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Short Sharp Science: A New Scientist blog

Texas officials censored climate change report

Chelsea Whyte, contributor


Least bitterns in Galveston bay (Image: Gary Seloff/Bournemouth News/Rex Features)

Officials at the state environmental agency in Texas have altered a scientific report they commissioned on Galveston bay, deleting mentions of human-induced climate change and rising sea levels.

The 2010 State of the Bay report has been delayed for a year by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center, who are contracted to provide the state with regular reports on the bay.

John Anderson, an oceanographer at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who wrote the chapter of the report that was apparently edited by TCEQ management, told British newspaper The Guardian that the cuts reflected what he called "denial" throughout the state of Texas about the effects of global warming.

The TCEQ is headed by Bryan Shaw, known for saying that scientific arguments that human activities are changing the climate are a hoax. He was appointed by Texas governor Rick Perry, who has publicly said that such science is inconclusive.

"They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence - it was edited or eliminated," Anderson told The Guardian. "That's not scientific review, that's just straightforward censorship."

The three scientists involved in the paper have asked that their names be removed from the edited version of the publication, reports the Houston Chronicle. "We feel it would impact our credibility as scientists on something where the data on sea-level rise has been censored," said Jim Lester, the vice-president of the research center and editor of the report.

News organisation Mother Jones has published the report with tracked changes made by two of Shaw's collegues, the director of water quality planning, Kelly Holligan, and her assistant director, Katherine Nelson.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow told the Houston Chronicle in an email that the agency disagreed with information in the article, saying: "It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it."

But the changes made by Holligan and Nelson go against known scientific evidence. In addition to editing references to the role humans play in climate change, they deleted a sentence noting that water levels in the bay have been rising five times faster than the long-term average.

"There's no denying the fact that sea-level rise has significantly accelerated. The scientific community is not at all divided on that issue," Anderson told Mother Jones.

"I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change," he told the Houston Chronicle. "It's not about the science. It's all politics."

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Where was your criticism of the Anglia emails ("Hide the Decline")? Or your support for the two IPCC scientists who resigned after their doubts were not published in original IPCC report?

Both sides can play this game. You are right: It IS all about politics, but don't portray your selves as dispassionate scientists interested only in the truth.


Governor Perry and his minions once again refuse to acknowledge that we are destroying our environment! Electing such closed-minded demagogues to public office - repeatedly - only confirms that Americans have become self-absorbed idiots who will follow anyone who tells them what they want to hear - whether it is true or not! God help our country and our world!


And will such revelations make the slightest dent in politically motivated denialism?
Not a chance, because denialism has nothing to do with truth, let alone science.


Thank God we've got some intelligent politicians inTexas. It's about we seriously objected to this political scientific establishment whose pronouncements will go down in history with the same credibility as the flat earthers. There's a sadness to that ... but it is inevitable.


This is the Real Climategate.I wonder how many 'skeptics' and 'skeptic' sites will complain about the distortion of scientific data?


Obviously Texas will just Pray global warming away, just like all the fires in Texas.



The deniers continue to deny reality.

As it stands, the science is still accurate. All of the official investigations into the so-called 'Climategate' scandal have proven that no lying occurred, no fudging of the data occurred, and that the scandal was manufactured by right wingers who have still not been prosecuted for their hacking into a scientific database for the sole purpose of manufacturing a scandal.

And, as usual. The deniers on this forum have conveniently ignored not only the fact that the controversy is dead, but that the scientist (one) who lost his job - got his job back after the entire controversy was deemed false.


Did the New Scientist have a problem with the censoring of the EPA scientist under Obama? BTW, The earth is in a a decades plus static temperature stance. So the earth seems to be in denial of "climate change". Cheers!


I'm sure all the climate change and sea-level rise deniers will happily swap places with the inhabitants of those low-lying pacific islands that they believe are not at risk of going under the waves.


Interesting example of the conflict between the people, who know what they're doing, and the people (knowing very little), who have the power to edit the results.

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