Space Studies. He has held this position since 1981. Dr. Hansen

is one of the Nation’s most esteemed climate scientists.

George Deutsch was a NASA public affairs officer until February

2006.

We thank you for your presence. It is the practice of this committee to ask all witnesses that appear before us to take an oath. So

if you would please rise and hold up your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will indicate that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Mr. Cooney, why don’t we start with you. Your opening statement will be in the record in its entirety and we would like to ask

you, if you would, to summarize it or present it to us in around 5

minutes.

STATEMENTS OF PHILIP COONEY, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF

OF THE WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL

QUALITY; JAMES HANSEN, DIRECTOR, NASA GODDARD INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES; AND GEORGE DEUTSCH,

FORMER NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER

STATEMENT OF PHILIP A. COONEY

Mr. COONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

I recognize the important work of this committee to ensure that our

government is operating efficiently and properly in performing its

valuable work on behalf of the American people.

I want to assure you of my full cooperation.

Today, more than anything else, I hope to convey to the committee that I held myself to a high standard of integrity in the performance of my duties in the administration.

I would like to highlight several points.

Point No. 1, my reviews of Federal budgetary and research planning documents of climate change were guided by the President’s

stated strategy on research priorities as set forth in his June 11,

2001 speech and chapter 3 of the Policy Book that accompanied it.

I joined the White House staff 2 weeks later.

The President’s policy itself was guided by a National Academy

of Sciences report that his Cabinet-level Committee on Climate

Change had specifically requested, entitled ‘‘Climate Change

Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions.’’

That report concluded—and I would like to emphasize this point,

‘‘making progress in reducing the large uncertainties in projections

of future climate will require addressing a number of fundamental

scientific questions relating to the buildup of greenhouse gases in

the atmosphere and the behavior of the climate system.’’

The National Academy of Sciences report itemized those uncertainties and questions which later guided the administration’s

prioritization of federally sponsored research.

Let me be clear, as this committee addresses my reviews of specific climate change policy documents, that a number of my specific

249

comments were verbatim quotations from the National Academy of

Sciences report.

My second point is that the documents that I reviewed as part

of a well-established interagency review process were not a platform for the presentation of original scientific research. Mr. Piltz,

who clarified that he is not a scientist, described his role before

this committee as that of, ‘‘an editor of summaries received from

agencies as they related to budget and planning reports.’’

The White House Office of Management and Budget then subjected Mr. Piltz’ drafts to formal interagency review and comment

by many others, including multiple Federal agencies themselves

and the relevant White House offices, including mine.

OMB’s review was then subjected to a final review and approval

by Dr. James Mahoney, who served as the Assistant Secretary of

Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and was director of the Climate Change Science Program. Dr. Mahoney testified before Congress about this process in July 2005 and confirmed that he had

the final word on the final content on all of these documents.

Dr. Mahoney’s written responses to Senate questions describe

that process and stated further that, ‘‘the edits by CEQ did not

misstate any scientific fact. Moreover, many comments, including

mine, were not incorporated in final reports.’’

The Council’s role in these reviews and that of other White

House offices was routine and well established.

The annual budget report, Our Changing Planet, was reviewed

by my predecessors in the Clinton administration. That is because

these were Federal research and policy and budget reports of the

executive branch and not scientific research per se.

In fact, the transmittal letters to Congress for both the strategic

plan and the annual budget reports were signed by the Secretaries

of Energy and Commerce and the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, reflecting their inherent policy nature.

To summarize, I had the authority and responsibility to make

recommendations on the documents in question under an established interagency review process. I did so, using my best judgment, based on the administration’s stated research priorities, as

informed by the National Academy of Sciences. Of course I understand that my judgment and the administration’s stated goals are

properly open to review.

I want to make equally clear, however, that I participated in the

established review processes in order to align executive branch reports with administration policies.

My third and final point is that within a month after my departure in June 2005, all three branches of our government considered

climate change science in the course of their decisionmaking and

acknowledged remaining uncertainties in our understanding.

There has been on an ongoing basis, active consideration both of

the scientific certainties and uncertainties in decisionmaking on climate change at the highest levels of the Federal Government. For

example on July 15, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld EPA’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, relying in part on the same

250

uncertainties noted in the National Academy of Sciences report

that the administration had requested in June 2001.

My point is that the comments and recommendations that I offered in reviewing executive branch policy documents on climate

change were consistent with the views and exploration of scientific

knowledge that many others in all three branches of our government were undertaking.

My most important point is that I offered my comments in good

faith reliance on what I understood to be authoritative and current

views of the state of scientific knowledge, and for no other purpose.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I look forward to your questions and helping the committee

complete its important work.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cooney.

Mr. COONEY. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cooney follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Dr. Hansen.

STATEMENT OF JAMES E. HANSEN

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Waxman, for inviting me to testify. I testify today as a private citizen. I have been

at a NASA laboratory in New York since I arrived in 1967 as a 25-

year-old post doc. And I hope that my observations of changes in

the past 40 years are useful to your Committee on Oversight and

Government Reform.

In my written statement, I describe a growth of political interference with climate change science. The problem has been worst

in the current administration. But it will not be solved by an election. There needs to be reform.

We cannot count on a new administration to give up powers that

have accreted. The growth in political interference coincides with

a growth in power of the executive branch. It seems to me that this

growth of power violates principles upon which our democracy is

based, especially separation of powers and checks and balances.

I have no legal expertise but I would like to raise three questions: No. 1, when I testify to you as a government scientist, why

does my testimony have to be reviewed, edited, and changed by a

bureaucrat in the White House before I can deliver it? Where does

this requirement come from? Is not the public, who have paid for

the research, are they not being cheated by this political control of

scientific testimony?

Second question: Why are public affairs offices staffed by political

appointees? Their job, nominally, should be to help scientists

present results in a language that the public can understand.

They should not be forcing scientists to parrot propaganda. Indeed during the current administration, NASA scientific press releases have been sent to the White House for editing, as I discuss

in my written testimony. If public affairs officers are left under the

control of political appointees, it seems to me that inherently they

become officers of propaganda.

Point No. 3, the primary way that the executive branch has

interfered with climate science is via control of the purse strings.

This is very, very effective.

Last February, a year ago, the executive branch slashed the

Earth science research and analysis budget. That is the budget

that funds NASA Earth science labs such as mine. They slashed it

retroactively to the beginning of the fiscal year by about 20 percent. That is a going-out-of-business level of funding.

The budget is an extremely powerful way to interfere with

science and bring scientists into line with political positions.

Some people have joked that at about the same time, the White

House brought in a science fiction writer for advice on global

warming. But this is not a joking matter.

We need more scientific data, not less.

And I am sorry that I don’t have time to talk about the science,

but if you give me 1 to 2 minutes, I would like to just summarize

briefly.

The climate has great inertia because of the massive ocean and

ice sheets. And it is hard to notice climate change because chaotic

weather fluctuations are so large. But climate is beginning to

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change. And it has become clear that there is a dominance of positive feedbacks. For example as ice melts, as forests move poleward, these increase the global warming further. And the upshot

of the inertia plus the positive feedbacks is that if we push the climate system hard enough, it can obtain a momentum. It can pass

tipping points, such that climate change continues out of our control. That is a condition we do not want to leave for our children.

There are many actions we could take to avoid that, actions that

would have other benefits, as I discuss in my written testimony.

And these are, of course, my opinions as a private citizen. Thank

you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Hansen.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hansen follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Deutsch.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE C. DEUTSCH III

Mr. DEUTSCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Deutsch.

I am 25 years old. I live in Nederland, TX. Until February 2006

I was a public affairs officer at NASA.

I would like to begin by thanking the committee, and specifically

Chairman Waxman for allowing me the opportunity to testify. I believe most people would agree that NASA is a place of wonder and

excitement. As a young man from a small southeast Texas town

near the Johnson Space Center, I saw the opportunity to join the

NASA family as a dream come true.

My path to NASA began around June 2004 when I left Texas

A&M University, one course shy of graduating, to take a position

as an intern in President Bush’s reelection campaign and, later,

the Inaugural Committee. After the Inauguration I applied for a

Presidential appointee position and was offered jobs by NASA and

the Department of Labor.

To the best of my recollection, I disclosed on various occasions

the fact that I had not completed my degree.

I accepted an entry-level public affairs position at NASA at the

age of 23 and after several months I became a public affairs officer

in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate [SMD]. There I worked in

a team with two career civil servants. The most senior civil servant

in the group functioned as our team leader. Collectively, it was our

duty to facilitate communications between NASA and the public.

Not long after joining SMD, I became aware of Dr. James Hansen, a distinguished and internationally renowned climate scientist.

I learned that Dr. Hansen disagreed with what I understood to be

NASA’s standard practices for responding to media requests.

Among those practices were the public affairs officer should listen

to interviews as they were being conducted, that superiors can do

interviews in someone’s stead, and that NASA employees should

report interview requests to the Public Affairs Office.

It was my understanding that these practices all existed prior to

my joining NASA and that I and other NASA employees were expected to follow them. The purpose of these guidelines was to encourage agency coordination and accurate reporting. Sharing interview requests with NASA headquarters, for example, gives headquarters officials a better grasp of what is going on at NASA centers. These practices weren’t unique to one individual or group.

They were agencywide.

Dr. Hansen can certainly address these issues himself today, but

as I understood it at that time, he found these practices to be cumbersome. This created a level of frustration among my higher-ups

at NASA who wanted to know about interviews before they happened.

I have addressed these issues in more detail in my written testimony, but here is one example. On or about December 14, 2005,

the Los Angeles Times and ABC News contacted NASA to inquire

if the agency was going to release information addressing whether

2005 was the warmest year on record. In response, headquarters

granted the Los Angeles Times an interview with Dr. Waleed

Abdalati, a veteran NASA climate scientist. In that interview, Dr.

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Abdalati stated they could not confirm that 2005 was the warmest

year on record. Yet on December 15th, Dr. Hansen appeared on

ABC’s Good Morning America program and submitted the letter to

the Journal of Science, concluding that 2004 tied 1998 as the

warmest year on record.

Senior NASA officials conveyed to me that they were unaware of

the release of this information being coordinated with headquarters

or peer-reviewed. That day NASA headquarters received a deluge

of media inquiries on the matter, inquiries headquarters was illequipped to handle because no one had been briefed on Dr. Hansen’s findings. The same senior NASA officials were, to say the

least, upset by this procedural breach.

Press Secretary Dean Acosta asked me to document these events

in a memo that was cosigned by a career civil servant Dwayne

Brown. Subsequently, several media reports accused national political appointees and others of censoring Dr. Hansen. I can only

speak for myself. I never censored Dr. Hansen and I don’t think

anyone else at NASA did either.

In February 2006, I learned that the New York Times was looking into whether the resume I submitted to NASA incorrectly stated that I had obtained a degree from Texas A&M University in

2003. I had created that resume sometime prior to 2003. At the

time the resume was created, it would have been clear that I was

referring to an anticipated degree. My mistake was that when it

later came time to apply for jobs, I failed to update the resume to

convey that I was one course shy of graduating. As I said, to the

best of my recollection, I told the hiring officials I spoke to that I

did not have my degree. But I recognize and take full responsibility

for the fact that I should have updated the resume to better reflect

this point. This was an honest mistake.

Rather than see the agency continue to be tarnished in the

media, I resigned in February 2006. Later that year I finished my

only remaining class and received my Bachelor of Arts degree from

Texas A&M University.

Since working at NASA, I have tried my hardest to continue to

devote my life to public service. I have done work for a nonpartisan/nonprofit United Way agency in Texas dealing with mental health issues, and I hope to launch a call-in mental health radio

program in a local Texas radio station.

During my time at NASA, administrator Mike Griffin released a

statement on scientific openness in which he said, ‘‘It is not the job

of public affairs officers to alter, filter, or adjust engineering or of

scientific material produced by NASA’s technical staff. To ensure

the timely release of information there must be cooperation and coordination between our scientific and engineering community and

our public affairs officers.’’

These two sentences capture my feelings exactly. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman. I would be happy to answer your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Deutsch follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Deutsch. I will now proceed

to questioning from the members of the panel and two 10-minute

rounds controlled by the Chair and the ranking member. I will

start off first.

Mr. Cooney, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate

you having taken the time last week to sit with the committee staff

in a deposition. And that deposition helped clear up a lot of points

which will allow us to focus on the major issues today.

It is clear from documents that the committee has received that

you played a major role in reviewing and editing scientific reports

about climate change. And I want to begin my questioning by asking about your qualifications for editing scientific reports. My understanding is that you are not a scientist, that you are a lawyer

by training, with an undergraduate degree in politics and economics; is that correct?

Mr. COONEY. That is correct.

Chairman WAXMAN. And prior to your move to the White House

in 2001, you worked for more than 15 years at the American Petroleum Institute; is that correct?

Mr. COONEY. That’s correct.

Chairman WAXMAN. The American Petroleum Institute [API], is

the primary trade association for the the oil industry, isn’t it? And

they are essentially lobbyists for the oil industry, aren’t they?

Mr. COONEY. That is a fair characterization, yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. My understanding is that your last position

with the American Petroleum Institute was as team leader of the

climate team. Climate change was a major issue for the Petroleum

Institute and they were very concerned about this whole matter

from an economic point of view.

While you were at the Petroleum Institute, the Petroleum Institute prepared an internal document entitled ‘‘Strategic Issues: Climate Change,’’ and this is exhibit H.

You have seen this document, haven’t you, Mr. Cooney?

Mr. COONEY. Exhibit H?

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes.

Mr. COONEY. Yes. I saw this document last week during my deposition.

Chairman WAXMAN. This document was prepared during API’s

budget review while you were employed there. It discusses why climate change is important to API and the strategies API will use

to combat governmental action to address global warming.

According to this document, ‘‘Climate is at the center of industry’s business interests. Policies limiting carbon emissions reduce

petroleum product use. That is why it is API’s highest priority

issue and defined as strategic.’’

One of the key strategies used by the Petroleum Institute was to

sow doubt about climate change science. Member companies and

spokesmen for the Petroleum Institute regularly exaggerated the

degrees of scientific uncertainty and downplayed the role of humans in causing climate change. What bothers me is that you seem

to bring exactly the same approach inside the White House—and

I want to ask you about that.

We received hundreds of edits that you and your staff at the

White House Council on Environmental Quality made to Federal

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climate change reports. And there seem to be consistent reports to

these edits. They exaggerate uncertainties and downplay the contribution that human activities, like burning petroleum products,

play in causing climate change.

So when I look at the role you played at the American Petroleum

Institute and then the role you played at the White House, they

seem virtually identical. In both places you were sowing doubt

about the science on global warming.

I would like you to respond to those concerns. Do you have a

comment about my observation? Do you think that I am being unfair to you?

Mr. COONEY. I do in some respects, Mr. Chairman. When you

characterize the efforts of the American Petroleum Institute, we

did have scientists who participated on our multidisciplinary team

on climate. We also had economists and press people and lobbyists,

of course. Our focus was lobbying on the Kyoto Protocol. But to the

extent that our scientists participated in science, often they provided public comments in good faith.

For example, on the prior administration’s national assessment,

our economists and scientists submitted public comments for the

record, trying to comment constructively and improve that process,

and they had the background to do so, the scientists and economists who were working on that.

You know, one thing that was brought to my attention in the

deposition was the funding for Carnegie Mellon University. They

had an esteemed program on studying, from what I understood—

I wasn’t very acquainted with it—but it was studying the connection between climate change and potential health impacts and

funded MIT, I believe——

Chairman WAXMAN. You think I am being unfair to the Petroleum Institute in my characterization?

Mr. COONEY. I think we surely were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, but I do think in many cases our scientists tried to participate

responsibly in some of the public dialog that was going on and to

offer legitimate views that weren’t merely about sowing uncertainty, as you have described.

Chairman WAXMAN. My staff released an analysis of hundreds of

changes that you and your staff made to Federal scientific reports.

Where the draft reports said that climate change will cause adverse impacts, you changed the text to say that these changes may

occur.

Where the draft reports said that the climate change would damage the environment, you inserted the qualifier, ‘‘potentially.’’

Where the report described adverse economic effects, you modified the text to say that the economic effects could be positive or

negative.

Mr. Cooney, aren’t the edits you were making exactly the kinds

of changes the Petroleum Institute itself would have made to these

reports?

Mr. COONEY. Mr. Chairman, the comments that you described—

and really these were recommendations on Federal reports, they

weren’t hard edits—they were offered within the context of an

interagency review process with a lot of people providing recommendations to Dr. Mahoney. But you know——

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Chairman WAXMAN. Who is Dr. Mahoney?

Mr. COONEY. Dr. Mahoney was at the end of the process and he

was the Assistant Secretary at Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the Director of the administration’s Climate Change

Science Program Office that was ultimately responsible for the publication of the 10-year Strategic Plan and the ‘‘Our Changing Planet’’ report.

Chairman WAXMAN. So you were making recommendations to

him?

Mr. COONEY. Within an established interagency process. And the

comments that you are describing that I made, you know, my comments of a scientific nature were really derivative. And as I said

in my testimony they relied on the major findings of the National

Academy of Sciences, according to the report that it released for

the President in June 2001. And it talked about many of the localized and regionalized impacts of climate change being very poorly

understood and of the inability of climate change models to project

impacts at a localized and regional level. And so, for example, the

reliance on that type of language would have led to my comments.

In the end, Dr. Mahoney didn’t take many of my comments. He

rejected a number of my comments. And that is the nature of our

process.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Cooney, as I understand it, every time

the National Academy of Sciences had certainty, you tried to delete

that certainty or change it so that it was uncertain.

Mr. Hansen, you are one of the Nation’s leading experts on climate change. What is your view of the changes made by Mr.

Cooney and his staff at the White House? Are they consistent with

the types of assertions that the oil companies and the Petroleum

Institute were making about the lack of scientific certainty about

climate change? Or were they simply trying to make sure that scientific edits confirmed what the National Academy of Sciences was

saying?

Mr. HANSEN. I think that—I believe that these edits, the nature

of these edits is a good part of the reason for why there is a substantial gap between the understanding of global warming by the

relevant scientific community and the knowledge of the public and

policymakers, because there has been so much doubt cast on our

understanding that they think it is still completely up in the air.

Chairman WAXMAN. You think the edits raised doubt where

there was a consensus?

Mr. HANSEN. Because they consistently are always of one nature,

and that is to raise doubt.

Of course there are many details about climate that remain to

be understood. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a broad

understanding.

Chairman WAXMAN. In a 1998 document from the Petroleum Institute that is called, ‘‘Global Climate Science Communications Action Planning,’’ which I would like to make part of the record as

exhibit T—and without objection.

It says, ‘‘Victory will be achieved when average citizens understand uncertainties in climate science, recognition of uncertainties

becomes part of the conventional wisdom, and media coverage reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00334 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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flects balance on climate science in recognition of the validity of

viewpoints that challenge the current conventional wisdom.’’

So when I compare this Petroleum Institute document with your

activities at the White House, Mr. Cooney, I find it is hard to see

much of a distinction. The Petroleum Institute is defining victory

as sowing doubt in the public about the certainty of climate change

science, and that is what your edits to Federal climate change reports appear to do.

Mr. COONEY. Mr. Chairman, I will try to be concise and say if

you look at chapter 3 of the policy book that the President issued

on June 11, 2001, in conjunction with the speech he gave in the

Rose Garden where he spoke at length about climate change

science and the findings at the National Academy, there are at

least 50 to 75 direct quotations from the National Academy report

that he had requested.

And it was part of what he released on June 11th. And that was

our foundational document for reviewing these budgetary reports.

It had truly nothing to do with my prior employment at the American Petroleum Institute. When I came to the White House, my loyalties—my sole loyalties—were to the President and his administration.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much. Let me just point out,

while my time has expired, that the points where you raised uncertainty were the places where the National Academy of Sciences

were fairly certain, and the other parts where they were uncertain

I don’t think that was affected. We will get into that more, I think,

in the questioning.

Mr. COONEY. Mr. Chairman, may I offer one more thing?

Chairman WAXMAN. Certainly.

Mr. COONEY. This document from 1998 from the American Petroleum Institute, I don’t really recall the whole story except to say

that I was not involved on the climate change issue at the time this

document was prepared.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thanks. Well, that document was

prepared——

Mr. COONEY. In 1998.

Chairman WAXMAN [continuing.] To express the views of the Petroleum Institute as to what they wanted to do on climate change

and that seemed to be consistent when you were there.

The National—the President’s speech wasn’t made—that you are

citing as your blueprint—wasn’t given while you were at the White

House, but submit that was guiding your policies at the White

House.

Mr. COONEY. It was given 2 weeks before I joined the Council on

Environmental Quality staff. And so it was the roadmap that was

established before I arrived.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you. Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Boy, there is a lot to cover

here today, and I hope I get through most of it.

Dr. Hansen, let me start with you, because we have been talking

about something from the petroleum industry from 1998. But in

2000—you, I understand are the author, the proponent for the alternative scenario theory you argued that the rapid warming in recent decades was driven mainly by noncarbon dioxide greenhouse

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gases, basically the chlorofluoro carbons—methane, nitrous oxide

and the like. Do you still hold that 2000—year 2000 view of global

warming?

Mr. HANSEN. The data in the 2000 paper is very good data,

very—we have an accurate knowledge of the forcings by different

greenhouse gases. That is one part of the problem which is very

well established. We know how much carbon dioxide has increased,

how much nitrous oxide and methane chlorofluoro carbons have increased, and the sum of these non-CO2 gases provide forcing approximately the same as that by CO2.

Mr. ISSA. OK. So in 2000 and today, you would say that more

than half of global warming—but at that time you said that it was

not CO2, but in fact these other gases. Now you would say it is 50/

50——

Mr. HANSEN. No, I did not say it is not CO2. It is a very qualitative paper. If you look at it, the forcing by CO2 was then about

1.4 watts and the forcing by non-CO2 gases is comparable. And

then there are other factors also——

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate that. And I will let you be the physicist

and I will try to be the guy up here that is trying to muddle

through a better understanding of both the science but, more importantly, the policy here.

Your quote at the time was that it had not been driven mainly

by—it was driven mainly by noncarbon dioxide. So it was getting

close to even at that point?

Mr. HANSEN. It is approximately the same, the CO2 forcing and

the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. I think that what you may be referring to is the fact that I pointed out that the same burning of fossil

fuels, that process produces not only carbon dioxide but aerosols,

which are small particles in the atmosphere, and those are also

cooling. So if you calculate the net effect of those, that reduces the

net fossil fuel effect on a temporary basis. But the problem is these

small particles have a lifetime of only 5 days, and we are attempting to clean those up because they are air pollution.

Mr. ISSA. Sure. I understand we can cool the environment if we

blacken the sky, but that may not be the best way to cool the environment. I am with you on that, Doctor.

But I guess when I look back to some of these arguments going

on within science—you don’t call them arguments but debates—as

late as 2000, you and other scholars were debating, you know, in

various papers—you were debating the differences of what was

causing what. And to a certain extent, you still are. Is that correct?

Mr. HANSEN. Oh, sure, that is always going on. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. So this isn’t settled science.

Mr. HANSEN. There are many aspects of it which are settled

and——

Mr. ISSA. What are those aspects that are totally settled? Name

one aspect that is totally settled in the science.

Mr. HANSEN. The climate forcing, that which drives the climate

change, many parts of that are quantitatively very well settled.

And carbon dioxide is the largest forcing, and it is now the fastest

growing forcing. And it is going to dominate the future global climate change. That has become very clear.

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Mr. ISSA. And I appreciate that because I think that is an area

that we should all focus on here a lot today because—Mr. Cooney,

I am going to go to you for a second.

Prior to coming to the White House, you worked for the American Petroleum Industry. We have established that. You were in

your role, among other things, an attorney; is that correct?

Mr. COONEY. Earlier in my career there, yes.

Mr. ISSA. So your client was the Institute.

Mr. COONEY. Yes. The members of the Institute.

Mr. ISSA. When you came on as—among your other attributes

you are an attorney—your client became who when you came to

work in Washington for this administration? Who was your client?

Mr. COONEY. The President.

Mr. ISSA. So, very different loyalties between petroleum and the

President, right?

Mr. COONEY. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. So when the President talks about switchgrass, when

he puts forward budgets that include billions of dollars for various

areas of climate study, including roughly a billion dollars for the

area that Dr. Hansen is most thoroughly involved in, that is your

client, right?

Mr. COONEY. Absolutely, yes.

Mr. ISSA. When the President includes in each of his speeches

the need to get unhooked or get rid of the addiction to petroleum,

that is your client, right?

Mr. COONEY. Correct.

Mr. ISSA. And you represent that client and would—wouldn’t

have a conflict there?

Mr. COONEY. My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing

the policies of his administration.

Mr. ISSA. I don’t see a conflict there. I must tell you that I came

from an industry where I produced car alarms, and I have no loyalty to the car alarms nor animosity to the car thieves that exist

in Washington today. I have moved on.

And that will be quoted, I am sure.

Dr. Hansen, you have been quoted, speaking of quotes, and correct me if I’m a little off on this, but the way the quote is here it

says, ‘‘Debating a contrarian leaves the impression that there is

still an argument among theorists that science is still uncertain.’’

You have said that many times, plus or minus a few words.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. Does that mean that your opinion among scientists—

because this talks about contrarians, not Mr. Cooney, because he

wasn’t the decisionmaker, as has been shown by the fact that when

it bubbled up to somebody with ‘‘doctor’’ in front of their name,

most of it got ignored—among scientists, you appeared to believe

that the debate about this—any aspect of science being settled,

that you think is settled, has a chilling effect on people’s understanding. You said so in your opening remarks here today. Is

that—you said that the American people were not—were confused

by these contrarian opinions. I guess we would be talking about

Senator Jimmy Inhofe who says there isn’t global warming. You

say it is settled science; is that correct?

Mr. HANSEN. I wouldn’t state it the way that you just did.

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Mr. ISSA. Please rephrase.

Mr. HANSEN. What I refer to is the fact that very often the

media, sometimes with pressure from special interests, will present

balance. And balance means we have one person describing the

science and one person who disputes it, even in cases where the

science is 99 percent certain.

And both of them speak in a technical language which to the

public often sounds like they are, you know, technical scientists,

and they don’t understand the language. And so it looks like a 50/

50 thing, even when it is not.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Well, you know, having been somebody that is still

befuddled about whether Pluto is a planet or not, I share that layman’s understanding.

But it appears as though you have become an advocate for limiting that debate to coming up with consensus that certain things

are settled, such as CO2 is a major cause of global warming and

no one should be able to dispute that.

Mr. HANSEN. No, that is not true at all. What I am an advocate

for is the scientific method. And with the scientific method you

present—you look at all sides of a story equally, without prejudice.

Now, what we have in the case of some of these contrarians is

simply making negative statements without—without presenting—

you know, they act more like lawyers than like scientists. They

present all the evidence they can think of for one side of the story,

rather than acting like scientists. And that is why I say it is a mistake to get involved with professional contrarians, because they are

to confuse the public that is basically——

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate that. Last July 20th, you pulled out of a

hearing and it was one in which there was a peer involved. And

my understanding from quotes you made at the time was that, one,

you were infirmed, but you said you would get out of your sick bed

if they were serious about the science.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes, if they want to speak about science seriously,

that is a different story. But if they just want to do the contrarian

story just for the sake of publicity, then I don’t see much point in

that.

Mr. ISSA. So today you are on a panel with no contrarians, so

that is OK.

Mr. HANSEN. Today we are talking about government reform,

and I think that some is needed in this case.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Well, my time is nearly ended, but Mr. Deutsch—

is my time over?

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. Let me ask one final thing. You are very young. You

were 22 years old and plus or minus 3 credits of being a college

graduate. Do you think you may have ruffled Dr. Hansen’s feathers

simply because you were young and inexperienced?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Apparently I did.

Mr. ISSA. Perhaps not skilled in the ways of public affairs.

Mr. DEUTSCH. I can’t speak for Dr. Hansen, but I very well may

have.

Mr. ISSA. I will hold for the second round. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Issa. Mr. Welch.

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Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cooney, you indicated in your statement that your loyalty

was to the President who appointed you, correct?

Mr. COONEY. Correct.

Mr. WELCH. You also indicated that your responsibility was to

align executive branch reports with administration policy, correct?

Mr. COONEY. Correct.

Mr. WELCH. And the administration had a pretty clear energy

policy during the time of the ongoing energy crisis, which included

recovery in the search for new oil and petroleum products, correct?

Mr. COONEY. It included that. There were many other elements.

Mr. WELCH. Well, it included supporting drilling in the Arctic

National Wildlife Reserve, correct?

Mr. COONEY. It did. It included extended——

Mr. WELCH. It included drilling offshore, correct?

Mr. COONEY. I don’t recall.

Mr. WELCH. It included maintaining royalty relief for the oil companies for the recovery of gulf oil, even as the price of oil increased

over $60 a barrel?

Mr. COONEY. I don’t recall that was an element of the National

Energy Policy in the spring of 2001——

Chairman WAXMAN. It included tax breaks that Congress gave the oil industry at time when they had $125 billion in profits, correct?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I can say that later in my years in

the administration, we opposed oil and tax—excuse me, tax incentives for oil and gas exploration for the oil industry——

Mr. WELCH. Let’s get real. Let’s get real. ANWR, offshore drilling, tax breaks, all advocated publicly, aggressively, by the Bush

administration, passed by a Republican Congress; yes or no?

Mr. COONEY. That was an element——

Mr. CANNON. Would the two of you yield? When you’re talking

about tax breaks, you’re talking about tax breaks that have been

in law for a long time, or since then? I’m wondering.

Mr. WELCH. You will have your chance, my good friend.

Mr. COONEY. There were many elements of the policy: the promotion of nuclear energy, the increase of fuel economy, standards

for light trucks, a mandate for renewable fuels and the sale of

transportation fuels for ethanol which was enacted in 2005. There

were many elements to the policy that were not necessarily to the

advantage of the oil and gas industry, which were administered

policies.

Mr. WELCH. Did that policy of the Bush administration—and you

supported the President in his policies—include promoting drilling

in ANWR?

Mr. COONEY. Yes, Congressman.

Mr. WELCH. Well, did it include support breaks that were passed

by Congress to the oil industry?

Mr. COONEY. I don’t recall that being an element.

Mr. WELCH. Let’s ask a few specific questions here.

You reviewed the CEQ, and this document is the strategic plan

for the Climate Change Science Program which was issued in 2003.

The committee has multiple drafts. You’ve seen them. You have

been asked about them in your deposition; and, in fact, at your

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deposition, you acknowledged that this was edited at least five

times, on October 28, 2002; May 30, 2003; June 2, 2003; June 16,

2003; and once before the final version was released. Is that correct? Yes or no?

Mr. COONEY. That sounds correct.

Mr. WELCH. And when we examined your edits, we found a large

number of changes that very clearly had the effect of emphasizing

or exaggerating the level of uncertainty surrounding global warming science. In your first round of edits, there were 47 edits that

introduced additional uncertainty; in the second round, you made

28 edits that made global warming seem less certain, and in your

third round of edits, you made 106 changes that introduced additional uncertainty. That is a total of 181 edits. I want to ask you

about these edits.

Take a look at exhibit C. You are ready for this.

When the draft arrived on your desk, lines 40 to 42 read, ‘‘recent

warming has been linked to longer growing seasons, grass species

decline, changes in aquatic diversity, in coral bleaching.’’ You inserted the words ‘‘indicated as potentially’’ introducing a greater

level of uncertainty into that report. Right or wrong?

Mr. COONEY. Right. I inserted those words.

Mr. WELCH. And I assume that you referred to some scientific report for introducing this change that contradicted the report of the

scientists.

Mr. COONEY. This is not a report of the scientists.

Mr. WELCH. Here’s a simple question. You made a change. You

had a basis for the change. My question is this: What was the basis

of your change?

Mr. COONEY. It was the National Academy of Science’s June

2001, report.

Mr. WELCH. And tell us specifically, in that report you are now

referring to, where the National Academy said ‘‘potentially.’’

Mr. COONEY. Well, the National Academy identified the uncertainties associated with regional outcomes of climate change as one

of the fundamental scientific questions that remained and needed

to be studied.

Mr. WELCH. My question is simple. It’s an important question.

You made a change. You overruled the written report of a scientist

in your department.

Mr. COONEY. I didn’t overrule it.

Mr. WELCH. Where specifically can you find support to authorize

the important scientific conclusion on the issue of climate change?

Mr. COONEY. On page 19 of the report it states, on a regional

scale and in the longer term, there is much more uncertainty. At

page 21 of the National Academy of Sciences report, it says,

‘‘Whereas all models project global warming and global increases in

precipitation, the sign of precipitation varies among models for regions. The range of model sensitivities and the challenge of projecting signs of precipitation changes for regions represents a substantial limitation in assessing climate impacts.’’

Mr. WELCH. Dr. Hansen, does this make the slightest bit of

sense?

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Mr. HANSEN. I think the connection between warming and longer

growing seasons is very straightforward, and I don’t see the need

for this sort of qualification.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you.

Please turn to exhibit D, Mr. Cooney.

When you received the June 5, 2003, draft, page 294 read, ‘‘Climate modeling capabilities have improved dramatically and can be

expected to continue to do so. As a result, scientists are now able

to model earth system processes in the coupling of those processes

on a regional and global scale with increasing precision and reliability.’’

The CEQ completely, completely deleted these sentences, right?

Mr. COONEY. At which line? I am sorry, Congressman.

Mr. WELCH. Page 294.

Mr. COONEY. Yes, Congressman.

Mr. WELCH. All right. Did you refer to some scientific evidence

upon which you would delete the scientific conclusions that were

presented by scientists?

Mr. COONEY. I did, Congressman. At page 16 of the National

Academy of Sciences report, it says, however, climate models are

imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by uncertainties in their

formulation, the limited size of their calculation and their difficulty

of interpreting their answers of the exhibit with almost as much

complexity as in nature.

Most importantly, at the end of the National Academy of

Sciences report, it says that a major limitation of model forecasts

for use around the word is the paucity of data available to evaluate

the ability of coupled models to simulate important aspects of climate change. In addition, the observing system available today is

a composite of observations that neither provide the information

nor the continuity and data to support measurements of climate

variability. Therefore, above all, it is essential to ensure the existence of long-term observing systems that provides a more definitive

observational foundation to evaluate decadal and century scale variability and change.

Mr. WELCH. You heard Dr. Hansen just a moment ago when he

said that scientists are different than lawyers?

Mr. COONEY. Yes.

Mr. WELCH. Lawyers find every single possible nuance to create

doubt and uncertainty.

Here’s the question, all right? What you deleted was a straightforward statement that said climate modeling capabilities have improved dramatically. You have now just read a statement that says

they are not perfect and you have now edited that report to undercut the conclusion on climate warming that was reached by our scientists. Yes or no?

Mr. COONEY. No, Congressman, I didn’t edit the report. I made

recommendations within an established interagency review process,

and I believed at the time that I made them that I had a foundation for my comments based in the National Academy of Scientists.

I am not being lawyerly. I am being—

Mr. WELCH. But you did have a foundation, and it was admirable

loyalty to the person who had appointed you to a political position.

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Here’s one of the questions I have as I listen to this. Whether

you call it a recommendation or an edit, we will let the people of

America decide that. You describe candidly that your job was to

align executive reports to administration policy. Administration’s

policy was pro-oil, pro-drilling, pro-API. It created—as the API report said, its goal was to create uncertainty about the basis of global warming.

How is what the Petroleum Institute was doing—and these edits

were encouraging—any different than the work of the so-called scientists during the whole tobacco debate when they were selling

doubt about whether there was any link between tobacco and lung

cancer?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I would say that the most material

development was that the President’s climate change committee—

Cabinet-level committee itself requested our latest knowledge, the

most current knowledge on the state of what we know about climate change of the National Academy of Sciences. That report was

delivered to the Cabinet in early June 2001, and became the explicit basis for President Bush’s stated policies in June 2001.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cooney, I’ll ask you the obvious question. In retrospect, do

you think it would have been better if a scientist had been in your

position doing these edits or maybe a librarian who had not worked

at the Petroleum Institute?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, this—all of this, the review of these

reports, the process for the report, is really controlled by the Global

Change Research Act of 1990. It calls for the Council on Environmental Quality to be represented on an interagency committee—

Mr. ISSA. I understand.

Mr. COONEY [continuing]. With high-ranking individuals.

Mr. ISSA. I am just asking, in retrospect, would a librarian from

East McKeesport been a better choice so that we would not be talking about past profession?

Mr. COONEY. Perhaps.

Mr. ISSA. Well, hopefully, in the future, Members of Congress

will not come from individual States with their political bent having served in the legislatures either. But I am not holding my

breath on that.

Dr. Hansen, I have a question for you.

We’ve been focusing up until now on specifics of a report and a

handful of edits that were mostly not accepted. Do you feel that

you are able to express in a clear way to the public the real dangers of climate change? Yes or no? Keep it as simple as you can.

Mr. HANSEN. I wish it were a simple yes or no.

Mr. ISSA. How about if we do this, since it is not that simple. I

did a little quick looking at the stories from January 1, 2006, until

today. Would you believe I found 1,400 statements in publications

distinctly different that you’ve done in that period that are available on Google? That doesn’t surprise you?

Mr. HANSEN. No, it doesn’t surprise me.

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Mr. ISSA. Does it surprise you that you’re only 40 or so—out of

that 1,464, you’re only about 40 or so behind Dr. Hale from the

shuttle program? And you’re only—the two of you together it takes

to get up to the administrator of NASA. So would you say that

more or less a major story each and every day times two is reasonable access to the media?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. That is, but this is a story that needs access

to the media.

Mr. ISSA. I don’t disagree with you. But, you know, in January

2006, you delivered 15 major media interviews; and in your testimony, or, actually, in some of the other material related, you said

this was a month after Mr. Deutsch and the administration stifled

your ability to speak. So I guess one of the questions is, when do

you have time for research?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, my wife will tell you that—about 80 or 90

hours a week. It takes a lot of time. If you’re going to spend some

time trying to communicate with the public, it does take away from

your research time.

Mr. ISSA. But 15 major media events in 1 month, and that was

the month after the administration put the hammer down.

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. That is the reason why. As soon as that became public knowledge, then the media came running.

Mr. ISSA. But did the administration stop you from doing those

15 major media events?

Mr. HANSEN. No. The NASA Administrator came out with a very

strong statement. To his credit, he said that we were, in fact, allowed to speak to the public.

Mr. ISSA. OK. So, notwithstanding the President, the American

Petroleum Institute, Mr. Cooney, the fact is, during this administration, with people such as the NASA Director, you have had significant access—as a matter of fact, you’re one of the most easily

Googleable human beings on the face of the earth. So the message

is getting out, would you say?

Mr. HANSEN. The message is getting out, but there remains a

gap in the public understanding of where our knowledge of global

climate change is.

Mr. ISSA. Going back to that, this 2000 report, I noted that in

2000 it was called the Alternative Scenario. Now the only reason

you call it the Alternative Scenario was you were outside the mainstream, to a certain extent, at least.

Mr. HANSEN. No. Alternative was alternative to business as

usual. That’s what it means. Business as usual has continued an

increase in emissions year after year by larger and larger fossil

fuels.

Mr. ISSA. Isn’t it true that in 2000 the groups, including the

Union of Concerned Scientists, criticized you soundly for publishing

the Alternative Scenario—

Mr. HANSEN. Yeah, there was—

Mr. ISSA [continuing]. Because it would confuse the public?

Mr. HANSEN. Because I focused on some of the contributions of

the non-CO2. Mr. ISSA. You were providing ammunition for the deniers,

weren’t you?

Mr. HANSEN. No, I was providing science.

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Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, when you provide an alternative to what

somebody else is doing and add to that body of debate, you are providing alternatives and moving the debate when someone else puts

a limiting word, it appears; and I have already written off Mr.

Cooney as not a scientist, but I am trying to understand if—in

2000, you did something very, very important, which is you said

you have all of those non-CO2 things that we have been looking at

and they have certain effects and CO2 has certain amounts and

here is how we are going to look at it, and you got denounced for

it, but you don’t consider that a problem, even though they said

you were confusing part of the public because it was unsettled.

Mr. HANSEN. Pardon?

Mr. ISSA. You were confusing the public as an unsettled science

in 2000; is that right?

Mr. HANSEN. Could you repeat that?

Mr. ISSA. The Union of Concerned Scientists found that you were

confusing the public in 2000 by putting forward this Alternative

Scenario.

Mr. HANSEN. Well, you would have to ask them. I don’t think it

was confusing the public.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, you know—look, I would like to be with

you because you are one of the preeminent scientists, but, in 2000,

you were still looking to add to the body, as I am sure you are

today——

Mr. HANSEN. Sure we are. We always are.

Mr. ISSA [continuing]. Of science because, until we have all of the

body, we won’t have all of the potential solutions for the problems.

Mr. HANSEN. That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.

Mr. ISSA. Of course. I am not saying that. My opening statement

said you are pushing on an open door. I agree with you on CO2,

I agree with you on the greenhouse gas, and I agree with you on

the need to change that.

In the last Congress, we had a number of scientists in my subcommittee, and we were able to get what we think was a pretty

good assessment. It is about $350 trillion if we are going to get to

zero emissions today. And if research—and do the science. That

price goes down, depending on how much time we have.

The concern that I have is I want your science to tell us as accurately on a daily, weekly, monthly basis how much time we have.

Because we know we can’t spend $350 trillion to solve this problem, but we know we can’t wait forever to solve it. So, in between,

we are trying to figure out how to apply efficiently the dollars not

to collapse our society and to in fact get to a zero greenhouse gas/

also CO2 emissions. Isn’t that a common goal that you share with

this President who stated that he wants to get to, in fact, a stable

environment and a cleaner one than we have today?

Mr. HANSEN. If you would look at my written testimony, you will

see that I have some terrific recommendations. The problem is that

our policy now is not going in that direction. We are continuing to

increase our emissions. But it is clear that we have to decrease.

Mr. ISSA. I agree. We are doing it.

Mr. HANSEN. The sooner we start on it, the less expensive it will

be. In fact, it may be economically beneficial.

Mr. ISSA. How much are we spending on sequestration of CO2?

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Mr. HANSEN. We are spending quite a lot on clean coal.

Mr. ISSA. Is that a step in the right direction as an interim to

reduce the emissions?

Mr. HANSEN. Sequestration is an important issue, which it

should be.

Mr. ISSA. Second, what are we spending on nuclear?

Mr. HANSEN. We are spending a lot.

Mr. ISSA. Is that important to disposable—

Mr. HANSEN. Those are important, but there are renewables in

energy efficiency which have tremendous potential in this. We are

spending chicken feed.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, that’s chicken feed. How much would you

spend?

Mr. HANSEN. It is not up to me to determine how much we

should spend.

Mr. ISSA. How much, if it is up to you to determine—

Mr. HANSEN. And, again, this is my opinion as a private citizen.

It is not—

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, I understand the disclaimer, but we didn’t

call you here as a private citizen. You said it was chicken feed. I

am following up on that. If $4, $5, $6, $8, $10 billion in various

pockets of the Federal Government is chicken feed, what do we

need to spend in dollars to move this along? Somewhere between

$10 billion and $350 trillion? Give me a number of an annual

amount we should spend.

Mr. HANSEN. It should be at least comparable to what we are

spending on nuclear—we are subsidizing fossil fuels and nuclear a

lot. We should be spending a lot more on renewables and energy

efficiency. We have tremendous potential in energy efficiency.

Mr. ISSA. So if nuclear—

Mr. HANSEN. I don’t think we are overspending on the other research. It is very important.

Mr. ISSA. That is a fair answer.

Am I running out of time again?

Chairman WAXMAN. Yup.

Mr. ISSA. Thanks, Dr. Hansen.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Issa.

Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Dr. Hansen, as one of the eminent climate researchers, I want to thank you for being here today.

I don’t know the process, but, as I am looking at the exhibits that

have been passed out to us, when you present an empirical report

is it usual or unusual to have whole lines deleted by someone who

is not a scientist?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, I would hope it would be unusual.

Ms. WATSON. All right. It is my understanding that in late 2002

a NASA public affairs official warned that there would be dire consequences if you continued to do press interviews about the threat

of global warming. Can you tell me if this is accurate and, if so,

what happened?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, it is accurate in the sense that was relayed

to me. It was an oral threat that was made to the public affairs

person in New York and relayed to me. And as I described in my

testimony today, I think—I don’t know if they were—can be diVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00345 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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rectly related to it, but the consequences for our budget were pretty

dire.

Ms. WATSON. So you worked at NASA for over 30 years, as I understand, and under several administrations, and was that kind of

explicit threat unusual?

Mr. HANSEN. Yeah. It is unusual that they will make such an explicit threat. But, as I again mentioned in my opening remarks, the

mechanisms for keeping government scientists in line with policy

are pretty powerful, and they don’t need to make an explicit threat.

Ms. WATSON. I had a confrontation with somebody from the Department of Commerce when we were in Qatar at the International

Conference on Trade, and he made a statement about delusionary

and mythical global warming. I talked to him about it afterwards.

He was quite curt and rude, and he is no longer with the Department. He is no longer alive. But I found that very—in terms of myself as a policymaker, very insulting.

In December 2005, National Public Radio wanted to interview

you about global warming science; and this is, of course, your area

of expertise, as I understand. I am very impressed with your resume. But NASA didn’t want you to talk to NPR, and they wanted

Colleen Hartman to do the interview instead. She was the Deputy

Associate Administrator at NASA and one of your superiors. Do

you think there would be a difference between what you could offer

in an interview on global warming and what she could offer?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, sure, given our experiences. I mean, I have—

Mr. SHAYS. Let me request that you speak closer to the mic.

Mr. HANSEN. I have been doing research on that topic for several

decades now, and they explicitly indicated that they wanted to talk

about the climate science research that I discussed at the AGU

meeting that December.

Ms. WATSON. Were you allowed to do the interview?

Mr. HANSEN. No, I was not allowed to do it because headquarters

indicated they preferred that I not be allowed to speak to NPR because it was described as the most liberal media outlet in the country.

Ms. WATSON. Do you think the administration was afraid of having you talk to the press about climate change in your opinion as

a private citizen?

Mr. HANSEN. They were reluctant for whatever reasons.

Ms. WATSON. It seems from this hearing that there was an attempt to quiet you. I experienced that myself from someone from

this administration, and I don’t know how you skew empirical evidence as a scientist. I would feel that there should be a report coming from the editors.

If Mr. Cooney, a non-lawyer—Mr. Cooney, if you were to review

this, I would think that, rather than changing words and editing,

that you would write a dissenting report, a challenge to the findings of Dr. Hansen, rather than suggesting lines be deleted if you

could not find a scientific base to do so.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Ms. Watson.

Mr. COONEY. Congresswoman, I did not comment on any of Dr.

Hansen’s work. In fact, the record before the committee shows that

339

I had suggested that he be invited to interagency committees to

brief us on the latest science. So I did not directly review his work.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you.

Mr. Cooney, would you mind expanding on what you just said?

My understanding is you have been a big promoter of Dr. Hansen

in many ways; is that not the case?

Mr. COONEY. I think that is true. In the materials that went up

to the committee, you will find in one of the boxes in the past couple of weeks that I had sent an e-mail to Dr. Mahoney who, of

course, ran the Climate Change Science Program. It is a one-liner,

and you’ll find it in the materials. I said, how about if we get Dr.

Hansen to brief the Deputy Secretary level committee that met

every 2 months on climate change policy, science, technology, mitigation, international negotiations.

But I have always been of the view that Dr. Hansen is very eminent. In fact, Dr. Mahoney did not take me up on my suggestion;

and we, at the White House, therefore invited Dr. Hansen to come

and provide a briefing when I was there. I attended that briefing,

and we appreciated his update. In fact, we were influenced by a lot

of what he had to say about the potential of near-term mitigation

from methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas.

As a consequence and in reliance on Dr. Hansen, to a large extent, the administration, the President announced in July 2004 the

methane-to-markets partnership under which a number of developed and developing countries tackled methane emissions.

Mr. CANNON. Methane is one of those greenhouse gasses that we

can do something about. Does it bother you that there is a tendency to be alarmist about the possible causes—and, Dr. Hansen, I

would like you to address this as well—the possible causes or the

possible effect on the massive inertia, I think you called it, Dr.

Hansen, that these feedback mechanisms might cause? There is a

tendency to focus on those dramatic potential effects but not so

much focus on what we can do to actually solve the probability containing things like methane.

Mr. COONEY. Well, I think that, as Congressman Issa has said,

we have a time period within which to act, and we want to act

timely, and we want to act cost effectively, and we want to calibrate our actions to emerging technologies.

So, to be concise, you want to get at the low-hanging fruit; and

Dr. Hansen told us that the low-hanging fruit was methane emissions. EPA has a tremendous program on methane emissions, a

voluntary program, where actually in the U.S. methane emissions

is the one greenhouse gas that has been reduced since 1990. My

recollection is that we were about 5 percent below the 1990 level

in methane emissions because we are capturing methane from coal

mines, we are capturing it from oil and gas systems, and we are

capturing it form landfills and using it for energy. So EPA’s successful program was something that we could take international

and help the developing countries embrace as well.

Mr. CANNON. I see Dr. Hansen nodding.

Let me just say, I have one of the biggest pig farms in my district. And, actually, it didn’t smell as bad as you might have exVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00347 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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pected, but they are now making more money off of capturing the

methane than they are off the 1,500,000 pigs or so per year that

they produce and sell.

Mr. Shays is saying I’ve got to be kidding. The fact is, in a very

difficult market, they are not making money from the pigs. They

are making money on the methane.

So these are the kinds of things—I see Mr. Hansen nodding. You

are not reflected in the record as smiling and nodding, Mr. Hansen.

It is true there are some things—

Mr. HANSEN. This is a success story, and the administration

should be given credit for it.

Mr. CANNON. I just want to say that I would give Mr. Capuano

the microphone any day to be talking about being anti-energy or

pro-oil or pro-drilling or pro-tax cuts. Because the people that pay

these costs are the poor in America way disproportionately; and in

an environment where there tends to be an increasing disparity between rich and poor, I want to be on the side of people getting what

they need in terms of energy.

I notice, Dr. Hansen, you are very positive about some of these

alternatives like methane control on the one hand, like nuclear on

the other hand. And, again, the record should show that Mr. Hansen is nodding; and, also, what you are suggesting, we go from

chicken feed to more money to alternatives. There are great potentials there and that—in fact, let me give you some time to talk, instead of just nodding, Dr. Hansen.

Your sense is that we have this—and if I can characterize you—

a massive inertia in our oceans and ice caps and that forces, feedback forces, have a tendency, over time, to maybe be dramatic.

Your concern is to draw people’s attention to the potential problem.

Don’t you think in that regard that finding options for what we can

do today to improve the way we affect the atmosphere is important?

Mr. HANSEN. Absolutely. That’s the bottom line, and we need to

begin to take those actions now. Because if we stay on business as

usual another decade, it will be very difficult to avoid the inertia

taking over and carrying us to climate changes that we would rather not have.

Mr. CANNON. How much time do I have left?

Chairman WAXMAN. None.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Deutsch, I am very impressed by you. It

sounds to me like you have your resume out there. You had it prepared in anticipation of graduation. If somebody ever raised that

as a question in your career, I would be happy to be a recommender for you to straighten them out.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you. You want to hire him?

Mr. Yarmuth.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cooney, you stated that—and we have repeated it a number

of times—that your primary obligation is to promote the policies of

the administration; is that correct?

Mr. COONEY. Essentially correct.

Mr. YARMUTH. Essentially, that you are a spin doctor, is that a

fair characterization of what you did?

341

Mr. COONEY. No, I don’t think that’s fair.

Mr. YARMUTH. I had to get that in anyway. It sounds to me like

a spin doctor.

You said that you were only making recommendations. And you

made recommendations to Mr. Mahoney. Is it fair to say that, once

you got these documents and passed them on, it had left the realm

of science and entered the political process?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, the documents were inherently of a

policy nature. They related to budgets. They related to research

priorities. They were not a platform for the presentation of original

scientific research. These were documents called for under the

Global Change Research Act.

They were sent to 75 people to review under an established process at the Office of Management and Budget, and I was one of 75

who reviewed it, and it came to my office. I did my reviews. You

send it back to OMB. OMB would synthesize the comments and,

in all likelihood, give them to Dr. Mahoney for a final reconciliation

because he was the head of the program.

Mr. YARMUTH. Are you saying you had no more influence on

what was in the final report than the other 75? You were in the

White House. None of the other 75 in the White House—

Mr. COONEY. The Office of Science and Technology Policy staff

participated, the Council of Economic Advisors. The Office of Management and Budget itself reviewed these budgetary policy research reports. A host of people in the White House reviewed them.

But all of the agencies reviewed these documents themselves because they affected their budgets and everyone wanted to be comfortable with what was expressed.

Mr. YARMUTH. But you made recommendations; and, according to

staff’s count, something like 181 of the edits that you made appeared in the final report. Are you saying that you didn’t have any

disproportionate influence?

Mr. COONEY. I was an active participant. There is no denying

that. But if you look at these documents, they were multiple hundreds of pages, and I don’t think it is unfair to say that 99 percent

of the pages had no comments on them. Where I had a comment,

I would make it. But I think it is a fair characterization to say that

99 percent of the drafts that came through I had no comment, no

recommendation to make.

Mr. YARMUTH. Let’s talk about—you have said on numerous occasions today that you used, as the basis for your editing, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Resource Council documentation; and, in fact, in chapter one of the draft, where it talks

about the issue—called the issues for science and society, on the

page you did have a footnote and one statement about human activities causing—whether human activities cause climate change or

global warming.

The NRC elaborated on this point. C-A, next page. And, in fact,

there was a section called, from their report, this is the NRC, the

effect of human activities, which talks about how the effect of

human activities cannot be unequivocally established; is that correct? So, in fact, you did that there.

Now, if we can, would you turn to exhibit A and—because both

in your testimony today and in your deposition, you talked about

342

this being your guiding document. Will you read the first sentence

of the National Academy Report aloud, please?

Mr. COONEY. Greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the earth’s

atmosphere as a result of human activities causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you.

Now turn to exhibit B, and this exhibit is your handwritten edits

to the EPA report.

Now on page 3, beginning on line 24, you have deleted a sentence

from the EPA text. Will you please read that sentence aloud?

Mr. COONEY. I am looking at line 24 on which page?

Mr. YARMUTH. Page 3.

Mr. COONEY. The NRC concluded that the greenhouse gasses are

accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of human activities,

causing surface air temperatures and subsurface temperatures to

rise.

Mr. YARMUTH. Now you replaced this verbatim quote from the

National Academy of Science with your own sentence. This sentence reads, ‘‘Some activities among greenhouse gasses and other

substances directly or indirectly may affect the balance of incoming

and outgoing radiation, thereby potentially affecting climate on regional and global scales.’’

That sentence does not appear in the Academy’s report. So you

deleted a direct quote from the Academy’s report, which you say is

what you relied upon, and replaced it with a sentence that appears

designed to obfuscate the simple reality that human activities are

warming the planet. Why did you make the change, and why did

you not rely on the NRC report in that situation?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I recall this document did have a

number of drafts, and I do recall the viewing documents that recommended the insertion of a more full quote, the one that you had

referenced before from page 17 about the linkage between observed

warming in the 20th century and human activities not being unequivocally established because the range of natural variability climate was not sufficiently known.

In this case, I don’t recognize the source of the comment that I

am inserting here on this draft. I don’t know that it is not in the

National Academy of Science’s report. I just can’t say that it is.

As I said, in most cases, nearly all cases, my comments were derivative and in reliance on the National Academy of Science’s report; and this may be a quote from that report.

But my concern there was that—in prior drafts, you will see my

concern there was that EPA was, in its draft, was not being sufficiently expansive on the question of the connection between human

activities and observed warming. It wasn’t using the full benefit of

what the National Academy had said, and I wanted a broad quote

because it’s an important question.

The quote on page 17 has the caption the Effect of Human Activities; and it is there where the National Academy is purporting

to speak very specifically, not from the summary which is what

this sentence is from but very specifically about the linkage between observed warming and human activities. I thought that it

was more complete to refer to that quote, and you will find that

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I did recommend the insertion of that quote in a number of other

drafts.

Mr. YARMUTH. And more supportive of the administration’s policies.

Mr. COONEY. Well, Congressman, again, if you look at chapter 3

of the policy book that the President himself released on June 11th,

2 weeks before I got there, the President has 50 quotes from the

National Academy of Science’s report where he prescribes what his

research priorities are going to be.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Hansen, a lot of people believe that money can influence

science. In fact, Mr. Cooney was more or less smeared for his past

ties to the Petroleum Institute. You received a quarter million dollars from the Heinz Foundation in 2001. Why shouldn’t we believe

that influenced your support for John Kerry for President in 2004?

Mr. HANSEN. The award—the Heinz Environment Award is an

award that is named for John Heinz, a Republican Senator from

Pennsylvania.

Mr. SOUDER. Whose wife is married to John Kerry.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes, that is right.

There is no—as far as I know, there is no political connection to

this award. It is an environmental award, and it is not—and you

know it is—

Mr. SOUDER. I understand the point you are making. It is not

from Theresa Heinz directly or from John Kerry directly. But the

point is that when you smear individuals based on associations or

indirect associations is what has historically been called McCarthyism and what was done to the first witness on this panel.

Let me ask you a more precise question.

You have said publicly multiple times that you were a consultant

on Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. You said that Al Gore

has a better understanding of the science of global warming than

any politician that you have met. Given your close ties to former

Vice President Gore, how do you feel about this statement: He said

it’s appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is as a predicate for opening up the

audience to listen to what solutions are and how it is to be helpful.

Do you feel it is OK for politicians to exaggerate the impact of global warming?

Mr. HANSEN. No, we don’t need to exaggerate. The reality is serious enough. There is no need for exaggeration.

Mr. SOUDER. I also want to express my concerns that you didn’t

submit your testimony. You were told, we understand, on February

15th that this hearing was coming. I know you are a busy person.

Our committee rules, which are increasingly being violated, were

told that you had 2 business days. Our staff was willing to stay in

over the weekend, and yet we didn’t receive the testimony until

Sunday night. It doesn’t matter, because there is nothing new in

your testimony. But, as a courtesy, it is helpful for us for hearings

to prepare.

I am more upset that the chairman has not allowed our Republican witness to speak until the third panel. On a hearing on cenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00351 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sorship, on a hearing of lack of debate, our witness was denied on

the first panel where we could have debated this. I believe it makes

a mockery of a hearing on censorship to censor the Republican witness.

Now, ironically, Dr. Spencer, who was at NASA for 15 years, who

was awarded the Meteorological Society Special Award for developing a global precise record of the earth’s temperature from operational polar orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate—that is the quote from the award—who receives NASA’s exceptional achievement medal, has views differing

from Dr. Hansen.

He also says, Dr. Spencer, ‘‘well aware that any interaction between scientists and the press was to be coordinated through

NASA management and public affairs.’’ And he resigned from

NASA under the Clinton administration because of limits on what

he could and could not say as a NASA employee because he felt he

was being restricted by the Clinton administration.

Now, Dr. Hansen, based on your definitions of censorship, silencing and political interference, whatever you want to call it, that

you allege to have occurred under the Bush administration, was

Dr. Spencer also being censored by the Clinton administration trying to filter his statements through NASA when he disagreed with

the Clinton administration?

Mr. HANSEN. I don’t have any knowledge of that. I don’t know

if he was prevented from speaking to reporters the way that I was.

You would have to ask him about that.

Mr. SOUDER. The major point with this—well, I would like to

ask, because it would be an interesting comparison, but the majority prohibited us from having him on this panel, not a contrarian,

but, in fact, a well-known researcher who was at NASA for many

years and has received numerous awards for that.

I think it is appalling that we can’t have a discussion and a comparison. We can have allegations—and that’s why people think

sometimes these things are show hearings. We can have allegations

against one administration, but when the press is here and when

there is coverage on one but not on the other, in my opinion, it is

a set-up, it is appalling, and we have been deteriorating in our

process here.

I am very, very disappointed, particularly the questions, to say

would—if you altered something from that is a legitimate debate—

from a—to put slight—more vague in and say that is what the Petroleum Institute would want you to do would be similar to saying—and a socialist would rather have you not do that that way

or a person who’s anti-capitalist would rather have you not have

it that way, it’s an over-simplification. And I just am appalled at

the process here and very disappointed.

I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. The only thing I can say to the gentleman

is that we do have the witness that the Republicans requested here

today to testify. We, unfortunately, can’t have everybody testify all

at once. We have to take them one at a time. But, on this first

panel, we have two appointees under the Republican administration sitting on either side of Dr. Hansen.

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The odd thing is that Dr. Hansen is one of the world’s most esteemed scientists on global warming, and the two people at the

table with him wanted to change his comments or stop him from

speaking. It is odd, when you look at their qualifications, how little

qualifications they have for imposing their views on science over

what Dr. Hansen was doing as a government employee.

Mr. SOUDER. As you know, just a few months ago I was a chairman. I do not recall you or the Democrats being willing to accept

my definition of who the Democrat witnesses should be.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, I would point out to the gentleman

that there were times when you would even deny our witnesses.

We have your witness here, and we are going to hear from that

witness on the third panel. I am looking forward to hearing what

he has to say. I will be here. I think that other Members will be

here as well.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, we do—

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say for the record, you

know, that I never did that in my subcommittee, that I have never

deprived Democrats of the witnesses on the panel. It may have

happened at full committee.

Chairman WAXMAN. I am being informed that it was at the full

committee and not at your subcommittee that we were denied witnesses.

At any rate, we don’t believe in denying witnesses; and we do

have your witnesses here.

Mr. ISSA. I want to thank you for that, after your three witnesses, that our witness will get up in the third panel. Let’s just

say let’s go forward from here, and I am sure what we did to you

will never happen back to us and vice versa.

Chairman WAXMAN. I don’t think Mr. Cooney, Mr. Deutsch, and

Mr. Connaughton are my three witnesses, but they are witnesses

that are appropriately here because they worked for this administration and we want to hear from them why we have this odd situation where nonscientists, even—how old were you at the time, Mr.

Deutsch?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Twenty-three, twenty-four.

Chairman WAXMAN. And you were telling Mr. Hansen’s staff that

he couldn’t go out and make public statements.

Mr. DEUTSCH. I wouldn’t go that far. I did relay information from

my higher-ups from NASA about particular instances.

Chairman WAXMAN. Particular instances.

Mr. DEUTSCH. Sure. Particular interviews.

Chairman WAXMAN. That he would not be able to do.

Mr. DEUTSCH. You are speaking to one interview in particular,

and that is NPR, and we offered them three very qualified guests.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, we’ll get into that with other Members.

The time now is yielded to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am interested in trying to get at the atmosphere that has created what would normally be a pretty pristine, straightforward atmosphere in the scientific agency. I want to congratulate Mr.

Deutsch because, despite his tender years and perhaps his eduVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00353 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cation, he was able to speak authoritatively as the spokesman on

occasion for the agency. One of those statements, I would like to

ask you about.

It relates to an e-mail to a NASA contractor of October 17th. I

am going to read part of it. You wanted him to add the word ‘‘theory’’ to Big Bang. I don’t have any problem with that. We talk

about evolution as a theory, although I am astounded by the lack

of understanding about what the word ‘‘scientific’’ theory means.

In any case, I don’t think anybody would have any problem with

that. But you went on to offer further opinions, and I am giving

you what you said in that e-mail now. ‘‘It is not NASA’s place nor

should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence

of the universe that discounts intelligent design by the Creator.

‘‘The other half of the argument that is notably absent from any

of these three portal submissions, this is more than a science issue.

It is a religious issue. I would hate to think that young people

would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.’’

Mr. Deutsch, you then were relaying the notion that, in order to

talk about the Big Bang theory, NASA would give or say words—

either say words or give some deference to intelligent design.

Mr. DEUTSCH. No, ma’am. It is important to note this e-mail was

between me and Mr.—

Ms. NORTON. Excuse me?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I only sent this e-mail to Flint. It was not a statement on national policy or anything like that. It was simply—the

bulk of that is my personal opinion, my personal religious views.

These I understood Mr. Wild to share. He is a Christian, and so

am I, and we had talked about that.

Ms. NORTON. I said, it is not NASA’s place, nor should it be. So

if it was your own religious views, why did you cite NASA’s place?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Well, again—

Ms. NORTON. A friend of yours. Is this person that you are emailing to a friend of yours?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, ma’am. I’d agree with you that it was—work

e-mail is a silly place to put this. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

But if you go down to the bottom of the e-mail, you will read the

sentence, ‘‘Please edit these stories to reflect that the Big Bang is

but theory on how the universe began. That is the only change I

really want.’’

And you will see that is all I was really asking for, that the word

‘‘theory’’ be added to Big Bang, because that was the AP style

guidelines of 2005.

Ms. NORTON. This perhaps explains why when you—this kind of

personal opinion lurking somewhere, even on e-mails, in correspondence, official correspondence between a representative and

a contractor, may explain what you mean when you apparently allege that there was a cultural war in NASA.

You were interviewed last February on a Texas A&M radio program; and apparently referring to the scientists at NASA, you said,

‘‘This is an agenda. It is a culture war agenda. They are out to get

Republicans. They’re out to get Christians. They’re out to get people who are helping Bush. Anybody they perceive as not sharing

their agenda, they’re out to get.’’ Who are you referring to?

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Mr. DEUTSCH. Well, Ms. Norton, I have to say, as you may imagine, I was very emotional, very upset, very distraught about the

way things went down.

Ms. NORTON. Do you still believe that?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I wouldn’t go that far today. No. I think that I,

frankly, said a lot of that stuff out of anger. It was just an emotional time for me, and I wouldn’t say all of those things today.

Ms. NORTON. Were you sitting next to Dr. Hansen there—and I

am going to allow you to—since you say that is the kind of thing

you would not say today, you said, at the same time, he wants to

demean the President, he wants to demean the administration, create a false impression the administration is watering down science

and lying to the public, and that is patently false. And Dr. Hansen

is sitting beside you now. Would you like to say anything to him

about such words that were spoken?

Mr. ISSA. Regular order. I don’t believe that our rules call for a

dialog between witnesses.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s order is not well taken. It

is the gentlelady’s time.

Ms. NORTON. I am simply asking, in light of the fact—and I ask

the question only because I want to give Mr. Deutsch the opportunity, and he said words like this were uttered as a matter when

he was highly emotional. Those words also were uttered in this

case naming renowned scientists at NASA. I am not asking you to

apologize to him. But rather than simply reading this statement

and saying did you say this, because I know you said it, I am asking you, having said something like this in light of your prior statement that these kinds of statements were made as an emotional

manner, in light of that, what would you like to say to Dr. Hansen

since you happen to be sitting beside him right now?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I think we all agree that he’s been critical of the

administration. But, beyond that, I would just restate that I

wouldn’t necessarily make those statements—comments today, no,

ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. I appreciate that answer.

I yield back my time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Before you yield it back, may I ask, how was

he critical of the administration?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I believe the things—you start with the allegations

of censorship and—you know, starting with that I think is a good

place.

Chairman WAXMAN. So Dr. Hansen is being critical of the administration by not being pleased with your telling people in his office

that he can’t go and speak certain places. Is that being unfair to

the administration?

Mr. DEUTSCH. He just made several allegations about censorship

by political appointees, allegations I don’t agree with him on. So I

think it is fair to say that is being critical of the administration,

sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, if we look at some of the changes Mr.

Cooney proposed, they were changes in substance of what the scientists were recommending be in these global warming climate

change positions. And, Dr. Hansen, I think your criticism is they

were substantive changes; is that correct?

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Mr. HANSEN. Yes, that is right.

Chairman WAXMAN. Now if there’s substantive changes coming

from a political appointee who used to be at the American Petroleum Institute and raises the question in his mind, and I think

anybody’s mind, Democrat and Republican, that maybe somebody

who is not a scientist, who is a lawyer, who used to work for the

Petroleum Institute, who is a political appointee is trying to superimpose his views.

Now you, on the other hand, were a public affairs representative

at the age of 23; and you were telling Dr. Hansen’s staff to tell him

that the higher-ups didn’t want him to be on National Public

Radio; isn’t that true?

Mr. DEUTSCH. That is fair.

Chairman WAXMAN. Isn’t that interference?

Mr. DEUTSCH. No, I wouldn’t go as far to say it was interference.

We had taken that request. I took it to the ninth floor and discussed it with the higher-ups. They thought it over and said, hey,

you know, we’ve got three other qualified people, Dr. Colleen Hartman, who was mentioned, Dr. Mary Cleave and Dr. Jack Kaye; and

those three were offered.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Shays, do you want your time now or do you want—

Mr. SHAYS. How many more Members do you have on your side?

OK. I am going to take it now.

I weep that this administration didn’t seize this issue and claim

it as its own, and this issue being climate changes for real, and

mankind has had an impact on it. Are we thinking what this administration could have done about this issue? So I just want to be

on record as saying that.

I think there are two inconvenient truths in this world right now,

one that unfortunately too many of my Republicans don’t want to

deal with, and that’s what Al Gore talks about, and the other is

what others have talked about, about the Islamist threat that too

many of my Democratic colleagues don’t want to deal with or are

in denial. That’s what I believe. It’s my view.

Having said this, when I listen to these hearings, I get drawn

into believing that there are setups here and there are

misimpressions galore, and some of them frankly, Mr. Cooney, are

the result of having someone with your background and your position. You instantly lose credibility. Not your fault. It’s your background. I might have thought twice about taking on that assignment because of that.

But when we had Mr. Piltz here last week, or 2 weeks ago, he

was talking as if scientists—his reports were being changed, as if

he was a scientist. I still read in the newspaper that he’s a scientist. He’s not a scientist.

Dr. Hansen, you’re a scientist. Now let me ask you about the

Academy’s report in 2001; not what you believe, not what you’re

convinced of, not what you think the science says, did the National

Academy report from 2001 say conclusively that global warming

was for real, case closed?

Mr. HANSEN. I would say yes. By the way, I was an author, one

of the authors of that report.

Mr. SHAYS. You’re saying yes to what?

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Mr. HANSEN. Global warming is real.

Mr. SHAYS. The report in 2001 said that? Not now.

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. We knew that global warming was real in

2001, absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. You knew it was real. So what did the report say

that I could turn to or you could turn to me and say case closed,

issued decided?

Mr. HANSEN. We had a sentence which was just referred to, it

said: Greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere as a

result of human activity, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

It is a very straightforward sentence. It connects cause and effect, increasing greenhouse gasses, increasing global temperature.

That’s a very strong statement.

Mr. SHAYS. Nothing that says this issue has been decided, there’s

no question about it, and we need to deal with it.

Mr. HANSEN. The report certainly concludes that we need to deal

with it, yes. There are always aspects of the problem which we

need to work on more, but this is a very strong statement.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s funny, it doesn’t strike me as what I would think

is a strong statement. What would strike me as a strong statement

is to say the issue has been decided, there is no doubt in our

minds, this is the issue, it’s caused by humans, and we need to get

on with it. When I hear that statement, it’s saying an issue as of

fact as if it’s, in my judgment, part of the problem, but not all of

the problem.

I am left with the belief that climate change, there’s no debate

anymore, and people would say it in a much more definitive way.

Mr. Cooney, how would you respond to my question?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. I want you to talk close to the mic. Both of you are

not speaking as loud as I would like.

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I would refer to you the quotation on

page 17 which is entitled: The effect of human activities.

Mr. SHAYS. Is this in the 2001?

Mr. COONEY. The June 2001 National Academy Report, and it

speaks to the connection to human activities and it says: ‘‘because

of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent

in the climate record and the uncertainties and the time histories

of the various forcing agents, particularly aerosols, a causal linkage

between the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and

the observed climate changes during the 20th Century cannot be

unequivocally established.’’

It goes on to say that—

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Hansen, is that just designed to confuse people

like me or is that designed by—sounds like an Alan Greenspan

statement.

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I had it before me, and I did it at

my desk when I was at the White House, it talked about major uncertainties with respect to clouds, aerosols, the natural carbon

cycle, the natural water cycle, the difference between temperature

record at the surface and in the troposphere that was measured by

satellites.

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It talked about the lack of a global integrated observation system. A lot of the southern hemisphere was not really routinely observed in a climate sense in a long-term sense in manners and

using methodologies that are consistent with the way climate is

measured—

Mr. SHAYS. How do you respond to that, Dr. Hansen?

Mr. HANSEN. If you pick out individual phrases or sentences and

compare them, you need to really look at the entire report. It was

a report which made a very strong statement. The White House

had asked for a clarification because they were uncertain as to

whether they should accept the IPCC document. There were some

people who were questioning the validity, the accuracy of the IPCC

report.

I believe that was a primary reason for requesting the National

Academy to look at the problem. They came out with quite a clear

statement.

Mr. SHAYS. My time has run out. Let me just ask Mr. Cooney

just to finish his comment.

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, at page 22 of the report, on the IPCC

report, when it spoke to it, it said: Climate projections will always

be far from perfect. Confidence limits, probabilistic information

with their bases should always be considered. Without them, the

IPCC summary for policymakers could give an impression that the

science of global warming is settled, even though many uncertainties still remain.

That is language from the National Academy Of Sciences.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll conclude. Dr. Hansen, I’m not a scientist, but

when I hear that I am not left with a report that says no, debate

is over.

Mr. HANSEN. No, depends on what you mean by debate is over.

The fact that greenhouse gasses are increasing and the world is

getting warmer and there is a causal connection between them,

that debate is over.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for

your testimony here today. Mr. Deutsch, I’d like to followup a little

bit on the questions that were asked of you earlier. As I understand, you were a public affairs officer at NASA.

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. And when you arrived at NASA did you have

any expertise in the area of global climate change?

Mr. DEUTSCH. No, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Would you agree that the American people

should have the benefit of the best scientific views within the government with respect to climate change?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Sure.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Who ultimately paid your salary there, our salaries, everyone’s salaries in public service?

Mr. DEUTSCH. That would be the taxpayers, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Would you agree that given that big investment that they make in our scientific investigation that again

should have the very best giving them their opinions on this issue?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Sure.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Now I want to look at this issue of sort of the

political apparatus sort of governing who can say what with respect

to the science on global climate change and I want to look through

this lens of this NPR interview which you mentioned before. We

have a couple e-mails with respect to the back and forth in the political apparatus with respect to how that decision was made. I

don’t know if we’re going to put them on the screens or you have

copies of them in front of you.

If you could make sure that the witness has copies of these emails from you.

An e-mail request came in from NPR to Dr. Hansen’s office, is

that right?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, yes. Then they sent it to us.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. As you said today in your testimony, you then

discussed that request for an interview with the ‘‘9th floor,’’ as you

describe it in this e-mail of December 8th. It’s on the second page

of your packet at the top. We discussed it on the 9th floor.

And it was decided that we would like you to handle this interview; you, referring to Colleen, right?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, sir. Colleen and also Ms. Cleave and Mr.

Kaye were all considered.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. My question is who was it that you discussed

this with on the 9th floor and made the decision it would not be

Dr. Hansen?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Specifically that would be Press Secretary Dean

Acosta.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. So the 9th floor was the press secretary.

Mr. DEUTSCH. That 9th floor, that’s sort of NASA slang for senior

leadership at headquarters; they’re all on the 9th floor. The head

of public affairs as well.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. But you meant him specifically in this e-mail?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes. Yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. There’s another e-mail on the next page that

talks about our main concern is ‘‘hitting our messages and not getting dragged down into any discussions we shouldn’t get into.’’

What were you worried that Dr. Hansen was going to get into

with respect to the science of global climate change?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I wasn’t worried about anything. Dr. Hansen

would say about the science of global climate change. We had some

media practices that we’d been using up to this time that I think

even Dr. Hansen would tell you he didn’t always follow, and so I

think that was a concern that the 9th floor had.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. It wasn’t his immediate—if you go up to the

e-mail above that, it says when asked how you’re going to describe

to Dr. Hansen, why he shouldn’t be doing this interview, according

to Costa they say right here: Tell them your boss wants to do.

His boss was Colleen, right? They didn’t ask to do this. In other

words, Costa said go ask them to do it. Isn’t that the way it happened?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. So it wasn’t that his bosses wanted to do it,

it was the top press people said we don’t want Dr. Hansen to do

this interview, isn’t that right?

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Mr. DEUTSCH. It was just Dean who said that and again that was

because we’d had some practices that he had not always been following as far as reporting the interviews etc., and those were some

of his frustrations he relayed to me. We did have a practice known

as the right of first refusal in which the senior people could do

these interviews.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right. But the decision was made at the top

by the press people that he wouldn’t be doing that, isn’t that right?

Mr. DEUTSCH. In this one case, yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. In fact, one looks like Mary and Colleen are

not sure they even want to do it. The point is you made a decision

at the top press level that you didn’t want Dr. Hansen to be giving

this interview because you were concerned about hitting your message and you were concerned Dr. Hansen wasn’t going to hit your

message, isn’t that right?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I can’t speak for the former press secretary, you’d

have to ask him about that. But that was what was relayed to me,

sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. It’s your words here, hitting your message.

Isn’t that right?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, sir.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Isn’t this the definition of political minding of

an expert. In other words, were any of the people you were offering

up more of an expert on global climate change than Dr. Hansen?

Mr. DEUTSCH. I don’t know as far as their level of expertise. I

know the head of NASA’s science mission directorate and the second in line are some pretty good people to get offered an interview

with, I would say.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Dr. Hansen, is there anybody else at NASA,

or any of these other individuals they were proposing for the interview, people who had more expertise in the science of global climate change than you?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, I’m not going to denigrate anyone.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I’m not asking you to denigrate, I’m talking

about in terms of experience.

Mr. HANSEN. In terms of experience, no.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. As you look at these e-mails and based on your

concerns at the time, doesn’t this appear to be a perfect example

of exactly the concern that you have raised, which is political interference in the ability of scientists who are paid for by funds from

taxpayers to be able to present a factual account of global climate

change.

Mr. HANSEN. Absolutely. The thing is, this is, however, a very

rare case of where you have it on paper. It’s going on all the time,

but most of the people doing that are more experienced than

George was, and they won’t make the mistake of putting the thing

on paper like that.

I pointed out, for example, that press releases were going to the

White House, science press release were going to the White House

for editing. But the process, they’re careful not to have memos like

this that describe the process.

It’s very unfortunate. We developed this politicalization of

science. As I mentioned in my opening comments, public affairs ofVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00360 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fices should be staffed by professionals, not by political appointees,

otherwise they become offices of propaganda.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen. Your time has

expired.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Following up—

Chairman WAXMAN. We’re proceeding with the second round.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Deutsch, maybe I’ll start with you. You couldn’t

seem to come up with an answer to that question of related to anything in the way of disliking the Bush administration or being political for Dr. Hansen. Are you aware that Dr. Hansen has called

the Bush press office the office of propaganda, or, ‘‘It seems more

like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States.’’

Are those the kinds of comments you might have been referring

to when you were frustrated. Were you aware of those comments?

Mr. DEUTSCH. Yes, sir, we were aware of those comments, and

those are unfortunate.

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate your candor. I’m sorry you didn’t come up

with those in real-time, because I think that does go to the question of your youthful indiscretions in perhaps, in how you handled

the senior scientist. I think you have owned up to maybe not being

up to the job.

Dr. Hansen, are those kind of comments appropriate for somebody who’s been on the Federal payroll, who’s had your science

paid for for 3 decades? Are those appropriate things to say about

the Bush administration?

Mr. HANSEN. I think that it was—that was in reference to the

fact that scientists were being asked to not speak to reporters, to

report before—to tell reporters I can’t speak to you, I have to get

permission, and I have to get someone on the phone with me to listen in on the conversation. That’s getting to seem a lot like the old

Soviet Union to me.

Mr. ISSA. The reference to Nazi Germany because they want to

have somebody who’s able to say that the doctor did or didn’t say

this to a reporter when it later comes out in print, is that Nazi

Germany? Nazi Germany, I think, is a pretty strong statement,

wouldn’t you say?

Mr. HANSEN. I was referring to the constraints on speaking to

the media.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen—

Mr. HANSEN. It violates the constitution, freedom of speech.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, first of all, when you work for somebody,

the question of when you will speak on behalf of that entity is not

a constitutional question, as you and I both know. You were not

being asked by public broadcasting because you happened to be a

smart guy with a good suit, you were being asked because of your

position at NASA.

Now I come back to this again—

Mr. HANSEN. I don’t believe that’s the case.

Mr. ISSA. You have over 1,400 opportunities that you have

availed yourself to, and yet you call it being stifled. I’m thrilled—

Mr. HANSEN. Those cases occurred after the NASA administrator

stepped forward and said I should be allowed to speak, not before.

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If you look at some of those memos, you will find that they were

intent on me not speaking.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, you’re saying if I went back to 2001, 2002,

2003, 2004, that I would find dramatically less quotes from you?

Mr. HANSEN. In many cases—

Mr. ISSA. Please. Just would I find dramatically less, yes or no.

Mr. HANSEN. You would find less. I don’t know how you define

dramatically.

Mr. ISSA. 1,400 quotes. Would I find that you were only allowed

to speak once, twice, five times, 50 times?

Mr. HANSEN. I’m an American and I exercise my right of free

speech. If public affairs people tell me I can’t do that and I know

that they’re violating the constitution, I ignore them.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, isn’t it true that when you speak, you’re

speaking on Federal paid time, when you travel, you’re being paid

by the Federal Government to travel. Isn’t that true.

Mr. HANSEN. Not always.

Mr. ISSA. Isn’t it normally true?

Mr. HANSEN. Normally it is, yes.

Mr. ISSA. So your employer, and your employer happens to be the

American taxpayer, but they’re sending you at government expense

to these speaking engagements.

Mr. HANSEN. That’s exactly the point. I should be able, for the

sake of the taxpayers, I should be able to—they should be availed

of my expertise. I shouldn’t be required to parrot some company

line. I should give the best information I have.

Mr. ISSA. Dr. Hansen, it’s very clear that you do say what you

believe each time you speak.

Let me—do you want to put that up on the board, the demo.

Dr. Hansen, you speak, and you speak everywhere regularly, and

you speak on the Federal dollar. I guess my question is do you

think that, in fact, the thousands of scientists all over NASA

should have that same right to travel places and speak.

Before you answer that let me ask a question because I appreciate public broadcasting, but is every speaking engagement the

one that should be appropriately having Dr. Hansen on it. Isn’t it

true that when you’re speaking to the general public often somebody who’s a perfectly good speaker, knows a lot less about the

science would be equally good to answer the basic questions of climate change?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. I welcome that. I accept only a very small

fraction of the invitations. It’s impossible. I would rather do

science. That’s always been my preference.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, if I could just close here.

Dr. Hansen, I appreciate the science you do, I appreciate the

work you have done for a very long time and I hope you continue

doing it. I would only say that I hope that the $250,000 you took

from the Heinz Foundation, the campaigning you did for Senator

Kerry for his Presidential race, doesn’t influence your chafing at

this administration any differently than it might for the next administration and that your effort to get more dollars for climate

change is done in a constructive fashion under the rest of this administration and the next.

I yield back.

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Chairman WAXMAN. I think the gentleman is smearing Dr. Hansen.

Mr. ISSA. Are you moving—

Chairman WAXMAN. I think you’re smearing Dr. Hansen’s reputation when you allege that he’s an activist Democrat and got that

award, the Heinz Award because he’s a Democrat.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, are you making a motion?

Chairman WAXMAN. I’m not making a motion, I’m making a comment.

Mr. ISSA. Are you recognizing yourself?

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, I will recognize you. I think you’re

smearing him. Do you want to comment on that?

Mr. ISSA. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. I think you’re being unfair to him.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I hope that this gentleman’s political

activism which is well defined is not, in fact, affecting his ability

to recognize that this Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has funded

a great deal of the research, with over 1,400 appearances in that

year, and I have no doubt nearly the same for each of the previous

years, that Dr. Hansen, in fact, in his effort to get more money for

climate change, which I commend, would recognize that in every

administration, he’s going to have the same chafing and that it not

be chafing more at the Bush administration, which he clearly dislikes.

You don’t compare the Bush administration to Nazi Germany,

and I’m sure the chairman would agree, that you do not compare

anyone to Nazi Germany unless you have real problems beyond

just disagreement on policy.

Mr. HANSEN. Could I correct his statement and comment on

them? First of all, I am not a Democrat, I’m a registered Independent.

Mr. ISSA. The chairman called you a Democrat, not me.

Mr. HANSEN. Second, the time when I said I was going to vote

for John Kerry, I actually said I would prefer to vote for John

McCain but he’s not on the ballot, and then I explained the reason

that I would vote for John Kerry was because of my concern about

climate change and the fact that it was not being addressed by the

Bush administration. And I thought that Kerry would do a better

job with that. It had nothing to do with politics. In fact, I have

often said my favorite politician was John Heinz, who was a Republican and who gave equal weight to economic considerations

and environmental considerations, and it was a great tragedy when

he lost his life in a small plane crash.

The Nazi Germany thing was completely with regard to—had

nothing to do with President Bush; it was the constraints on scientists, their ability to speak to the public and to the media. And

when you tell scientists that they can’t speak, they’ve got to hang

up on the reporter and report this and allow the right of first refusal so someone else can speak for you, it doesn’t ring true. It’s

not the American way. And it was not constitutional.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you, both of you. Let me take my

time here.

Dr. Hansen, have you had any examples of people working in the

public relations office within this administration that wanted to

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help you further as leading scientist in this global warming the

field the opportunity to talk about the issue?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, you know, there actually are lots of opportunities to speak to the public, and the hard thing is to keep enough

time to do science.

Chairman WAXMAN. You didn’t think Mr. Deutsch any time was

trying to help you get your views out.

Mr. HANSEN. No, they didn’t.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me go on to other things in the time I

have. Mr. Cooney, I guess what we’re trying to figure is whether

what drove the policy and is driving the policy of this administration on global warming and climate change is the science or whether it’s something called the politically correct science. And as I look

at the edits that you proposed, I think there were—

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Chairman, may I ask.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman is out of order.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Chairman, did you recognize yourself for additional 5 minutes before the rest of the panel has the chance to

question for 5 minutes.

Chairman WAXMAN. No, I did not. I recognized Mr. Issa first for

the second round.

You proposed 181 edits to the strategic plan, 113 edits to the

other global warming reports, there are 3 reports. I guess what I

am trying to find out is whether all of your proposed edits moved

in one direction, which was to increase uncertainty in global warming science. Would that be a fair statement or an unfair statement?

Mr. COONEY. I think the fair statement would be that my comments were aligned with the findings of the National Academy of

Sciences in June 2001 as emphasized by the President in his policy

book in chapter 3 on June 11, 2001.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Cooney, you had a senior position at the

White House, but there were officials at the White House who were

more senior to you. Your immediate boss was James Connaughton,

chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Was Mr. Connaughton aware of your role in proposed edits for climate change reports?

Mr. COONEY. He knew that they were reviewing reports as they

came in ordinarily from OMB for review.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did he personally review your edits?

Mr. COONEY. No, not most.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, his boss is behind him and available.

Chairman WAXMAN. Excuse me, I have the time. I didn’t interrupt you. I waited until you finished and then I interrupted you.

Did you discuss the edits with him?

Mr. COONEY. No, not ordinarily.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did he give you any instructions about how

any of these three documents should be edited?

Mr. COONEY. No. He understood that my objective was to align

these communications with the administration’s stated policy.

Chairman WAXMAN. And the administration’s stated policy was

different than what the scientists were saying in those documents.

Mr. COONEY. It wasn’t even scientists who were saying it in

these documents. It could have been budget people from the agencies who were just drafting up reports, what they wanted to see in

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next year’s budget. The material was not a platform for the presentation of original scientific research. These were budgeting and—

Chairman WAXMAN. These were statements of science that you

changed, recommended changes.

Mr. COONEY. Well, they came from Mr. Pills himself, who was an

editor who said he received summaries from agencies.

Chairman WAXMAN. Sounds like yours.

Mr. COONEY. It’s not clear they derived to scientists about what

I reviewed.

Chairman WAXMAN. Let me go on. Were other officials in the

White House besides Mr. Connaughton and others on the CEQ

staff with whom you discussed climate changes, in other words,

were there other people in the White House, not just people at the

CEQ?

Mr. COONEY. Absolutely.

Chairman WAXMAN. Who were the other people at the White

House outside of CEQ that you discussed this with?

Mr. COONEY. It really depends upon the issue, but the Office of

Science and Technology Policy obviously led by Dr. Marburger;

Kathy Olsen was the Senate-confirmed director for science, and she

had a leadership role.

Chairman WAXMAN. How about Andrew Card? Did you ever have

a conversation with Andrew Card about it?

Mr. COONEY. I did not.

Chairman WAXMAN. How about Karl Rove?

Mr. COONEY. I did not.

Chairman WAXMAN. Kevin O’Donovan? Do you know who he is?

Mr. COONEY. Yes. He was a staff person in the Office of the Vice

President, and he and I would speak on occasion. He had the portfolio for energy and natural resources and environment issues, as

I understood it.

Chairman WAXMAN. What did you talk to him about?

Mr. COONEY. He was a colleague in the White House. He was a

colleague and we would talk occasionally as a lot of us would talk

occasionally, pick up the phone, talk about different things. We

were all going to a lot of the same meetings in some cases.

Chairman WAXMAN. So you had numerous conversations with

him?

Mr. COONEY. Sure. As I did with people in OSTP, OMB, the

Council of Economic Advisors. All of the White House offices, really. The domestic policy council.

Chairman WAXMAN. When you talked to Mr. O’Donovan, were

they in the Vice President’s office or your office?

Mr. COONEY. We usually spoke by phone, really. Our offices are

on Lafayette Square in townhouses and his office is obviously in

the Eisenhower executive office building.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did the Vice President’s office, Mr.

O’Donovan or anyone else give you any directions as to what they

thought you ought to be doing?

Mr. COONEY. No, not directions. We would compare notes. We

would consult as colleagues, but I didn’t receive direction from

them. It was really, if you look at how internal White House documents are approved, for example, the Office of the Vice President

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visors, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, each office independently reviews communications, and so we had an independent

role for review, they had an independent role.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did they ever suggest to you that there may

be some value in highlighting the uncertainty of some of these

global climate change issues?

Mr. COONEY. I don’t recall specific conversations. We would talk

about matters that were pending. The development of the 10-year

strategic plan obviously was occurring in the spring of 2003. They

were a reviewing office. We would have had conversations. But I

don’t remember specifically what was said.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you. Mr. Cannon.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that

Mr. Cannon have 10 minutes. It would sort of balance the time.

Chairman WAXMAN. I don’t know that it would balance the time.

But let’s do it. There are more Democrats here.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Unless anybody is going to ask for 10 minutes for someone else. Mr. Shays might say he’s entitled to more

time.

Mr. SHAYS. What is my member suggesting?

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Souder might think he should have

more time. I think they’re complaining that I spoke too much without the timer on. Isn’t that right?

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman—

Chairman WAXMAN. When I reacted to what I thought was a bit

of a smear.

Mr. ISSA. I was just talking about your 5 minutes you spoke at

random, really about 8.

Chairman WAXMAN. I think I have been fair. I have let some

Members run over and I think I’ve tried to be as fair as possible.

I don’t interrupt people while there’s an answer being given.

Mr. ISSA. I appreciate that.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. By the way, I appreciate the fairness. This really has to be about getting information

and understanding and not so much wrangling.

Dr. Hansen, in the process here, I’m learning to understand you,

I think, a little better, and I actually think you’re very straightforward. Mr. Cooney obviously thinks very highly of you and your

science.

You indicated here you prefer Senator McCain for President,

would have preferred him in 2001. You supported Kerry because of

his positions, I believe you indicated, on the environment. But the

guy you would really most like to support is Senator Heinz. Seems

to me the most important thing in your political life is how people

are dealing with this threat to the world that might derive—

Mr. HANSEN. That was one of the two factors. The other one that

I pointed out is obviously in spades today and that is the need for

campaign finance reform. Senator McCain has made efforts at that,

and they haven’t, as you know, been fully successful. I think we

really need to solve that problem and then we’ll have a lot easier

time.

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Mr. CANNON. That one might be more difficult to solve than global warming. That said, you talked about the government being evil

or you talked about Nazi Germany, which I take it you view as

meaning that this what you later described as constraints on scientists speaking, I take it you view that constraint as evil.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes. You know, you have heard of our first amendment. This is the United States and we do have freedom of speech

here.

Mr. CANNON. Of course, Mr. Issa has pointed out that you have

a lot of opportunity to speak, the question is where the burden of

your duty with the government should constrain and go through a

process as opposed to what you do in the rest of your life.

Now, what I understand here is that your greatest concern here

is you don’t want constrained the ability of scientists to help

bridge—I think you referred to bridging the gap of understanding

by the public of how great the threat of climate change is.

Mr. HANSEN. Right.

Mr. CANNON. That’s not equivocal on your part.

Mr. HANSEN. As I mentioned, I think the public is not yet fully

informed about the dangers.

Mr. CANNON. Any attempt to interfere with your ability to tell

the public about that is evil and would be represented by a Nazi

Germany-type approach.

Mr. HANSEN. No. I was referring to the constraints on free

speech.

Mr. CANNON. That’s right, but the free speech you’re most concerned about, indicated by your politics and by your other statements, is about climate change.

Mr. HANSEN. There’s no politics.

Mr. CANNON. You talked about Mr. McCain and Mr. Kerry and

Mr. Heinz all being attractive. Let me finish my question because

I want you to respond. You support those people largely because of

their position on climate change, with the exception of Mr. McCain

who you support also because of his views on funding of politics.

Isn’t it true that the most motivating factor here is the science of

climate change?

Mr. HANSEN. No, no. I have the same rights as all Americans.

Mr. CANNON. We’re not talking about your rights, we’re talking

about what you’re characterizing as evil.

Mr. HANSEN. I was characterizing as evil the constraints on free

speech. That’s all.

Mr. CANNON. On all free speech or just on free speech related to

climate change and you?

Mr. HANSEN. Any free speech.

Mr. CANNON. In other words, what I want to know, you view people on the other side of the climate change argument as evil?

Mr. HANSEN. No, no I have never said that.

Mr. CANNON. You did call those people Nazi Germany.

Mr. HANSEN. You have taken out of context a statement about

the constraints on free speech. It had nothing to do with personalities.

Mr. CANNON. But it had everything to do with debate.

Mr. HANSEN. Of any particular people.

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Mr. CANNON. It had everything to do with the debate on global

warming and you’ve got people today characterizing Mr. Cooney as

a bad person because he was hired by API before he went to the

CEQ.

Mr. HANSEN. Did I characterize him?

Mr. CANNON. No, you have people in this town doing that.

Mr. HANSEN. Then you should ask them about that.

Mr. CANNON. No, we’re not bantying words here. The question is,

are you mostly concerned about climate change and your ability to

talk about that, and you characterize as people on the other side

of the argument as evil because they’re confusing the issue as you

said earlier.

Mr. HANSEN. I have never done that. I don’t know where you get

this.

Mr. CANNON. I think I’m quoting you pretty much directly.

Mr. HANSEN. I didn’t characterize anybody as evil.

Mr. CANNON. I used the characterization of evil, you used the

characterization of Nazi Germany, which most Americans view as

equivalent to evil in our society.

Mr. HANSEN. I was referring to the constraints on free speech,

not to a person.

Mr. CANNON. The constraints on free speech, not what?

Mr. HANSEN. I was referring to the constraints on free speech,

not to a person.

Mr. CANNON. Except that you’re blaming the constraints as coming from this administration by way of policy. In fairness, you characterized this as a developing issue over a series of administrations, not just this one, in your earlier statements. But you were

characterizing this administration as being like Nazi Germany, and

those reflected a view that what is going on is evil. Now you’re trying to narrow that evil to the constraints on speech, not to your

constraint on speech about climate change.

Mr. HANSEN. I was referring to constraints of free speech of government scientists, which is not confined; not confined to me. I referred specifically to some of my colleagues and in other agencies

like NOAA and EPA.

Mr. CANNON. How about other issues other than climate change?

Mr. HANSEN. I don’t have—yeah, in fact, I have been told about

National Institutes of Health scientists who have felt very constrained on their ability to speak freely. I think this is dangerous

in our politics.

Mr. CANNON. If the chairman would just indulge me. We pay—

we tax people, we take money out of the pockets of Americans and

we give it to scientists, and we ought to, at least, direct where that

science goes. The difference between directing where our science

goes and what we search and free speech is not a simple thing and

is subject to direction by policy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Yarmuth.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Cooney, are you

familiar with a memo that you sent to Kevin O’Donovan of the Vice

President’s office of April 23, 2003. I’ll try to remind you, the subject the Soon and Baliunas paper on global climate change.

361

Mr. TUOHEY. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. We’ve not seen the

memo. We would like to see a copy of it before any answers are

given. We were assured we would receive all documents before

questions were advanced. Can we see it, please?

Mr. BOLING. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. As the chairman—

Chairman WAXMAN. Could you identify yourself.

Mr. BOLING. Yes. I’m Edward Boling, deputy general counsel for

the Council of Environmental Quality. I would simply notify the

chairman that the document in question as referenced in Chairman

Connaughton’s February 9, 2007 letter to this committee reciting

Executive Privilege—Executive Office of the President, excuse me,

correct myself, sensitivities with regard to that document. It is an

internal document from the council on environmental quality to the

Office of the Vice President.

Chairman WAXMAN. This is a document that was requested by

this committee, isn’t that correct?

Mr. BOLING. Yes, Your Honor. It is one—yes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. You can call me Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BOLING. It is one of—not my usual court of practice. It is one

of the documents referenced in the chairman’s request of CEQ on

February—

Chairman WAXMAN. So this document is being withheld based on

Executive Privilege, is that what you’re asserting?

Mr. BOLING. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, the document

has not been provided to the committee. We have not made any affirmative decision with regard to its withholding. However, it is

subject of our ongoing efforts to accommodate this committee’s

needs, and it has been shown to committee staff as part of that accommodation and its status is part of our ongoing discussions of its

status and whether we would provide it to the committee as part

of this rolling document production.

Chairman WAXMAN. I thank you for that clarification.

We don’t have a document to show you, Mr. Cooney, but the gentleman is recognized to pursue whatever questions he wants to

pursue.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will proceed to read

excerpts of this. This, again, is a memo from you to Kevin

O’Donovan of the Vice President’s office: The recent paper of SoonBaliunas contradicts a dogmatic view held by many in the climate

science community that the past century was the warmest in the

past millennium and signals of human-induced global warming.

Then you say: We plan to begin to refer to this study in administration communications on the science of global climate change. In

fact, CEQ just inserted a reference to it in the final draft chapter

on global climate contained in EPA’s first state of the environment

report.

Then you go on to say: It represents an opening to potentially invigorate debate on the actual climate history of the past 1,000

years.

The Soon-Baliunas paper is a public document, is that correct?

Mr. COONEY. Yes, Congressman.

Mr. YARMUTH. It was funded by the API, is that correct?

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Mr. COONEY. It was funded by NASA, NOAA, the Air Force, and

I understood 5 percent funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

Mr. YARMUTH. So API was a partial funder of this report which

you have inserted into—you said you have inserted into this report

that we are discussing to invigorate the debate.

Let me continue to discuss the EPA’s report on the environment

and have you, if you will, turn to exhibit F. Would you say that

your role—you have already said earlier that your role was to advance the administration’s policies. That was your sole role.

But in terms of handling information and making the edits that

you have made, how would you characterize—would you characterize that you were, and forgive me for using this term, trying to reflect a fair and balanced perspective on what the science on climate

change is?

Mr. COONEY. I would say that’s exactly what my objective was,

to be fair and balanced.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you. This document, exhibit F, is the EPA’s

staff report to Christine Todd Whitman. On page 2 of this document it says: The text—these are after your recommended suggestions, edits—the text no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change. A few examples are conclusions of the

NRC are discarded, multiple studies indicate recent warming is unusual, the thousand year temperature record is deleted, and emphasis is given to a recent limited analysis, I think there is a word

missing, that supports the administration’s message. Natural variability is used to mass scientific consensus that most of the increase is likely due to human activity.

Then it goes on to say: Numerous technical details incongruous

with the rest of the report on the environment make the section

confusing and seem more uncertain rather than presenting balanced conclusions about what scientists do and do not know.

Are you concerned at all that career professionals at EPA

thought that these edits actually were so biased that incorporating

them would make the report scientifically inaccurate?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, the memorandum refers to comments not only provided by CEQ but provided also by the Office of

Science and Technical Policy, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Energy, the Council of Economic Advisors. A

lot of offices had concern with not only the way EPA was characterizing climate change in a 4-page summary, we were also concerned,

I think, at the same time that the 10-year strategic plan was being

developed and there had been a 1,300 person workshop in December 2002 at which scientists from 40 countries came and commented on the 10-year strategic plan.

We thought that was a fuller—Dr. Marburger has spoken to this

publicly, and you would get his statement from OSTP, he’s the director, but he thought, I think, and he has said in the aftermath

that a fuller exposition of the science of climate change was in the

10-year strategic plan and in the end the state of the environment

report referred people to the 10-year strategic plan, which was several hundred pages. It was a much more complete exposition of climate change than the 4-page summary that went back and forth

between EPA and reviewing agencies.

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Mr. YARMUTH. I’ll concede that you were only partially culpable

for these changes that EPA criticized, but my question was aren’t

you concerned that the EPA professional staff thought that this report as edited by you and others portrayed a scientifically inaccurate perspective on climate change.

Mr. COONEY. I would say a few things; I’ll answer your question,

of course, first. Yes, I am disappointed, and it is a concern to me.

Second though, we had at the Council on Environmental Quality

a detailee from EPA who was handling the coordination of this

state of the environment report. His name was Allen Hecht. And

he was coordinating comments from throughout the Federal Government and within the CEQ and other White House offices, and

he was really the interface between our office and a lot of the commenting offices and the agency itself.

So we had an EPA detailee in our offices at the White House coordinating the development of this report. And I would just say

that the development of this report was not really smooth. There

were very many—a number of iterations and a lot—I think a lot

of people felt that EPA was not sufficiently responsive in the commenting, interagency commenting process to the comments that it

was receiving, and it was not just our office, as you made clear.

Mr. YARMUTH. Well, I think, in concluding my time, the important point to make is we’re dealing with a process here and whether or not the process used by this administration resulted in information that was useful to the public and was honest and accurate

and fair and balanced, and in this particular case, the process resulted in a document which the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency said was not useful and therefore deleted

it, therefore the process apparently, at least my conclusion, the

process was fatally flawed in that it ended up producing something

that was not useful.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the chairman. Once again, I want to point

out that the only Republican witness is isolated and sentenced to

the third panel of the wilderness, who actually controlled similar

questions of whether you can speak out when your policies disagree

with administration with the people who are elected, not unelected,

and showed that there are differences within this agency is isolated

to the third panel. He disagrees on science, he disagrees and would

point out this isn’t unique to this administration, but apparently in

a hearing where we’re debating whether one side has been silenced, it’s OK to haul out two Republican witnesses to hound and

one who has said he supports Kerry and Gore, did support apparently a dead Republican, and one who he might have voted for if

he had actually been on the ballot, but in fact, praised Al Gore,

praised John Kerry for whatever reasons. That’s OK. We can discriminate, but on a hearing where there’s discrimination.

I would like to point out on this Nazi comparison that Dr. Hansen said that part of this, ‘‘is staffed by political appointees from

the Bush administration; they tried to stop me from doing so. I was

not happy with that and I ignored the restrictions.’’

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How do you think Nazi Germany would have reacted to that?

Would you admit that statement was an overreaction at a time of

emotion?

Mr. HANSEN. Well, I thought—

Mr. SOUDER. Nazi Germany did not allow—

Mr. HANSEN. After making the statement, I did regret the Nazi

Germany, so in my revision of that document, which was published, I changed it to the old Soviet Union because of the connotations that come with it.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you think Stalin would have let you ignore those

restrictions and not go to a concentration camp? This is ridiculous

that you are working—could we put up the video of the picture of

him speaking.

Part of our concern here is that the challenge here when you

have an elected administration where whether you like it or not,

there is a still a scientific debate, whether that scientific debate is

sometimes funded by organizations that have concerns about one

side is another matter.

Could you read what it says under your name there on the television? Can you see that?

Mr. HANSEN. Yeah, it has the organization that I work for, NASA

Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I can’t read the last word.

Mr. SOUDER. Basically, in your introductions, and when you travel you’re always a public citizen, just like we are. I must say, and

I want to say this for the record, I have some concerns with the

lack of clearance of this administration for documents to an oversight committee, and I’m upset that a question was asked without

that document, but I believe the administration should be more

forthcoming. I also believe we need to give more flexibility for people to speak. But I also believe there are times when any elected

administration has a right to choose and to say there are policy differences, and they don’t have to uniformly allow everyone to speak

in every case.

Now if there’s a pattern of misrepresentation and it was always

silence and you didn’t have 1,500 chances to do so, it would have

been a different challenge, or if, in fact, you’d have followed orders,

or in fact, you’d gone to a concentration camp or silenced to Siberia,

which you’re not. C–SPAN and other agencies are not exactly like

Siberia, they are not like a concentration camp. This isn’t Nazi

Germany, it’s not the Soviet Union. That I do think there are debates and there needs to be some caution with that, but I think

your overstatements are there.

Furthermore, we have this challenge of Rick Piltz who’s not a scientist who testified in front of this committee and he admits his

group is an advocacy group addressing the challenge of global climate change, meaning their ideological. It’s very hard to separate

this issue from people who have a vested interest in one side or another. And while it’s clear global warming is occurring, I mean Indiana used to be covered with glaciers, and it’s clear it’s probably

growing at an accelerating rate and humans are challenging and

adding to that, I don’t think anybody is disputing those, but the

particular policy conclusions on how it’s done have incredible political overtones. What are we going to do, just shift to China?

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How we do it and how precise that science is does have political

consequences, and therefore the elected officials do have some

rights with which to show some of that debate.

Do you want to respond, Dr. Hansen?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. I have no problem with that. I do not specify

policy or attempt to do that. I do try to make clear the science

that’s relevant to policy. What our administrator has said is that—

and it’s impossible in this topic to discuss the topic without having

some relevance to policy, but I simply make clear that if it does

touch on policy as my personal opinion, I’m not representing the

government in that case.

Mr. SOUDER. How would you separate that?

Mr. HANSEN. Pardon?

Mr. SOUDER. How can you possibly separate your personal views

on a subject where your professional responsibility is this very subject?

Mr. HANSEN. No, I make clear that—some of the implications of

global warming, it has implications for policy. And, for example,

one of the things that people need to understand is that about a

quarter of the carbon dioxide that we put in the air is going to stay

there forever. I mean more than 500 years.

And what that means is we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels

without producing a radically different planet, which none of us

would like to see, I think, without ice in the Arctic and with much

higher sea levels and things.

These things relate to policy because you’re going to have to do

something about it, and there are different things you can do, you

can capture the CO2 and sequester it. There are different ways to

treat this. That’s up to the public and policymakers to decide that,

but I need to make clear to them that there are such constraints

and they’re going to have to start to think about that real soon.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank the chairman for your indulgence.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Welch.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cooney, I would like to ask you about some evidence that the

White House edited an op ed piece written by then EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman to ensure that it followed the

White House line on climate change.

In July 2002, there was an ongoing debate about the Kyoto protocols, as you remember. EPA Administrator Whitman wrote a

piece for Time Magazine about the Bush administration’s record on

global warming, defending it more or less.

My understanding is that the CEQ did play an active role in reviewing and editing administrator Whitman’s op ed. For example,

on July 15, 2002 Sam Thurstrom of the White House Council on

Environmental Quality distributed a revised version of the administrator’s piece that contained several significant edits. I will direct

you to exhibit L.

According to that document Tom Gibson an associate administrator at EPA wrote to Mr. Thurstrom, this is in response to the

proposed language to be used by Secretary Whitman: I can’t use

the 5 million out of work figure for Kyoto. It is based on the EIA

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ment the Kyoto protocol. It also is the high end of numbers that

were expressed as a range.

So it’s pretty clear that in effect, the high level EPA administrator was telling CEQ there was simply no basis to assert that 5

million American jobs would be lost. Of course that was the heart

of the administration pushback on Kyoto. This figure is taken directly—Mr. Thurstrom responded that figure, the 5 million was

taken directly from the President’s 2/14 speech and Jim

Connaughton’s Senate testimony last week.

Using merely an abstract dollar figure may not be as compelling.

My understanding, Mr. Cooney, is you were copied on the e-mail,

and when you saw the e-mail, did you tell Mr. Thurstrom that Administrator Whitman’s piece should be not required to include an

assertion that her own staff regarded as baseless, namely this 5

million job loss figure?

Mr. COONEY. Congressman, I don’t recall whether I said anything to Mr. Thurstrom or not. I do recall seeing e-mails over the

weekend where Mr. Gibson responded to Mr. Thurstrom and I

think was persuaded by what he had written, and I can’t remember

his exact words but they continue in their e-mail exchange.

Mr. WELCH. Take a look at exhibit M. In that e-mail Mr. Gibson

from EPA says that administrator Whitman had made her own

edits and struck the reference to the 5 million lost jobs. And if you

turn to exhibit N, this e-mail sent 41⁄2 later by Mr. Thurstrom, he

put the 5 million lost jobs figure back in the draft.

Now what they offered as evidence or support for this was A, the

President said it. I assume you don’t believe that if the President

says something that is not true, that makes it true because he’s

President.

Mr. COONEY. I don’t believe that.

Mr. WELCH. It appears that your staff kept insisting on the inclusion of an erroneous statement about the economic consequences

over the strenuous objection of the EPA.

Mr. COONEY. Strenuous is your words. E-mails tell half a story

often. People pick up the phone and call each other. They go back

and forth, pick up the phone, they’ll solve things. I don’t recall how

this was solved. I don’t remember it being directly involved in how

it was solved.

Mr. WELCH. I would agree e-mails tell half the story. What I

think tells the rest of the story here, its very clear there was no

solid basis for this 5 million job figure.

Mr. COONEY. It was from the energy information administration

1998 study on the impacts of the Kyoto protocol on the United

States.

Mr. WELCH. Then you had more current information by your own

staff that raised substantial questions about the legitimacy of that

figure.

Mr. COONEY. Mr. Gibson questioned the figure, but the figure

comes from the independent statistical agency of the Department

of Energy, the energy information administration. It is independent, it’s not politically driven, and it came out with a study in 1998

documenting—

Mr. WELCH. Did that study assume that there would be trade as

was the case under the Kyoto protocols, yes or no.

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Mr. COONEY. I don’t recall. Mr. Gibson says that it did not assume trading, but I don’t recall. I just don’t have the depth in the

study to recall.

Mr. WELCH. In failing to assume trading, which was inherent in

the Kyoto protocol, was it not without any foundation for the conclusion it was pushing?

Mr. COONEY. I understand Mr. Gibson’s comment essentially as

you’re saying, is that the Kyoto protocol had in a written form flexibility mechanisms that might bring down the costs of complying

with Kyoto. There is a record now about those flexibility mechanisms, and many of them have not proved efficient at bringing

down costs.

Mr. WELCH. Here’s where it is frustrating on this side of the

table, and it gets back to what my colleague had spoken about before. The American people are entitled to the benefit of the clearest

science available, correct?

Mr. COONEY. And economics, from the energy information administration, which is independent.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. Do you

want to conclude? Go ahead and conclude.

Mr. WELCH. Well, the conclusion here, Mr. Chairman, is that the

science that we were getting was pretty good until it was altered

by folks in the press operation that were changing it for political

considerations.

Mr. COONEY. The editorial was really about climate change policy, in its whole sense, the President’s commitment to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 18 percent. The predominant, if you look at the Time Magazine op ed by Administrator

Whitman, it was not really focused on science so much as it was

on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Dr. Hansen, I think that we won’t have

a world to live in if we continue our neglectful ways, and so I don’t

disagree one bit with what you believe and how you’re expressing

it, I just want to state that. Frankly, I don’t even know if I would

have called you to come before this hearing, but you’re here and

so I’m going to deal with what you say because I find it puzzling

and I find your answers candidly inconsistent. It’s not ‘‘I got you,’’

I’m just trying to understand.

When Mr. Issa asked you a question you didn’t want to say the

imagery to Hitler’s Germany was inappropriate, with Mr. Souder

you did, and now you’re saying it’s only the Soviet Union.

We have a young man who made a mistake and he said you

know, I made a mistake and let me get on with my life. What puzzles me is that you don’t even want to admit a mistake when you

make them, and you seem to stand up waving the Constitution as

if somehow you have no restraints at all. I’m an American, I can

say anything I want.

I’d like to just ask you about that. The old media policy rules

were drafted in 1987. Under section 1213–103A instructs that all

headquarters news releases be issued by the Office of Public Affairs

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nificance be coordinated with the associate administrator for public

affairs. That was done in 1987.

Are you saying that’s a policy that shouldn’t have existed in

1987, shouldn’t have existed in 1992, shouldn’t exist in 1998,

shouldn’t exist in 2002; shouldn’t exist?

Mr. HANSEN. I haven’t said anything about public affairs press

releases. They are handling the public affairs press releases.

Mr. SHAYS. Would you agree that makes sense, that you have

that?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure.

Mr. SHAYS. That means your right to speak out is restrained?

It does. You can’t speak out any time you want. Would you at

least acknowledge that.

Mr. HANSEN. Sure. But do you think that these—

Mr. SHAYS. Hold on. There are certain times when you can speak

out and there are other times you can’t speak out, correct?

Mr. HANSEN. Probably that is true.

Mr. SHAYS. Not probably. It is true. How many people do you

have working at your institute?

Mr. HANSEN. What do you mean?

Mr. SHAYS. How many people do you have working at your institute?

Mr. HANSEN. Approximately 120.

Mr. SHAYS. And you are the Director.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you sometimes edit what they do? Do you sometimes question what they say? Do you?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure that is a scientist’s job—

Mr. SHAYS. That is a scientist’s job.

Mr. HANSEN. That is the scientific way, but not—

Mr. SHAYS. Does your staff have the right any time they want

to just say whatever they want about things related to their work?

You know, I just want to say something.

Mr. HANSEN. Within the—

Mr. SHAYS. Before you answer, I want to say to you that this is

not a game. You are under oath. I want an honest answer.

Mr. HANSEN. I have been giving you honest answers, and within

constraints of what is reasonable, people—I don’t try to change

what somebody is saying.

Mr. SHAYS. I didn’t ask that question. Do they have the right to

say anything they want any time they want about issues relating

to the institute?

Mr. HANSEN. I have never constrained anyone in that—

Mr. SHAYS. Do they have the right to? So any employee from this

point on can speak out, and if anyone comes to me, let me say this

to you because you are saying this under oath—if any of your employees say to you they wanted to say something but you said you

shouldn’t do it or you can’t do it, you are under oath saying you

have never restrained anything from saying that?

Mr. HANSEN. I have never restrained anybody.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this. If somebody wanted to issue a

release saying that global warming is getting worse and worse and

they work for you, could they say that is so?

The answer is yes or no.

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Mr. HANSEN. Scientists, sure. They can say anything they can

support.

Mr. SHAYS. If someone said that based on my scientific work at

this institute, I believe that global warming is not getting worse an

issue, speak to someone at their desk at your office, they are allowed to do that?

Mr. HANSEN. Sure, absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So, you have no policy whatsoever?

Mr. HANSEN. No constraints on scientific statements.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you think it is logical for a department before you

issue a release, to have to submit a release—so let’s go back to the

first point we had.

You said, in other words, the rules. There are rules. There are

rules that you seem to agree with drafted in 1987.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes, but those rules don’t include, for example, that

they should go to the White House for editing.

Chairman WAXMAN. Gentleman’s time has expired. Do you want

to conclude, Mr. Shays?

Mr. SHAYS. I would like more time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Wouldn’t we all?

Mr. SHAYS. Pardon me? In other words, we can’t develop the

idea, so it is pointless to go on.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, that concludes the questioning of this

first panel and we thank you very much for being here. And we

look forward to further conversations on these issues.

I would like to now call forward Mr. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

I want to welcome you to our hearing. Is it Connaughton or

Connaughton?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. It is Connaughton. I appreciate that, Mr.

Chairman. It is the Irish.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK. We welcome you to our hearing today.

Your prepared statement will be in the record in its entirety. We

would like to ask you if you would to try to limit your oral presentation to around 5 minutes. We will have some leniency on that.

It is the policy of this committee to swear in all witnesses, so I

would like to ask you to rise and hold up your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Chairman WAXMAN. The record will indicate that the witness answered in the affirmative.

Mr. Connaughton—Connaughton—

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Connaughton.

Chairman WAXMAN. Forgive me. You can call me Waxman.

Please go ahead with your oral presentation.

STATEMENT OF JAMES L. CONNAUGHTON, CHAIRMAN, WHITE

HOUSE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and

members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be back before you

yet again after many appearances. I would notice that Jack

Marburger, the President’s science adviser, was also interested in

being part of this discussion as he is the senior scientist overseeing

Federal Government policy, and I am sure he would look forward

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to working with the committee as we go forward, as you continue

this inquiry.

Over the last 6 years this administration has relied on the advice

of scientists from 13 government agencies, from the National Academies of Science and, in developing our 10-year strategic plan that

you heard about today, from scientists from 36 countries. Now all

of this is in an effort to guide Federal climate change science, technology research and policymaking.

As you heard earlier, of particular importance to this hearing is

in fact the 2001 National Academy of Sciences report on climate

science commissioned by President Bush. That report sets the foundation for what we knew about the climate science at that time and

what we still needed to know.

The questions before this committee are not new, including those

involving CEQ’s role in reviewing documents. With respect to the

2003 climate change science program’s 10-year strategic plan,

which I am showing you here is about 200 pages long, Dr. James

Mahoney, who is a PhD scientist and the top official overseeing

that program, informed the Congress several times years ago that

he was responsible ultimately for the final content of this report.

To the best of Dr. Mahoney’s knowledge, ‘‘no errors were contained in the two reports.’’ Dr. Mahoney further affirmed that edits

proposed—affirmed that, ‘‘edits proposed by CEQ did not misstate

any specific scientific fact.’’ Following that, the National Academies

of Sciences wrote the plan, ‘‘articulates a guiding vision, is appropriately ambitious and is broad in its scope.’’

Now with respect to the 2003 climate budget summary, also discussed today, and that’s called Our Changing Planet—that is about

120 pages—most of the edits recommended by CEQ were actually

accepted or changed somewhat by the science program officials responsible for the document. Only three were not, and CEQ would

have no objection to the fact that they weren’t included. Now as to

the early two-page drafts on climate in the 2003 draft report on the

environment, this one is more than 600 pages long. I don’t have the

technical appendices here. The relative few agency comments of interest to some on this committee were actually of no importance because the EPA Administrator decided to replace the passage with

a reference directing the public to the two much more substantial

reports above that came out at the same time. That is these two

reports. These are huge, hundreds of pages with the entire scientific community in consensus on the content of these reports.

Now in any event, in my detailed—in my written testimony when

you look at the actual comments being proposed by the various offices not just CEQ’s, most of them either echoed nearly verbatim,

were appropriately reflective of the substance of the 2001 National

Academies of Science report on climate science.

Now this is a fact that even a cursory direct comparison or even

a Google search revealed, and I did it. I Googled one of the edits

just to see what turned up an expression. The edit recommended

showed up in numerous science documents, including the National

Academy of Sciences.

Finally, the committee’s focus on my former chief of staff, Mr.

Philip Cooney, who you saw here today is misguided. And actually

I find it a little bit ironic. It was Mr. Cooney who is responsible

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for inviting Dr. James Hansen to the White House in 2003 to brief

me and other senior officials on advances in climate change science.

It was a remarkable and important presentation. It was Mr.

Cooney who is the driving force behind working to ensure that Federal Government documents and our budgets were actually responsive to the priority research areas that Dr. Hansen himself identified along with his colleagues at the National Academy of Sciences.

Now, it is also Mr. Cooney who, precisely because he is an expert

in the energy sector, who zeroed in on Dr. Hansen’s very useful policy recommendation about the substantial climate change benefits

of aggressively attacking methane emissions and black soot now,

something we can do now. And therefore it was Mr. Cooney who

became the driving force in creating this international methane-tomarket partnership, a 19-nation effort that is going to remove more

than 180 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions from the

atmosphere by 2015. Now this is going to come from oil and gas

operations, something Mr. Cooney knows something about, and

mining, something he also knows something about, landfills and

agriculture.

And then it was Mr. Cooney in terms of proactive climate policy

to actually make a difference who helped establish the Climate Vision Partnership and who for the first time secured industry emission reduction commitments from 14 major energy intensive industrial sectors, including the Business Round Table.

I just have to say, I live in two worlds, the world of reality and

the experience on my job and what I have been hearing a little bit

here today. Mr. Cooney is among the most proactive supporters of

both the science enterprise and advancing it, but more importantly

he was one of the most proactive creators of sensible policies built

on the science that are actually going to help us cut our emissions.

The totality of this administration’s record is one of unparalleled

funding, openness and inclusiveness in confronting the serious

challenge of global climate change.

I think the sum of this is I fear that we are sort of losing the

forest for the twigs in this discussion. The forest is this massive

science enterprise. The forest is the massive technology investments in which the United States is leading the way in attacking

global emissions, not just here but abroad. And I hope as the committee continues its inquiry we can begin to lay that information

out on the table.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Connaughton follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Connaughton.

Let me go right to this memo. It was a memo written from Mr.

Cooney to Kevin 0’Donovan in the Vice President’s office. We don’t

have a copy of that memo because it is being withheld from the

committee. But we did have a chance to review that memo. And it

obviously stirred some concern when we had Mr. Yarmuth, and Mr.

Yarmuth pursued a question about it. The memo refers to a paper

by Soon Baliunas that was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. The paper purports to show that the past century

was not the warmest in the last 1,000 years.

My understanding is that the conclusions of the paper had been

heavily criticized by the scientific community. The memo to the

Vice President’s office says, ‘‘we plan to begin to refer to this study

in administration communications on the science of global climate

change. In fact, CEQ just inserted a reference to it in the final

draft chapter on global climate change contained in EPA’s first

state of the environment report.’’

That is the memo to the Vice President’s office from Mr. Cooney.

The memo also states that the paper, ‘‘represents an opening to potentially reinvigorate debate on the actual climate history of the

past 1,000 years.’’

My concern is that the documents suggest that there was a concerted White House effort to inject uncertainty into the climate

change debate. This communication between Mr. Cooney and the

Vice President’s office seems to reflect exactly this kind of effort.

Did CEQ communicate with the Vice President’s office about how

to inject the Soon Baliunas report into the Federal climate change

reports?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Mr. Chairman, I leave aside for the moment

the issues related to potential Executive Privilege which we are

still working on with the committee. I will limit my remarks to

commentary on the Soon—

Chairman WAXMAN. Why don’t you limit your remarks to my

question? Did the CEQ communicate with the Vice President’s office about how to inject this report into the climate changes reports?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. It is my understanding that CEQ did suggest that the report should be referenced in the new draft environment, state of the environment report, because in fact it was a new

and major piece of science. At the same time Dr. Hansen was also

introducing some of his new research that was also high interest.

At the same time we were looking at issues related to the difference between surface temperatures and ground level temperatures. So at that time there was a lot of very interesting development to the science and the Soon Baliunas report was very important as well. I found it fascinating. I am not a scientist, so I can’t

find it conclusive. But I liken the debate over that report—Mr.

Chairman, I just want to give an example—

Chairman WAXMAN. No. Excuse me, Mr. Connaughton. I only

have a little time. So you thought it was really interesting and

worthwhile bringing it in, that was your thought as well as Mr.

Cooney’s, is that right?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I am not speaking to the recommendation it

be included. I was made aware of this report and I found it very

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interesting. I actually did not have a role at that time in anything

having to do with the edits on the documents.

Chairman WAXMAN. And you did later?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I did later, yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. And tell us what you did later. What were

the circumstances?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. When the process was not leading to a reconciliation of the comments by the various offices in the White

House and from other agencies, I did get on the phone—actually

Governor Whitman called me, EPA Administrator Whitman called

me. We were talking about a range of things but this is one of the

issues that we talked about on how to reconcile the comments.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK, now this memo that was sent to the

Vice President’s office said this will reinvigorate debate about

whether the planet is warming. This sounds to me like a play directly out of the Petroleum Institute playbook. Do you have a comment on that?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Actually, sir, it strikes me as a statement of

fact. When that report did come out, it actually did receive, as you

indicated, a lot of interest by the scientific community as to the essentials of the solar based research that was being conducted and

particularly by Dr. Baliunas, who is actually an internationally renowned solar scientist.

Chairman WAXMAN. But that report has since then been strongly

criticized by the scientific community and its conclusions have been

rejected.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That—actually I do not understand that is

correct. What I do understand—

Chairman WAXMAN. So is it the position of you and CEQ that is

a fairer statement of what we know about climate change than

what Dr. Hansen and others were suggesting?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. No, it is not my position. What I was going

to indicate, Mr. Chairman, the debate that surrounded that report

is very similar to the active one undergoing right now about the

relative contribution of global warming to hurricane and storm intensity and frequency, very active points of scientific debate.

Chairman WAXMAN. Excuse me—

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. And that is part of the variety of viewpoints

which we must be incorporating into our process.

Chairman WAXMAN. This memo suggests as well it was active coordination between CEQ and the Vice President’s office about how

to inject debate and uncertainty into discussions of climate change

science. Will you provide this memorandum to our committee?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I think that is something for our lawyers to

work out, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. And unless the White House asserts executive privilege it should be provided to our committee.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Again that is something I would defer to the

counsel for the committee and the Council and the White House.

Chairman WAXMAN. I am requesting—

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I am not in a position to make that—to take

that position personally.

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Chairman WAXMAN. I am requesting that CEQ turn over that

memo and also to provide other communications between CEQ and

the Vice President’s office.

Were there other communications?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I am not aware of other written communications of this type. They could exist. I do not know.

Chairman WAXMAN. And we would like to see the e-mail communications as well.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Connaughton, I am

going to ask a question, and it is probably unfair, but it is just an

impression and I want to get it on the record somehow. A number

of years ago before I was in Congress, there was a flack under then

President Clinton about Speaker Gingrich being forced to go out of

the back of Air Force One, and Speaker Gingrich seemed to have

a real problem with that.

Dr. Hansen is still here. I am not trying to do this behind his

back. But isn’t to a certain extent somebody who appears 1,400

times in clips, who is regularly sort of the toast of the town as the

Speaker, who is asked to consult to almost anything, including Vice

President Gore’s movie, isn’t the complaint that you are being muzzled a little bit like Newt Gingrich complaining about going out of

the back of Air Force One, a plane most of us will never see much

less be on?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I want to start, as I indicated, having the

highest personal regard and professional regard for Dr. Hansen

and his work. My son and I were just watching him on TV last

night on the History Channel. Congressmen, senior administration

officials, highly accomplished senior scientists, we all chafe at having to talk to our public affairs people. But the public affairs people

are there for a reason. They are there to organize and be sure that

what we are saying is official government policy, is understood, and

that the people who might have to then respond to those statements can effectively do so.

This is a process that has been with us for a long, long time, and

it works well. Now we all chafe from it. I can understand Dr. Hansen especially chafing if it comes from someone relatively young

and inexperienced, but the policy of public affairs is a very important one.

Now I would note that I am not aware of any instance where any

scientists in pursuing their science, of any scientist seeking peer review of their science, is in any way controlled, handled or otherwise

managed in their scientific work. I mean from what I see all over

the world and what people, scientists come and speak their mind,

to me they come and speak their mind to you. What we are talking

about is a science-policy interface and that has significant implication that requires some level of management.

Mr. ISSA. And if I could followup on that, in the previous panel

I think there was a lot of discussion about certainty versus uncertainty. And certainly, your chief of staff was drawn and quartered

pretty well for the statement that he was—or a statement claiming

that he was creating uncertainty.

Is there any uncertainty about man’s influence on the environment at this point from the body of science that you have been part

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of putting together? In other words, not the nuances but isn’t it—

and I will lead you for a second. Isn’t it true that this administration has made it very clear that pollutants, whether we call it that

or not, including CO2, reflect a clear danger to our environment?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Well, I will put it in the President’s words.

The Earth is warming. Humans are part of the problem. We need

to get on with the solutions, and I need to stick to layman’s terms.

I am not a scientist. And that was clearly reflected in the National

Academy of Sciences report.

Mr. ISSA. So since it is settled science, at least settled Presidential policy as stated by the President, that we are—we do have

this problem and we need to be part of the solution, but this question of settled science—and I am just going to ask you one question—isn’t it true that it was only this last year that the 2001 understanding of the rise in our oceans has been revised downward,

less dramatic than it was thought to be? Isn’t there always new information coming in that affects one side or the other of speed and

so on?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Well, actually I think Dr. Hansen was trying

to get to this level of complexity in the answer as well. The top

line, there is a lot of agreement around warming and around the

fact that humans play a role. A lot of agreement. But as you then

delve down into the science, in the National Academy of Sciences

report, including the edits recommended by CEQ and others, as

well as subsequent documents, the most recent being the IPCC report, which is the international report updating the science, there

is a wide range of uncertainties to which we are dedicating nearly

$2 billion a year to attempting to resolve. So there is still a lot of

science to be done.

As I indicated in my written testimony, if all the science were

settled we wouldn’t be spending $2 billion of taxpayer resources

every year on it. This is very important work. One reason for one

of the comments is to make sure we are emphasizing the need to

go after some of this research because that is what the National

Academy of Science has told us we should do.

Mr. ISSA. So I guess I will just finish with one sort of series of

questions, there are thousands of scientists that work for the Federal Government at all levels and hundreds, if not thousands of

them worked on the Shuttle program over the years. What would

have happened if Dr. Hansen’s policy that every scientist gets to

say anything to the camera any time they want, as long as it is

supported by, ‘‘their science,’’ that you know what they do, that

they should be able to have an interview any time, anywhere, what

would have happened each time a Shuttle went down? Can you just

give us a little conjecture that, 1,000 scientists working at the various launch facilities, what would have happened if all of them had

responded without checking with public affairs just done their on

camera interviews those days?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. You would see the kind of chaos and confusion that this entire discussion is about trying to avoid. So chaos

and confusion—in public affairs.

Mr. ISSA. In closing, isn’t it clear that when you have dozens or

hundreds or thousands of scientists as much as we want to make

sure scientists can argue with each other and have that freedom

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of expression, that first amendment, so to speak, right that there

has to be some reasonable limitation and has been for decades on

how many different scientists can talk at a given time and what

they can talk about?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Clearly scientists are free to pursue their research. They are free to publish and talk about their research. Taxpayer funds that all over the world, that is great. It is when we

get into expressions of government policy or the science policy

interface where you need some level of management. Otherwise

you can fall prey to lots of misinterpretation and misunderstanding

about what represents official government policy.

Mr. ISSA. I hope all our scientists all get a ride on Air Force One.

Thank you, I yield back.

Mr. YARMUTH [presiding]. Mr. Connaughton, I want to ask about

the EPA’s draft report on the environment. We talked about it already today. EPA professional staff was deeply concerned about the

way the White House handled this report. And if I may, I would

like to refer you to exhibit F, which is a memo about the draft report on the environment from the staff of EPA to Administrator

Whitman of the EPA. It says that as a result of Mr. Cooney’s edits

the text, ‘‘no longer accurately reflects scientific consensus on climate change.’’ And I read a number of other statements and there

are examples of what they meant. The EPA memo says that the

White House told the EPA that no further changes may be made.

Did you make the decision that no further changes were to be

made?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. No, I did not. And I would observe, Congressman, that the—I only saw this document for the first time

over the weekend. It was not something I saw in my conversation

years ago with Governor Whitman. But I would observe a number

of the items being complained of were verbatim language from the

National Academy of Sciences report. That told me something else

is going on. There is a pride of authorship going on between EPA

and the other agencies. At the time, by the way, it seemed to me

that to the extent there were editorial differences they should be

reconciled. They weren’t being reconciled. That suggested some

back and forth. That is really what Governor Whitman and I ended

up talking about, and the solution she came up with I thought was

perfection.

Mr. YARMUTH. Is it not true that someone advised Administrator

Whitman that no further changes were to be made?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. The document I saw—again I only saw it for

the first time over the weekend—was the handwritten note that

says these changes must be made.

Mr. YARMUTH. These changes must be made.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. But I would note the context of that, Congressman, was important. What was happening is we have a process where agencies provide their input to these documents, and

there is a reconciliation process. It doesn’t mean all the comments

have to be accepted. You just have to have a process where you say

I accept it or I reject it and here is why. That wasn’t happening

on this particular set of issues. Remember, this document was 600

pages long. I showed you just a fraction of it. We are talking about

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a small number of edits to a two-page passage in an otherwise

massive document. We are just down to the end on this.

So really what was going on—and I thought it was reasonable at

the time—was the notion that we needed some reconciliation. It

was an issue of whether the comments were in or out. As it happened, by the way, none of the comments being raised to the committee—none of the comments could have possibly confused the

public because they didn’t make it into the report.

Mr. YARMUTH. That is because EPA found the report to be so inaccurate that it said that if they released it, it would cause great

confusion in the public, isn’t that correct? At least that is what that

memo says.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I saw the memo. My personal reflection is it

seemed to be a little bit melodramatic. We have a process for reconciling these kind of returns. That wasn’t happening, which is

why it got elevated. Most of what you are talking about today

never got elevated because Dr. Mahoney on these science documents—these science documents include expressions of science—

Dr. Mahoney had a very effective process of reconciling comments.

Some of them are included. Some are changed. And some of them

are excluded. And that process wasn’t being applied in this particular instance on the draft environment report. And so we worked it

out.

Mr. YARMUTH. Now you mentioned before that some of these, all

of these changes were based on NRC but in the EPA—again this

memo says that conclusions of the NRC report were deleted. That

is one of their complaints, wasn’t it?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That is—again, we can get into lots of back

and forth about the particularized edits. I included that in my written testimony. Others were being asked to be included.

I think one of the things, Congressman, that went to your line

of questioning earlier, you had these massive documents, and you

have CEQ and other agencies agreeing to 99 percent of them.

These have some of the strongest expressions of why we need to

take action on climate, the effects of global warming on ecological

systems, the research questions on relations of public health. These

documents are full of that. And we didn’t have any objections to

any of that.

What these comments went to were certain expressions of key

uncertainties identified by the Academy that were a qualifier to

some absolute—more absolute statements that appeared to be in

the text. Now the National Academy chose to include those qualifications. It was at least reasonable for reviewers to suggest that

some of those qualifications be included as well.

Now ultimately the scientists decided which ones were appropriate, what tone, what weight to give to those. But I do want to

underline what was missing in all of the questioning before I came

up here was the fact that there was actually massive agreement

on, you know, more than 99 percent of these massive documents.

That is where all the positive heavy duty stuff was on climate

change. These qualifiers were a little teeny piece of the discussion.

So much ado about a very small amount of qualification.

Mr. YARMUTH. Now thank you. You said that earlier you did not

make the decision that the White House wasn’t going to make any

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changes, but in your conversations with Ms. Whitman did she explain to you why she made the decision not to—that she did not

make those changes?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. As you might expect this was an executive

level conversation. We don’t—we weren’t into parsing all the back

and forth between the various staffs. But you asked, I just want

to be clear, I was perfectly content to just get them in a room, especially get the scientists with them and just reconcile the comments.

She had what I thought was a much better solution. And that

was, we had just spent over a year developing this document with

1,300 scientists from around the world. Why not refer the public

to that rather than try to collapse this down to a two-page passage

on climate in a document that otherwise sort of had a rich abundance of detail on a whole bunch of other issues that were not getting the attention they deserved? So I thought it was a perfect solution. We didn’t need to talk a lot. I said, that sounds great to me.

Let’s just go that way.

Mr. YARMUTH. My time has expired. Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you very much. I am having a hard time

trying to figure out what this hearing is all about. I think, Mr.

Connaughton, your term of ‘‘melodramatic’’ probably fits pretty

darn well. You have a 23-year-old young man who was put on the

hot seat, and I think acquitted himself quite well. Your former

chief of staff—or the chief of staff of the CEQ—I thought did a remarkable job. I don’t think there was a single question left unanswered very directly by him. So I am not sure why we had him up

and were grilling him to the degree that we did.

And then of course the third person on the panel is the guy who

had the real questions. And those questions come down to what I

think involved his views were as to good and evil, people in the administration representing something akin to Nazi Germany and

people who believe as he believes being good.

I would like to read you a quote by Dr. Hansen from 1998: Injection of environmental and political perspectives in midstream of

the science discussion cannot help the process of inquiry. I believe

that persons with relevant, scientific expertise should concentrate

with pride on cool, objective analysis, providing information to the

public and decisionmakers when it is found, but leaving the moral

implications—this is again the person who raised the issue of the

morality of this administration and comparing it to Nazi Germany—leaving the moral implications for later, common consideration or, at most, for summary inferential discussion.

I am not implying bias on the part of any particular scientist, but

the global warming debate has plentiful examples to illustrate my

thesis, especially, at least a per capita basis among the most vociferous greenhouse skeptics; i.e., those who challenge the reality or

interpretation of global warming. Many of the participants in this

debate have ceased to act as scientists as defined above but rather

act as if they were lawyers hired to defend a particular perspective.

New evidence has no effect on their preordained conclusions this is

abhorrent to science and spoils the fun of it.

Now we are not talking about the underlying facts of global

warming or climate change here. We are talking about the process

by which the administration has operated and the environment in

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which it has made decisions about how to get a message out. And

with all the claims of big oil and drilling in ANWR and all the

other things that will actually make America a much better place,

with cheaper energy for the poor, I fail to see where we have made

any progress. What we have really done is tied ourselves up with

the beliefs of an individual who has been very critical of the administration.

Would you like to comment on that or would you just let my

statement stand if you want?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I would just like to remark. An important

facet of all of this is we need to continue to encourage a wide diversity of viewpoints. The science enterprise is to constantly test the

received wisdom, and that goes back and forth.

Now there is a lot of strong agreement on climate change, on the

fact it is occurring and that humans are part of it. But there are

still many, many lines of inquiry that the scientists are in fact pursuing and they are testing each other on.

The same is true, by the way, in the policy perspective. We take

the advice of economists. We take advice of lawyers. We take the

advice of policy people. We take the advice of politicians and communications people. This is an extremely complicated issue. It is

not the province of any particular professional class.

I actually am pleased at the direction of the National Academy.

They pushed us to create a more integrated process for linking

science with the technology development process. That did not happen before. We are doing that now.

Those two processes are then working their way much better,

really with the urging of Congress as well, into the policy development exercise. It requires a lot of people, providing lots of viewpoints. And then we work to sort it out. That is what our role is,

your role and the senior administration officials roles.

Mr. CANNON. I would just point out that probably the most hardest figure in the history of America on environmental issues was

the Moses of the West, Brigham Young, who took Mormons to Utah

which I represent. And he was very concerned about the environment. And by the way slightly in a religious context, but it seems

to me dogma ought to be left to the area of religion, and what we

ought to do is look at the science and try to figure out where we

are going, because the decisions are huge. The implications of

eliminating CO2, I think Mr. Issa said earlier, $35 trillion—oh,

$350 trillion, roughly more than about 10 times as much as the

total net worth of all of America. These numbers are astounding.

So the question is what do we do as humans try to adapt to deal

with that situation. And you have been leading the fight on this.

You have been dealing with this. You have been in the vortex. Do

you have other things you want to say in comment about that?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Well, I think we are going back 5 years in

history looking at individual edits, individual documents that never

made it into most of the reports, at least the ones of concern. So

I much prefer the hearing we had last summer, which is actually

trying to dig into the detailed solutions to tackling this problem

which, by the way, there is strong bipartisan support, whether it

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partisan in both Houses of Congress going after renewable fuels,

going after vehicle fuel—actually the energy bill didn’t include vehicle fuel efficiency. But we would like the Congress to consider

that, as well as billions of dollars in tax incentives to advance a

new generation of coal that would ultimately be zero emission.

These are the solutions. This is what we should be working on.

I call this, what is it about yes you don’t understand? We have this

strong commitment to get on with the solutions. Let’s do that.

Mr. CANNON. Sounds to me—I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, my time

is up. Thank you. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN [presiding]. Thank you. Chair yields himself

time to pursue a second round.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I haven’t had a first round yet.

Chairman WAXMAN. Oh, Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. No problem.

When Kyoto was negotiated, Senate voted 100 to 1 and if there

was someone absent it was unanimous, don’t come back if you

leave out India and China. So the Clinton administration comes

back having left out India and China. Whereupon there were only

about three to five Members of the Senate who said they supported

the treaty.

But given that the President said he was against it and people

are finally facing up to the reality of global warming, even though

Kyoto left out two of the potentially biggest contributors, every

Senator acts like they would have voted for it.

I wish to God this administration had submitted to the Senate

the Kyoto Treaty without prejudice. There would have been five

Members who would have actually voted for it. It is not unlike the

two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the Senate. Some

Members now act like they never voted for the war in Iraq.

So, now but the sad thing is, Mr. Connaughton, and we have

talked about it more than once, because this administration wanted

to appeal to a narrow base that didn’t believe in global warming,

and so therefore was silent about the need to deal with it early on,

you are having to deal with what you are having to deal with, and

that is the tragedy of this in my judgment. You have done some

amazing bilateral agreements to reduce the impact of global warming. You will get no credit for it because this administration early

on wanted to give the impression that they didn’t believe in global

warming. That is the way I look at it.

And I am sorry that—and then we hire someone who is very capable, did a nice job in his performance before us but represented

before the petroleum industry, which is not kind of what you would

expect in the position that he was holding.

Wouldn’t you agree that, you know, some of what you are having

to deal with is just a bad start?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Sure. I mean I think, you know, it is also,

though, the challenge of leadership. The prior administration did

not make explicit the fact that the treaty was not going to work.

President Bush did. As indicated in my written testimony, that did

earn the—undeservedly earn all the ill will that has been directed

at the President and our strategy since then.

That—and it is ironic because actually where I depart from you

when you align the President with some of the constituencies, it

402

was the President in June 2001 following the National Academy of

Sciences report said, this is what we know, the Academy has told

us about some key uncertainties. But notwithstanding that, we

need to take action now to begin to address this important problem. And he set in place a process that I inherited when I came

in in June 2001 after that of running the policy that led to the

2002 climate policy strategic plan. It is all the more ironic because

the President himself actually—as he should have—took the advice

of the Academy and led probably the single most aggressive—

Mr. SHAYS. Other ironies. Al Gore is right about global warming.

It is a very real inconvenient truth and it needs to be dealt with.

I would love to compare his house with President Bush’s house. I

would love to compare it.

So you have one who advocates dealing with global warming but

doesn’t practice it. And you have another, President, who has been

frankly quiet about global warming in my judgment and practices

dealing with it in his own personal life. That is one of the other

huge ironies.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. There is a wonderful USA Today story about

the President’s house down in Texas. It is a model of green building and environmental conservation.

Mr. SHAYS. Or when we hear the actors and actresses who complain about Humvees, driving up in long stretch limousines, flying

in airplanes that make Humvees look like they get tremendous

mileage. The irony in this debate, I hope once we get beyond all

this we will start to deal with the reality of what we need to deal

with. And I just say to you, I think it hasn’t happened because of

how we stepped into this debate.

And I am afraid frankly there are some on the religious right—

whatever party—that have denied global warming and when it finally happens they are going to say, well, this is the fulfillment of

the Bible and the destruction of humanity. I mean, it is just like

I hope we wake up, and I hope we act soon. And I encourage you

to keep doing the good work you are doing. But I just wish you

were more vocal about the good work you are doing.

Mr. ISSA. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Shays. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. You mentioned everything except nuclear. Wouldn’t you

say it was notable that Dr. Hansen was very supportive of nuclear

in every round of questioning and yet, to be honest, Al Gore and

his movie and all of the activities is a pushback from nuclear pretty

consistently? Have you seen that interesting dichotomy that those

who want us to deal with global warming have a tendency to be

extremely anti-nuclear even though it is zero emissions?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. There is no question that if you were serious

about climate change you have to be serious about nuclear, at least

for the next many decades. It is the only baseload zero emissions

source we have. It has the smallest environmental footprint of any

source we have, and we know how to do it right. We have been

doing it right in America for a long time. And the modern plants

are even better than the old ones. So I use that as a gauge actually

when I deal with people on climate change. If they are not open

to a serious discussion of nuclear, I tend to find that their interest

in the issue is more rhetorical than real.

403

Chairman WAXMAN. Gentleman’s time has expired, and now the

Chair will recognize himself for a second round.

When this administration came in, they rejected Kyoto. Maybe it

couldn’t have passed. The Senate probably couldn’t have. But I

didn’t hear the administration go back and ask the countries admitting Kyoto to reconvene and see if they could renegotiate a treaty. Fact No. 1.

Second, you pointed out with pride all of the things that this administration has done and is doing. But all the scientists tell us

that the emissions of carbon are going up and not down, which

means the planet is going to get in a more difficult situation in the

direction we are moving.

Now, what appears to some of us is that it looks like the administration’s policy was pretty much the petroleum industry’s policy,

which is let’s sort of, let’s try to confuse things and suggest that

there’s not such a big problem of global warming. We’ll try to sow

some doubt about it. That is what it appears like to many of us.

Now I want to find out whether this was a deliberate White

House strategy to sow doubt, or if I am incorrect about it. Did you

ever have any communications with anybody in the White House

outside of CEQ about the value of emphasizing uncertainty and climate change?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I had conversations with people outside of

CEQ about the broad range of science, which included uncertainties related to issues such as aerosols, some of the other factors

that were in the National Academy of Sciences report. And the answer to that is yes, with scientists as well nonscientists.

Chairman WAXMAN. Who are those people in the White House

outside of CEQ?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Especially the budgeteers. We were working

on the 10-year strategic plan because a lot of—

Chairman WAXMAN. Budgeteers were OMB—exclusively OMB

people?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. As well as the Office of Science and Technology people, including Jack Marburger, because 10-year strategic

plan, Mr. Chairman, was all about how are we going to direct our

resources toward these key areas of uncertainty that the National

Academy of Science has identified. So we had an extensive set of

conversations all the way up to the cabinet level on how to get this

10-year research plan going. The National Academy of Sciences

hailed this plan as having ambition and vision.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Connaughton, I have only a limited period of time so I want to ask you some very specific questions.

When the White House appeared to edit the climate change

science reports, that was highly controversial. And several of the

changes made front page headlines. Did you have communications

with others in the White House outside of CEQ about the reaction

to CEQ’s edits and how to manage that reaction?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. First of all, the controversy was created by

media stories, which I think grossly distorted the actual record of

our process and the final documents to which scientist—

Chairman WAXMAN. You are not answering my question. I asked

you a specific question, and I really want an answer.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I need to start with disagreeing—

404

Chairman WAXMAN. Did you have any conversations with anybody about how to handle the public relations once these reports

were—

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I certainly did. I talked to the White House

communicators because this had achieved national and actually

international stature—

Chairman WAXMAN. Would you tell us who the communicators

were?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. At the time—I would have to get back to you

on that because I don’t know exactly when people moved in and

out.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did you have any communications with

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. About?

Chairman WAXMAN. About the global warming reports.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I only had a conversation with him after the

reports came out.

Chairman WAXMAN. Did you have any conversations with him as

you took your job as to how you were going to handle your job?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes, I did.

Chairman WAXMAN. And when were they?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That would have been in the middle of June.

Chairman WAXMAN. June, what year.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. 2001.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That is when I was assigned the portfolio on

climate change, on air pollution and a whole range of issues, fuel

economy and a whole range of issues on the National Energy Plan.

Chairman WAXMAN. And did he suggest to you some policies you

might pursue or what—tell us about the conversation as it relates

to global warming, climate change.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Mr. Card was happy to have me on board.

He said there were specific areas we should get into and we wanted

to really focus on the technology. We had been given this strong advice from the National Academy of Sciences. And we wanted to

make sure also we were advancing the science in the way the

President directed. Mr. Card was reinforcing for me the agenda

that the President had already clearly laid out in his policy address.

Chairman WAXMAN. Now after the reports were put out you said

you had some communications with him?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes. He wanted to know because what we

had regarded—

Chairman WAXMAN. Could you tell us when that was approximately?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I can’t recall the specific date.

Chairman WAXMAN. And tell us about that communication.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. The report—we had scientific sign-off on the

report so when it came out and the media began to nit-pick—I

guess it leaked. The report had been out for some time. Then someone in the media got ahold of leaked versions of some of these early

edits without even, by the way, comparing to see if it made it into

the final document. That is what created the media flap. And so

there were questions what was in the report, what was it about.

405

We actually treated this as a routine publication. It was only later

sensationalized.

Chairman WAXMAN. This was a direct conversation with Andrew

Card?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I had one direct conversation with him.

Chairman WAXMAN. On this issue.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. The reaction to the report.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Right. This was much later after it came out

and the leaked edits, the leaked edits emerged.

Chairman WAXMAN. And you don’t recall the date of that?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. No, I don’t, sir.

Chairman WAXMAN. OK, did he suggest you do something other

than what you were doing?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. No. We were actually——

Chairman WAXMAN. Or was he just asking questions about what

you did?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. He wanted to know what the report, what

the process was, was the process followed. I assured him it had

been followed. I assured him the scientists at the end of the process

had ultimately reconciled all comments and he was actually—well,

I don’t want to speak for him.

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, we know that some of the documents

we have seen came from the—related to communications with the

Vice President’s office. Did you talk to anybody in the Vice President’s office, including the Vice President or any of his staff, such

as Kevin O’Donovan or anyone else in that office?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. About?

Chairman WAXMAN. About global warming, climate change, the

report.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Sure. I talked with all of the office of the

White House about climate change. It is an issue that has been

with us for 6 years. I can’t think of a single office, including Office

of Public Liaison, in which there hasn’t been some interface of one

kind or another about climate change, but really focused on the

technology initiatives of the President much less so on the science.

Chairman WAXMAN. So you had frequent communications with,

was it, Kevin O’Donovan or others in the Vice President’s office?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. We have a very vigorous interagency process

that includes participation by the various White House offices as

they see fit, as well as all the various agencies. So you can lump

in a dozen agencies and six or seven White House offices.

Chairman WAXMAN. We look forward to learning more about

those.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Where are your offices.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. On Jackson Place, sir, right in front of the

White House, right on Lafayette Square.

Mr. ISSA. Which is really part of now the White House complex

area?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That’s correct, sir.

Mr. ISSA. And when did essentially the oversight of global climate change—when did it move to the White House area? In other

words, how long have the offices that are overseeing this part of

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science, how long have they been within, you know, what we always think of as the White House, Treasury, Old Executive Office,

the various townhouses and of course the White House itself?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. My office, the, Council on Environmental

Quality, was created in 1969, so it has been there for almost 30—

40 years. The Office of Science and Technology Policy I believe was

created a few years later than that. And those are the two primary

sort of policy offices as it relates to energy and environment and

natural resources and some of those matters.

And then there was the Domestic Policy Council of course, the

National Economic Council was created under the Clinton administration and then during the Clinton administration they actually

had a sub office specifically focused on climate change where they

coordinated all of the climate change efforts across the Clinton administration. We decided to consolidate that within CEQ.

Mr. ISSA. Which is also in the White House complex?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Correct.

Mr. ISSA. So it is fair to say that administration after administration, this has been something which has—although it has

evolved and it’s grown, every administration has thought it important enough to take up this very small amount of space available

in and around the White House rather than sending it off to Crystal City or any number of other large Federal buildings a few miles

away that certainly other things have been pushed out of.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Well, there has been a Catch–22 to the discussion we are having today. This issue is very important. It is

Presidentially level important. But that said, we also make clear

to do some assignments. So at NOAA, the head of the Climate

Science Program that was housed at NOAA, so all of our input

went to them and they had the final call on the science documents.

Mr. ISSA. I just want to understand that this is something where

you get to say you are coming from the White House, because effectively these buildings are—everyone, everyone except people maybe

inside the Beltway, we don’t—we know the difference between the

Old Executive Office and whether or not you have something in the

Roosevelt Room, wing or whatever, but bottom line is you are right

there in the White House complex, and this administration has

kept it that important.

Let me just followup on a couple of things. When this administration—and I realize you weren’t with it in the first days—but you

were pretty close. This administration inherited Kyoto. It was dead

on arrival at the Senate, is that right?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That’s correct. It was dead 3 years before

that.

Mr. ISSA. So it just hadn’t been buried.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Actually it had effectively because the prior

administration never sent the treaty to the Senate.

Mr. ISSA. So we also—thank you. And we also, this administration also inherited methyl bromide, the Montreal Protocol, which

exempted all of the Third World, is that right?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. It actually put them on a delayed compliance

schedule, which they are now beginning to implement.

Mr. ISSA. This is the year in which they are going to actually

have to cut down their use. But basically they have been unreVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00414 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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stricted and, correct me if I’m wrong, methyl bromide basically

moved from the United States and Europe to Africa and developing

countries in South America who are unrestricted. The flower industry of Holland mostly moved to other countries. So this is something that was done in previous administrations. It sounded good

but the bottom line is it didn’t change the emissions of this terrible

ozone depleting material one bit, did it, outside the United States?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes, I believe that is—I believe that is true.

The issue you always face in these international agreements with

global emissions is what is called leakage. If you squeeze the balloon too tight in one place and the other country is not constrained,

you actually get an increase in those emissions. That is a fundamental issue in the climate policy debates.

Mr. ISSA. So some of this is what I call unilateral disarmament

on emissions. We stopped, but it didn’t change one bit the amount

of emissions.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. And Congressman, there is a place for leadership which the United States is demonstrating, but you don’t

want your leadership to sacrifice your economic objectives to greater emissions somewhere else.

Mr. ISSA. The United States is leading the world. This Congress

has funded leading the world in cleaning up coal and other carbon

emitters, recognizing without sequestration you are not getting

there, that has to be part of it. But isn’t it true that China builds

basically one coal fired plant every week, week in and week out,

for the last couple years and plans to continue doing so and that

those tend to be among the dirtiest electric production facilities in

the world?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes. They will build, I am told, 140 in the

next 3 years and they are massively industrializing and picking up

a lot of the manufacturing and industrial output that would otherwise be occurring in places like the United States and Europe for

a variety of reasons.

Mr. ISSA. Then as I yield back, I will simply make the point that

this administration has a bigger problem than just good research.

We have to get it applied around the world or it won’t make a bit

of difference in global warming.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Mr. Issa, to the point that was raised by the

chairman I would sharply disagree. We did reconvene internationally. We just didn’t reconvene in Kyoto. We have dozens of bilateral

partnerships now. And we have many, many multinational agreements on advancing hydrogen, on advancing global fuels, on advancing methane capture, as I indicated. The list is quite lengthy

of real international agreement, the most recent of which is the

Asian Pacific Partnership on Clean Development Climate, which

includes India and China and South Korea, which comes in third

in new emissions for the first time.

So we found a different way to have the international conversation, and this is a foundation we can build on and, by the way, Mr.

Chairman, California is going to be a huge beneficiary of that because we are all about opening up markets for good old-fashioned

green technologies from California and really getting them into

these marketplaces in Asia. That is where the solution lies.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. I yield back.

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Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Welch.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Connaughton.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Connaughton, please.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Connaughton. Welcome.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Thank you.

Mr. WELCH. I would like to ask about, but your decision to hire

Phil Cooney as your chief of staff. As you know, Mr. Cooney was

a very successful oil industry lobbyist. He had worked for the Petroleum Institute in his job there. Among other things was to stop

or delay governmental actions on climate change. They weren’t shy

about their point of view on that, but that obviously is an agenda

inconsistent with the mission of the Environmental Protection

Agency.

My question is this, who made the decision to hire Mr. Cooney?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I did.

Mr. WELCH. And I assume you were aware of the work he did

at the American Petroleum Institute?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Yes, I was.

Mr. WELCH. Did you have any concerns about that work and how

it would affect the work that he was to do at the environmental

agency or was that a reason why he was hired?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. In my many years in Washington, I have

come across a lot of people in the professional world, lawyers, people from the environmental community and other places. Of the

many people I intersected with in my professional life, Mr. Cooney

is one of the people of highest integrity that I have run across. He

is also an outstanding manager. And actually I saw it as a great

benefit that he had experience in the energy sector because one of

the major tasks I knew I was going to be taking on was the CEQ

portion of implementing the National Energy Policy.

So it was actually something Mr. Cooney knew something about.

But first and foremost was his commitment to public service, and

actually it was an honor for me to have him join me. And I have

to say, you know, as much as the tone of this hearing has been

what it is, Mr. Cooney is the best in class individual when it comes

to integrity, honesty and ethics. And I do greatly regret some of the

insinuations that I have heard from some members of this committee about the fact that Mr. Cooney might have been unable to divorce himself from one client and take on the role of public servant.

I certainly did. Mr. Welch, I would submit you certainly did when

you—at some point in your life when you became elected. We are

all capable of serving the institutions in which we are employed.

Mr. WELCH. I haven’t heard anybody raise questions about Mr.

Cooney or anybody else’s integrity. What I understood and I have

heard is a fair amount of evidence that the American Petroleum Institute had a clear point of view on climate change and a fair

amount of evidence that many of those views on climate change, for

one reason or another—conviction or politics, I am not going to

make a conclusion—found their way into reports through editing;

181 different edits.

Did you have any concern about what signal would be sent to the

American people, really, in hiring a person whose job it was before

taking on the new position to basically advocate the American Petroleum Institute’s position that climate change was not a problem

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and that the right approach on energy policy was to drill in ANWR,

to drill more extensively in the coastal waters, and basically to

erase, and sow doubt, about the urgency of addressing global

warming as a problem?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. You are making some insinuations in that

litany. So let me ask you—this plays against the type that you are

suggesting. Mr. Cooney was involved in the National Energy Policy

that was advancing mandates for renewable fuels against the interest of the oil companies. Mr. Cooney was involved in some of the

energy policy in which the Bush administration, for the first time

in over a decade, was implementing new fuel economy standards

for vehicles. Mr. Cooney was involved in the National Energy Policy that did not support tax breaks for oil and gas. In fact, the

President and his administration were opposed to them and made

that very clear in the run-up to the energy bill in 2005.

I could give you any of a number of additional examples where

Mr. Cooney was actually working against the interest of the oil and

gas industry, and he did it with the highest integrity in the service

of the policy agenda that he was being directed to implement by

the President of the United States.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Connaughton, I admire your energy but not

your misstatement of the facts.

The White House opposed the fuel standards that you are referring to.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Mr. Welch, you couldn’t be more wrong. In

2001, in the National Energy Plan, it called for increases in fuel

economy standards. It was then that we initiated a process with

the National Academy of Sciences to get their recommendation on

how we could move forward with new mandatory regulations on

fuel economy in the light truck fleet that would not create the safety hazard the National Academy of Science had identified.

We subsequently implemented two regulations covering 7 years

of light truck manufacturing for the first time in a decade. During

the same period, the President and his administration called on the

Congress to legislate, give us the authority to do the same thing

with respect to passenger cars, a call on Congress the President

most recently reinitiated in his State of the Union address in which

he committed the Nation to save 8.5 billion gallons of fuel through

new mandatory fuel economy standards if this Congress will give

us the authority to do it right rather than do it the way it was provided back to us in the 1970’s, which creates a safety penalty and

harms drivers.

Mr. WELCH. Were you involved in any one of the 181 changes

that were made, the edits that were made, under the supervision

of Mr. Cooney?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I only had general oversight as that was

working its way through the staff progress. What typically happens

if there’s an irreconcilable——

Mr. WELCH. So is the answer yes or no? You have given a few

speeches here but not answered too many questions.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I think I am doing fine answering questions.

Mr. WELCH. There were 181 different provisions that were edited

on the global warming report. Were you involved—that were made

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under the supervision of Mr. Cooney. Were you involved in approving those or making those?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. It was possible that some of those may have

been called to my attention. I don’t have a specific recollection because it was almost 5 years ago. Nevertheless, I was confident that

Dr. James Mahoney, who was the one leading this process, would

do a perfectly great job reconciling any comments that he thought

might be of concern.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Welch, your time has expired.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I am happy people don’t talk about how

many times I edited a simple letter, but thank God for a computer.

Is there anything that you would like to put on the record before

we get to our next witness?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I want to go back to the basics. Thank you,

Mr. Shays.

These reports are of worldwide significance, and when they were

published they received worldwide acceptance and praise. The 10-

Year Strategic Plan, our annual climate action reports, these are

full policy and budget documents that contain expressions of the

science that the scientific community itself found worthwhile. If

there was something fundamentally wrong with any of the edits to

the extent they made it into the document, one would have thought

that some scientist somewhere would have said, ‘‘Hey, on page 85

you got it wrong.’’ That didn’t happen.

We are looking in this inquiry at early edits to documents—and

documents, you know, before they got into their final stages. And,

again, it is—we are all very busy people. This inquiry is a bit odd

in that we are not looking at what was in the documents. This is

where the real information to the public is being provided. We are

looking at internal deliberations and contacts and what makes it

all the more ironic is the whole point of the deliberative process is

to encourage the diversity of viewpoints whether they are wrong or

whether they are completely right. And maybe some of them are

wrong and maybe some of them are right. Maybe Mr. Cooney’s

edits he made, I maybe had a question of. I didn’t have to, because

the context sorted it out.

So these documents are going to stand the test of time. This is

where we should be concentrating our focus, in my view, on the

budgets we need to answer these key science questions and the

budgets and policies we need to make meaningful, sensible

progress attacking greenhouse gas emissions in a way that grows

our economy and adds American jobs.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the hearings we are having, and I think they are interesting, and I know we are going to

have a lot more. But I hope we start to get beyond the issues of

who said what, when, and that this new majority will start to lead

and deal with the issues of where we go from here.

I know they are attempting to do that by a special committee

under Mr. Markey, because they are concerned that the very chairman of that committee, candidly, has been deleting the opponent—

the Dean of the House has been deleting the opponent against the

increasing CAFE standards. And while I may have some disappointment with this administration not taking charge and, you

411

know, picking up the sword and leading us through this, I wish

they had—I am sure if they had, I am sure you would have had

a nice job doing that, Mr. Connaughton.

I do know this: This is a bipartisan problem. It needs a bipartisan solution, and we need to get beyond the attacks of this administration. And if we start to work in a bipartisan way, we might

get some things done.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Dr. Jack Marburger was very interested in

joining, although the committee at this point in time is not ready

to speak with them. I think it would be highly useful, if we are

going to get to more e-mails, science statements—I am not aware

that the committee has assigned any scientist to actually look at

any of this. But I think it would be much more helpful if you had

a scientist from the committee sitting down with a scientist with

the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the scientists

could find a Science Office to sort through some of this to see how

it all shaped up. Again, I think it shaped up right but it is——

Mr. ISSA. So, just asking you quick, for emphasis, two things. I

guess we know the culprit here.

Mr. SHAYS. May I say the culprit is that this is sometimes on

even when it’s off. So if the committee would note this has got a

problem.

Mr. ISSA. Two things. One, I think you made a good point that

I would hope you would reiterate, that in fact your final report has

never been questioned today. The output of this process, including

Dr. Hansen’s complaints, bears no—no one complained in the final

document, including Dr. Hansen, one; and, two, that up until now,

the President’s attempt to modernize the CAFE standards to dramatically increase the fuel economy that our fleet gets without penalizing safety has not been answered by this Congress yet.

Would you repeat those two to clarify them for the committee?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. The 10-Year Strategic Plan that has been of

highest interest to this committee so far was roundly praised by

the National Academy of Sciences after two independent reviews,

after they provided it, and it’s actually being used as a basis for

research priorities, not just in America but around the world.

And, second, the President in his State of the Union declared

very specifically he wants to end our addiction to oil. He wants to

do it by dramatic increase in mandatory renewable and alternative

fuels, and he wants to do it with a significant—I would also call

it a dramatic—increase in fuel economy of vehicles across all of the

fleet, not just the big ones. All of them, small ones to big.

And we are prepared to work with the Congress to see that legislation turned into law.

I would note, by the way, that it has huge greenhouse benefits,

too, and it reduces air toxins substantially at the same time.

Chairman WAXMAN. Before I recognize Mr. Yarmuth, I want to

state a couple of facts. One, that suggested changes from CO2 were

not just early draft, they were continuously pushed until the final

draft, and, in fact, until the final day of the final draft. And all of

those edits were not by scientists. You say you would like scientists

to sit down with scientists. Let’s see who would have preferred

your scientists to have more of a say than your representative from

the oil industry, pushing his view of science over your scientists.

412

And then I do want to point out that the administration has authority to raise CAFE standards for passenger cars today, and you

haven’t chosen to do so.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. The National Academy of Sciences said if we

do so, we will create a safety penalty that causes more fatalities

and more traffic injuries. Certainly we can agree that is not an outcome we want.

Chairman WAXMAN. I think that is a red herring. I don’t think

the National Academy of Sciences has that view, but certainly the

auto industry does.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. That is not the case at all. The auto industry

is not happy about these standards, Mr. Waxman. In fact, I would

refer this committee and actually ask, if you would, the committee

enter into the record the 2002 National Academy of Science Report

on Fuel Economy Standards. You should read for yourself what

that says.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Yarmuth.

Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Connaughton, the reason we are here today

is not because we are concerned what came out on the final report.

Fortunately because of Christine Todd Whitman, we understand

that the edits that were made—that many, both here on this committee and also many in the scientific community, represented

cherry-picking of the evidence, that she decided that painted an inaccurate portrait of the situation with regard to climate change.

And I know you called it in your testimony, your prepared testimony, an intramural editorial exchange, but we are concerned here

with the process and whether the process is actually fair to science

or not.

And we have heard a lot of evidence about cherry-picking. You

disagree with some of it, but in fact your own testimony represents,

in my opinion—gives an example of where evidence was cherrypicked. You defended in White House edits to delete a discussion

of the human health and ecological effects of climate change. In defending that edit, you cited a 2001 National Academy of Sciences

report.

And you quote this sentence from that report: ‘‘Health outcomes

in response to climate change are the subject of intense debate.’’

Clearly they are. But you omitted from that reference the sentence

that immediately follows it and that sentence reads, ‘‘Climate

change has the potential to influence the frequency and transmission of infectious disease, alter heat and cold-related mortality

and morbidity, and influence air and water quality. And that same

section of the Academy report also says, ‘‘Increased tendency toward drought, as projected by some models, is an important concern in every region of the United States. Decreased snow pack

and/or earlier season melting are expected in response to warming

because the freeze line will be moving to higher elevations.’’ And,

finally, ‘‘The noted increased rainfall rates have implications for

pollution runoff, flood control and changes to plant and animal

habitat. Any significant climate change is likely to result in increased costs because the Nation’s investment in water supply infrastructure is largely tuned to the current climate.’’

Would you not concede that a—the sentence that you included as

evidence of using the National Academy of Sciences report paints

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a slightly different picture than if you included all of that material

after that?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Actually, Congressman, I became a big fan

of including all of the material, which was why the decision was

made to go ahead and reference all of it.

What I find in these science debates, especially among nonscientists, is the dangers always come when we try to summarize,

when in fact this is a much more complex issue. That is where people end up fighting. They fight over little amounts of space. That’s

why this was the best solution. I was inspired by Ms. Whitman. I

immediately agreed with it. This is a great document. I really recommend you to read it.

I would also recommend you to read the entire NAS report before

you reach final judgment. I appreciate the chairman in his opening

remarks saying there were suspicions but they’re trying to sort out

the facts.

I would really appreciate it if you would commit to read the NAS

report, because that is what I did in preparing for this hearing, because I wanted to see if these edits were in the realm of the reasonable. You could agree or disagree with them, but were they within

the realm of the reasonable to be sorted out by the ultimate scientific reviewer? My judgment is maybe they were. Maybe you will

come to a different one. You seem like a reasonable man. But if you

will look at the whole report you will see what was trying to happen here.

In addition, again, 99.5 percent already contained all of what you

just described. The issue, what was missing by some reviewers—

it wasn’t just Mr. Cooney—it was the Office of Science and Technology Policy, too. There was missing some qualification to some of

these absolute statements that justifies beyond these ongoing

science investments we’re making.

Reasonable minds could differ over that, but that is what we

should be after. But are we in the realm of the reasonable in the

deliberative process that’s there to call out these different viewpoints? I think so. I am hopeful that the committee will ultimately

find that as well.

Mr. YARMUTH. Do you understand why there is some suspicion

on this committee when virtually every edit that was suggested

tends to minimize the severity of the threat of global warming?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. I completely understand that, and the dilemma was because the rest of it, all of the affirmative stuff, wasn’t

objectionable. So you have this issue of—there was a concern that

something was being left out, and so the nature of the edits was

to reflect on that which was left out, without recognizing that Mr.

Cooney and many others read the rest of this and said wow, this

is good stuff. It’s so important about the temperature trends, and

all of the different impacts and the polar area, lots of good stuff in

here, without any negative comment by CEQ or anything else.

That’s really what was going on.

Mr. YARMUTH. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Your last answer was really good. Recasting it, you

were asked why it was obvious that you raised suspicions with

edits, and your answer was that there was so much positive that

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there was a tendency to focus on just those things where the certainty wasn’t the case. And frankly, in my last round of questioning, I raised the issue of why we are actually having this hearing.

And now that we’ve been through most of it, I’ve got to say it has

been really interesting.

The gentleman just asked you or just suggested that, fortunately,

Christine Todd Whitman had intervened, that we came out with a

sound report. That is like a vindication of the process. I don’t know

what more you could say that is more vindicating of what you all

did. People can disagree with your beliefs and the policy and a lot

of other things, but it seems to me if the point of this hearing was

to talk about policy, that it has worked pretty well and I—if you

want to comment on that, you have done a pretty good job thus far.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. The only thing I would add to that is by

doing a really smart thing, it ended up being portrayed publicly as

an omission from the draft you put in of the environment and, fortunately, pieces of the draft you put in of the environment is great.

It deals with all kinds of issues. So the benefit of this report was

diminished. And then the benefit of this report was diminished,

and it really had nothing to do with the merits of the document.

It really had to do with the sensation caused that always happens

when people pull back and get a look at some of the deliberative

processes without focusing on the final product. We like to focus on

the results. The Congress does. We do. Where the results are on

a sale——

Mr. CANNON. Let me talk about—Mr. Issa talked earlier about

all of the power plants, the coal-fired power plants that are being

built in China. And, of course, if we do coal to liquid here in America, the nice thing about that technology is you can actually take

the CO2 stream and sequester it, not only inexpensively, but maybe

at a high profit because you can use it to enhance oil production

and in other activities or just get rid of it in ways that we are

learning are scientifically sound right now.

So it seems to me that the net of this hearing, if anything comes

out of it, ought to be to shift away from process and there ought

to be a congratulations to the process used and a shift toward what

you have been suggesting back and forth through your whole testimony, which is what can we do to actually mitigate the problems

that may happen if man-made gasses are actually affecting the

temperature of the climate as a whole.

And if you just want to take a few minutes to wrap up on the

things we can do, I’d very much appreciate that, because I think

that is what we found in this hearing.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. Clearly we had an opportunity on renewables, especially renewable fuels; that is, the potential that has not

been tapped to the extent it can. And that’s why, again, we are

pleased by the broad bipartisan interest in the State of the Union

address as well as the advancement of renewable power.

But coal remains a very important issue. Anything we do short

term to mitigate greenhouse gasses is of relatively little consequence unless we figure out the zero emission coal solution. And

we have to be very careful about our policies to be sure we keep

an investment toward zero emission coal, because if we don’t,

China—and India in particular—and some other countries, their

415

missions will far exceed ours starting in about 2008–2009 and it

just runs away from us.

So if we are focusing on climate policy, to me, we have to advance this highly efficient zero emission coal agenda which, again,

the Congress, working with the administration on a bipartisan

basis, is doing. And we have to bring more nuclear on-line as a

hedge while we fill in with renewable fuels and we fill in even more

with renewable power.

We can get there. It takes some time, but we have to sequence

this right. And we can’t drive our investment away from coal in

America, because if we don’t figure it out, it will be decades before

China and India and other countries figure it out. So we have an

imperative to get it right here first.

Mr. CANNON. And if we get it right here first, and other nations

can copy the technology that we produced and have the kinds of

wonderful things in life that we have in America without the effect

on the environment——

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. And also, again by the way, we are competing less on the world stage for energy resources. So countries like

Japan, emerging economies, that don’t have access to the same natural resources we do, when we are using our own smarts, that

makes other resources available to other countries that don’t have

it. It is good for the global economies of all, and it will lift billions

of people out of poverty over time.

Mr. CANNON. Poverty is the big polluter. If you don’t believe that,

go to Haiti and take a look at the landscape.

You said something about the Federal opaque and this new chip

that has come out that is 40 percent positive, I believe it is funded

in large part by DOE. I think that is one of the great stories that

is ready to happen. We don’t know what it’s going to cost yet. It’s

not commercial—or it is actually commercial, but not really commercial—and of the price that will really make sense. But isn’t that

a direct result of DOE funding and this administration’s initiatives

to do those things?

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. In last year’s State of the Union address, the

President called for significant ramp-up in the research dollars toward some of these advanced solar and wind technologies. My son

dragged me to NexTechs in New York, sponsored by Wired Magazine. And they had this nanosolar technology that creates little pyramids on the same panel. That’s a great one.

And then DOE is also looking at lower efficiency but much

cheaper solar panels, so you could actually make a whole roof out

of it but it doesn’t cost you very much. So it might not be as efficient as the glass panels, but you get more energy from it because

you can spread it out on a bigger surface. Now, that could make

it more affordable for the consumer, and we can get to these zero

energy or energy gives back home.

Mr. CANNON. I recognize my time is almost gone.

The breakthrough you already have on the table is a chip that

will deliver over 40 percent efficiency as opposed to the 15 or 16

percent that we had historically. That is a tripling, almost, of efficiency, which means that the possibility of really using this wildly

throughout the world, not in all uses, but supplementing our uses

is close.

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Mr. CONNAUGHTON. These things come in waves, and I think

that is a renaissance in that area and that is very exciting.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Connaughton.

Thank you for being with us.

We are going to continue this investigation. We expect cooperation from your office in giving us all of the information and documents that we feel we are entitled to.

Mr. CONNAUGHTON. You will have our continued cooperation, Mr.

Chairman.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much. Thank you for being

here.

Our last witness is Dr. Roy Spencer. He is the principal resident

scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He worked at

NASA for more than a decade.

I want to welcome you to the committee. Your prepared statement will be in the record in full. We would like to ask, if you

would, to keep your oral statement to no more than 5 minutes.

It’s the policy of this committee that we put all witnesses under

oath. And so if you would please rise and raise your right hand.

The record will indicate the witness answered in the affirmative.

And we look forward to hearing from you.

STATEMENT OF ROY SPENCER, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA,

HUNTSVILLE

Mr. SPENCER. I am sorry I wasn’t here for——

Chairman WAXMAN. There is a button on the base of the mic.

Mr. SPENCER. I am sorry I wasn’t here for Jim’s testimony. As

you can tell, I am not an expert on this. It has been a few years

since I have done this. So I am going to read my oral testimony

verbatim if you don’t mind.

I would like to thank the chairman and members of this committee for the opportunity to provide my perspective on political interference on government-funded science.

I have been performing NASA-funded science research for the

last 22 years. Prior to my current position as a principal research

scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I was senior

scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and was an employee of NASA from 1987 until 2001.

During the period of my government employment, NASA had a

rule that any interaction between its scientists and the press was

to be coordinated through NASA management and Public Affairs.

Understandably, NASA managers do not appreciate first learning

of their scientists’ findings and opinions in the morning newspapers.

There was no secret within NASA at that time that I was skeptical of the size of the human influence on global climate. My views

were diametrically opposed to those of Vice President Gore, and I

believe that they were considered to be a possible hindrance to

NASA getting full congressional funding for Mission to Planet

Earth.

So while Dr. Hansen was freely sounding the alarm over what

he believed to be dangerous levels of human influence on the climate, I tried to follow the rules. On many occasions, I avoided

questioning from the media on the subject and instead directed reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:53 Jan 22, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00424 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\37415.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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porters’ questions to my director John Christie, who was my coworker, still is, and a university employee.

Through the management chain, in fact, I was told what I was

allowed to say in congressional testimony. My dodging of committee

questions regarding my personal opinions on the subject of global

warming was considered to be quite humorous by one committee,

an exchange which is now part of the Congressional Record.

I want to make it very clear that I am not complaining. I am

only relating these things because I was asked to. I was, and still

am, totally supportive of NASA’s Earth satellite missions, but I understood that my position as a NASA employee was a privilege, not

a right, and there were rules that I was expected to abide by.

Partly because of those limits on what I could and couldn’t say

to the press and Congress, I voluntarily resigned from NASA in the

fall of 2001. Even though my research responsibilities to NASA

have not changed since resigning, being a university employee

gives me much more freedom than government employees have in

expressing opinions.

So while you might think that political influence in our climate

research program started with the Bush administration, that simply isn’t true. It is—it has always existed. You just never heard

about it because NASA’s climate science program was aligned with

Vice President Gore’s objectives.

The bias started when the U.S. Climate Research Program was

first initiated. The emphasis on studying the problem of global

warming presumes that a problem exists. As a result, the funding

has always favored the finding of evidence for climate catastrophe

rather than for climate stability. This biased approach to the funding of science serves several goals which favor specific political ideology.

First, it grows government science, environmental, and policy

programs, which depend upon global warming, remaining as much

of a threat as possible. It favors climate researchers who quite naturally have vested interests and careers, theories, and personal incomes, myself included. And it provides justification for environmental lobbying groups whose very existence depends on sustaining public fears of environmental problems.

I am not claiming that global warming science—that the global

warming science program isn’t needed. It is. We do need to find out

how much of our current warmth is human induced and how much

of it we might expect in the future.

I am just pointing out that the political interference flows both

ways, but not everyone has felt compelled to complain about it.

This concludes my oral testimony.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spencer follows:]

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Chairman WAXMAN. Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Spencer, your qualifications—you are a climate scientist; is

that correct?

Mr. SPENCER. Well, at my age, none of us were trained as climate scientists. We were trained as meteorologists or atmospheric

scientists.

Mr. ISSA. But you are a Ph.D.

Mr. SPENCER. Ph.D. in meteorology.

Mr. ISSA. And if I heard you correctly, what you said, you chafed

at the Clinton administration’s tendency to like Dr. Hansen’s ability to get out and say what he thought and not like what you wanted to say.

Mr. SPENCER. I specifically remember after my congressional testimony where I was asked to not say anything beyond something

specific about my work, I asked my management how is it that Jim

Hansen gets to say these things to the press and I don’t. And they

just shrugged their shoulders and said he is not supposed to be

able to.

Mr. ISSA. So there was a double standard under the Clinton administration.

Mr. SPENCER. Sure.

Mr. ISSA. Is there a double standard under this administration?

Mr. SPENCER. Double standard in what way?

Mr. ISSA. If you were still here under this administration, do you

think you would be more free to talk about things which, let’s say,

were more aligned with the oil industry?

Mr. SPENCER. No. I don’t think so, because there is too much

pressure to keep the global warming thing going. I don’t want to

make it sound like there is no such thing as global warming. You

realize from reading my testimony that is not the case. I’m just

saying there is a bias that exists. The bias is pervasive, and in Jim

Hansen’s case he has a lot more political capital than I ever had,

since he is Mr. Global Warming. And he——

Mr. ISSA. And before that, he was Mr. Global Cooling.

Mr. SPENCER. Oh, well, I don’t know. That goes back before my

time, probably.

Mr. ISSA. So what you’re saying, there is politics at work. There

were politics at work in the last administration, and it’s very difficult for scientists to deal with that, both from the administration

but also from their peer group when one side or the other is sort

of ganging up on the minority.

Mr. SPENCER. That is right.

Mr. ISSA. And this committee is a committee of jurisdiction over

a lot of things in government. We can’t mandate that people get

along and play pretty, but we certainly can set a lot of the rules.

Do you believe this committee should pass legislation that would

change any aspect, and if so, what aspect of how the Clinton administration, and, I guess, the Reagan administration, the first

President Bush administration, and the second President Bush administration, has had these policies since 1987. What would you

change or advise us to change?

Mr. SPENCER. OK, well, I believe in what Roger Pielke, Jr. said

in his testimony. I believe it was to this committee on January

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30th or 31st. It was pretty flowery and maybe a little difficult to

follow, but he basically said you cannot separate politics from

science. I agree with that.

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Mr. SPENCER. I would say if I changed anything, I would make

sure that when science is funded, it does not favor any particular

political or policy outcomes. That is what I would like to see

changed.

Mr. ISSA. I hope we can do that.

Let me ask one more question.

The analogy I used earlier of former Speaker of the House Newt

Gingrich complaining about being put on the back of the plane of

Air Force One in the Clinton administration, a plane that most

people never get to ride on at all, isn’t Dr. Hansen’s complaint essentially that he is the most covered environmental person on the

planet and yet he feels stifled because he can’t do more freely?

Mr. SPENCER. I basically agree. He has gotten to say whatever

he has wanted to say about climate change, and the public can rest

assured that they have already heard about every potential catastrophic climate scenario that anybody can dream up 10 times over

in the media. They haven’t missed a darn thing. So when Jim Hansen finally complained about some pressure, my first thinking was

well, they finally started asking him to follow the rules.

Mr. ISSA. And last but not least, unfortunately the 600-page findings are no longer here, but you saw them being referred to by Mr.

Connaughton. How do you feel about the final product on climate

change?

Mr. SPENCER. Which final product? That big thick thing? I didn’t

read it.

Mr. ISSA. And why not?

I know you are under oath, but honesty is unusual here.

Mr. SPENCER. I spent all of my time trying to go after what I believe to be the largest uncertainty in global climate change, because

I think it is important especially for the poor in humanity and I

don’t—I basically don’t spend much of my time trying to understand all different aspects of what the administration is currently

interested in in terms of the——

Mr. ISSA. The chairman is helping with the question, but it is the

right one to ask. What is the greatest uncertainty right now that

you are working on?

Mr. SPENCER. I think the greatest uncertainty, which I am not

alone in this but we are in the minority, is that we don’t understand the way in which the climate system is naturally controlled

by precipitation systems. All the air that you are breathing, all of

the air out there in the sky, within a few days it all gets cycled

through precipitation systems. Those are the systems that impart

upon the air its greenhouse effect, which is mostly water vaporing

clouds.

Everyone admits we really don’t understand them very well, but

when you have people that don’t have meteorological training—and

I love Jim Hansen, I think he is a fantastic scientist, but he doesn’t

have formal meteorological training—you’ll find that meteorologists

are very skeptical about global warming because they understand

the complexity of the atmosphere, the almost biological complexity

of the atmosphere.

And yet modelers come along and say well, we put some equations in and we put in all the different components and we think

this is—that it’s telling us the way the atmosphere works. Well,

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there are a lot of us, possibly a silent majority of meteorologists,

that don’t believe we know enough. And I think ultimately getting

back to your original question, it all comes down to

precipitationsites.

Mr. ISSA. Isn’t it true that we also don’t understand the ocean

and its effects? Recently we learned that every 80 miles you have

unique DNA in organisms?

Mr. SPENCER. That’s true. But also I want to point out that if

global warming is indeed a problem, even though we don’t understand it, we should do something about it to the extent it makes

sense economically. I like to think I am a pretty good student of

basic economics, which I never learned about until about age 35.

I am a student of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, and I think

the part of this whole issue I love more than the science is the economics.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The

Chair recognizes himself.

So it is your view, Dr. Spencer, that this consensus that the view

we have heard from the National Academy of Sciences and the

international group that has come up with recent conclusions, that

they are incorrect. You have a dissenting opinion on this.

Mr. SPENCER. Well, I hear a lot about consensus. You are going

to have to tell me which consensus this is.

Chairman WAXMAN. How about the National Academy of

Sciences, they have a consensus point of view. Do you disagree

with that point of view?

Mr. SPENCER. I don’t recall what their consensus happens to be.

The consensus I agree with is mankind does have an influence on

climate. To me that is pretty obvious.

Chairman WAXMAN. Is the climate getting warmer?

Mr. SPENCER. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. Is that caused by man-made pollutants?

Mr. SPENCER. I don’t think we have any quantitative idea how

much of that warming is due to mankind.

Chairman WAXMAN. Do you think that people that disagree with

you are acting more on faith than on science?

Mr. SPENCER. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. And what do you mean by that?

Mr. SPENCER. Well, I learned many years ago that there are

some things in science which are difficult to answer, some questions that are difficult to answer. And some people—some scientists

don’t realize to what extent they are going on faith when they

make certain pronouncements. And it’s only human nature. I

mean, I don’t fault us for it all. I am saying there is more faith involved in science than most people are led to believe. So those are

not keepers of the truth.

Chairman WAXMAN. There is such a thing as a scientific method

where they evaluate the evidence and test hypotheses. Do you

think those people who try to follow the scientific methods and

reach the conclusion that we——

Mr. SPENCER. They haven’t followed the scientific method.

Chairman WAXMAN. They have not?

Mr. SPENCER. You cannot put the climate system in the laboratory. There is only one experiment going on. Mankind is carrying

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it out. And there is no way to know how much of the effect of the

warming we have seen is due to radiated forcing from something

like low-level clouds versus mankind.

Chairman WAXMAN. You are definitely outside of the mainstream

of these views on global warming and climate change. Would you

acknowledge that?

Mr. SPENCER. If there was a vote taken, yeah, I would probably

be outside the mainstream. Yes.

Chairman WAXMAN. Now, I want to read something that you

wrote.

‘‘Twenty years ago as a Ph.D. Scientist, I intentionally studied

the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about 2

years and finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary

theory as fact, I came to the realization that intelligent design as

a theory of origins is no more religious and no less scientific than

evolutionism.’’

Is that a correct statement?

Mr. SPENCER. Yes. I still believe that.

Chairman WAXMAN. So as a scientist, you believe that intelligent

design is equal to the doctrine of evolution?

Mr. SPENCER. I consider it to be a better explanation of origins,

and origins are something that science basically cannot address.

There are no naturalistic explanations yet for the information content of DNA or RNA. There is no explanation for the Big Bang that

doesn’t have to invoke new physics we’ve never heard of before, we

have never seen. To me, that is as much faith as it is science.

Chairman WAXMAN. And the whole Darwin explanation of evolution, survival of the fittest——

Mr. SPENCER. Even the evolutionists are having big problems

with neo-Darwinism. They realize it’s not explaining what is going

on biologically.

Now, of course, I have a sister that will beat me over the head

because she disagrees with me on that. But I still believe that, and

there are a lot of scientists that believe that, including evolutionists.

Chairman WAXMAN. So as a scientist, you are out of the mainstream on global warming, and would you say you are out of the

mainstream on evolution?

Mr. SPENCER. Yeah, among scientists, sure. I would also like to

point out that there were two medical researchers from Australia

that were out of the mainstream. They were laughed at for 10

years for believing that stomach ulcers were due to bacteria. In

2005, they were awarded the Nobel Prize. So I don’t mind being out

of the mainstream.

Chairman WAXMAN. There is no question in scientific history

that people who are out of the mainstream later are proved to be

correct, but that was based on scientific evidence.

Mr. SPENCER. And statistically I probably agree with you that

consensus among scientists usually is more right than wrong.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you.

The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Cannon.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, I am wondering how we got to the point of discussing

intelligent design here except to somehow cast a shadow on the

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witness’ integrity. I think that he has made casual references to

very deep studies, and I would suggest that the majority look at

those studies and deal with that issue on its own merits, because

I think what we are dealing with here really comes down to the

question of should we be asking questions, especially in an environment so complex as the Earth’s atmosphere, or should we say there

is a mainstream and if you are outside the mainstream, you are

not accepting?

The whole point of the scientific method is to ask, yes, and the

key is to come up with a good question to ask.

And I think, Dr. Spencer, when you talk about there is only one

experiment, that is what is happening around us. There are things

we can measure in that environment, right?

Mr. SPENCER. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. And are we doing some of that measuring?

Mr. SPENCER. I am sorry. You are asking about the measurements?

We do the satellite temperatures. John Christie and I were not

the only ones, as the chairman is well aware. There is another

group in California that is also doing that now, and they get answers very close to us. They get somewhat warmer global temperatures. There is Jim Hansen and others that have a global——

Mr. CANNON. And they are measurements, right?

Mr. SPENCER. All of these measurements have errors. We don’t

know how big the errors are, but we think we are all in agreement

that all of these measurements do show warming. There is still

some argument about how much warming there is.

Mr. CANNON. There’s an argument about how much warming,

about how much that is going to affect the sea level. There are arguments about everything in the whole system, including how good

the model is that you use to predict.

You said earlier there is only one experiment, and the model, I

think you were going to say, the model is woefully inadequate in

dealing with the reality which we are still trying to figure out.

Mr. SPENCER. That is my belief, and here’s where we hit faith

again. Jim Hansen has faith that he has the important physics

that is necessary to show that you—the climate system is going to

react from addition of man-made greenhouse gasses. OK.

Now the climate modelers will tell you that the climate models

do replicate the basic behavior of the climate system. That is true.

I agree with them. They do. The question is, though, how the atmosphere will change from this very small amount of rate enforcing that mankind is causing, less than 1 percent, of the natural

greenhouse effect, which weather has control over. We are putting

in our own extra 1 percent. How is the system going to respond?

Jim Hansen and some other modelers think the system is going

to respond by punishing us, that its going to amplify the little bit

of warming from that.

Mr. CANNON. That is a belief you are saying. That is Jim Hansen’s belief.

Mr. SPENCER. It’s a belief based on the physics that he put in his

model, that the physics he put in his model are sufficient to describe how the system is going to react to our addition of greenhouse gasses.

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Mr. CANNON. I think it would have been fascinating to have a

longer discussion with Dr. Hansen, because I believe you are correct that a large part of what he is doing is justifying his longstanding view that catastrophic bad things are going to happen

based upon—what do you call them—the inertia, the massive inertia and these slight changes.

Mr. SPENCER. And I don’t mind going on the record saying he

may well be right. As a scientist, he may well be right.

Mr. CANNON. Isn’t that the point? We have to ask the question,

is he right? He has posited an idea and now he has tried to quash

the questions because he’s drawn a conclusion, and that conclusion

has become a conclusion of faith instead of a conclusion of inquiry

of science.

Mr. SPENCER. I am sure he doesn’t look at it that way, but I do.

Mr. CANNON. I think he was pretty clear about it and what is

evil and what is good.

Mr. SPENCER. He has done a good job of showing quantitatively

one possible explanation for the warming in the last century, and

that increases his confidence because he claims if he combines the

effects of volcanoes and aerosols and CO2 and he tinkers around

enough with the model, he can actually get something that looks

like the temperature changes over the last century.

So what he has done is come up with one potential explanation

for the current global temperatures and how they evolved over the

last century.

Mr. CANNON. And that becomes an augmentor of his faith, is

what you are saying.

Mr. SPENCER. I wish I could remember the name. There was a

lady who worked at NCAR who did some research, some sociological research at NCAR about climate modelers, and what she

learned was that they only tend to discuss the big uncertainties

among themselves, but when it comes to public consumption the

uncertainties are greatly——

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Hansen talked about that when he talked

about trying to overcome the gap between what the public understands about the catastrophic possibilities and the science. What he

meant there is not that they want people to understand the complexities of the discussion, but he wants them to understand the

conclusion that he believes is imminent.

Mr. SPENCER. Yeah. From the people I talked to in the public,

I think everyone knows what the consensus view is.

Mr. CANNON. The consensus is out there very loud, and promoted

by people who want a conclusion.

I have some technical questions about what is going on with

global warming, but I do want to ask one other thing. Mr. Issa, I

think, used the expression ‘‘gang up.’’ And when scientists come to

a conclusion and gang up, that is some of a ‘‘thugocracy,’’ you

know, when thugs have control.

Chairman WAXMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. CANNON. This is the end of the question.

In the first place, it means bad science when people get together

and decide who’s inside and who is out. And second, it means those

who are on the inside continue to get the money. Isn’t that the

case?

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Mr. SPENCER. Generally, yes. But I don’t think you are going to

change scientists. Scientists are human, too, and they have their

own biases and political opinions, as do I. And you are not going

to change that, I think, getting back to the original suggestion

maybe the committee can try to make sure that different political

and policy outcomes are respected, you know, in funding the

science.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you. I yield back.

Chairman WAXMAN. Yes.

Mr. Yarmuth.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Spencer, I would like you to either tell me whether you agree

or disagree with this statement: When the government speaks on

science, it should present an accurate and honest view of the current state of the science.

Mr. SPENCER. That would make sense, yes.

Mr. YARMUTH. And it should, to all extents possible, prevent ideology, dogma, and corporate considerations from influencing its description of the current state of the science?

Mr. SPENCER. I guess, in an ideal world.

Mr. YARMUTH. And while you have some evidence, claim to have

some evidence, that such activity took place or such influence on

undesirable influence took place under the Clinton administration,

you don’t have a judgment as to whether it has taken place or has

not taken place under the current administration.

Mr. SPENCER. No. I don’t really have any judgment, but I

wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, I don’t know whether it has been

mentioned in this hearing, but NASA is an executive branch agency, and ultimately our boss is the President. And if something is

not agreeing with the President’s policy direction, I can see pressure being made. I mean, as a scientist, I wouldn’t like it. But then

I don’t have to be a government employee, do I? So I resigned.

Mr. YARMUTH. I would ask you whether you would consider it a

legitimate role for the Congress to—when it suspects that such influence has taken place, that it inquire, investigate whether that

is the fact and whether the public is, in fact, getting a fair and honest and accurate description of the state of the science.

Mr. SPENCER. Yeah, as long as the Congress does that fairly.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you.

Chairman WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Spencer. We appreciate your testimony.

That concludes the hearing for today, and we stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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