»The Environment - Now and Then. Global warming«

Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific data to influence decisions about the allocation of limited resources.

My greatest concern, however, is with Lomborg's tone. He is clearly committed to rubbishing the views of hand-picked environmentalists, frequently the very silly ones such as Ehrlich, whom professionals have been ignoring for decades. This selective approach does not inspire much confidence: ridiculing idiots is easy. Who better to manipulate data in support of a particular point of view than a professional statistician? And who to trust with the task less than someone who argues like a lawyer?

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down the links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal U.S. government documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In most cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as inserting the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
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The American Petroleum Institute, where Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.

On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal, during the rest of Bush's term of office.

Lib Dem environment spokesman Norman Baker branded George W Bush the environment's "public enemy number one".

"Tony Blair has got no influence on Bush when it comes to climate change," he added.

Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale described Mr Bush as "an international menace" and said Mr Blair should "press on regardless".

And Catherine Pearce, of Friends of the Earth, described the latest draft as "disastrous".