The White House forced EPA to drop findings on global climate change from a recent draft report on the state of the environment in what’s become a pattern of politics trumping science. The initial EPA draft, obtained by the New York Times, contained a two-page section on climate change, which is completely deleted from the version released for public comment June 23. This section referenced a number of studies that pointed to human activity -- such as rising concentrations of smokestack and tail pipe emissions -- as contributing to global warming, including a 2001 National Research Council report commissioned by the White House. According to the Times, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), along with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), edited the initial draft, cutting out mention of these studies, and replacing them with references to a study questioning climate change, partially funded by the American Petroleum Institute. EPA staff ultimately decided to delete the entire section; an internal memo stated the agency objected to filtering science and misrepresenting the scientific consensus on climate change. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman discounted any disagreement between the White House and EPA and called herself “perfectly comfortable” with the draft report. This is the second time in the past year the White House and Bush appointees have downplayed global warming in official documents, interfering in scientific findings by EPA staff. Last September, for the first time in six years, the administration removed a climate change section in an annual EPA report on air pollution. Shortly before that, in May of 2002, President Bush disavowed an EPA report to the United Nations that, in a first for the administration, lay blame for global warming on human activity. “I read the report put out by the bureaucracy,” the president said dismissively following its release. This caused some political embarrassment for Bush -- juxtaposing the seriousness of the problem with his unwillingness to do anything about it -- and likely contributed to the White House taking a closer look at agency scientific findings. In another example, the White House forced EPA to make contextual changes in its Feb. 24 report on children’s health that downplayed the effects of mercury, according to sources. Stronger findings against mercury could have given additional ammunition to environmentalists who contend the administration’s flagship environmental proposal, the “Clear Skies Initiative,” is too weak. More recently, in April, the Bush administration referenced a doctored report on Yellowstone National Park in asking a United Nations committee to remove the park from a list of World Heritage sites that are “in danger,” according to the Los Angeles Times. A draft by professional staff indicated continuing threats to the park’s streams, bison herd and trout, but these sections were removed or toned down. “Tinkering with scientific information, either striking it from reports or altering it, is becoming a patter of behavior,” Roger G. Kennedy, a former director of the National Park Service, told the L.A. Times. “It represents the politicizing of a scientific process, which at once manifests a disdain for professional scientists working for our government and a willingness to be less than candid with the American people.”