Political officials throughout the Bush administration have edited and manipulated climate science communications, according to a recent report by a nonprofit watchdog group. Evidence shows the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to be involved in the manipulation.

On March 27, the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a public interest advocacy and watchdog organization, released a report detailing political interference in federal offices performing scientific research related to global climate change. The report, Redacting the Science of Climate Change, focuses on the manipulation of agency scientific communications to Congress and the media. The report is the product of a year-long investigation which included interviews and examinations of internal executive branch documents.

Examples in the report indicate OMB has been involved in political interference. OMB exerted political influence in responses to questions from Congress. OMB also plays an oversight role in a federal climate science clearinghouse.

For example, after an April 26, 2006, Senate committee hearing on the effects of climate change, two senators submitted questions for the record to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A number of federal offices, including OMB, took the opportunity to comment on and edit the responses.

In one of its edits, OMB inserted text which "attributed global warming to increasing water vapor, in reliance on a quote taken out of context from a scientific paper," according to the GAP report. Before finalizing the response, one of the paper's authors intervened to correct OMB's assertion.

In another edit, OMB recommended removing the phrase "healthy coral reef ecosystems are important to both the fisheries and tourism industries and negative impacts on these ecosystems could affect these industries." OMB felt the phrase unnecessary, according to documents obtained by GAP.

The report indicates OMB has also been involved in interference as an overseer of the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). CCSP was formed to coordinate climate change science across a number of federal agencies and serve as a clearinghouse for information. CCSP is governed by members of those agencies as well as other executive offices, including OMB. Two OMB officials also sit on a CCSP working group in charge of publicly disseminating climate science information.

However, CCSP has underwhelmed observers in its releases of public information, according to the report. Since 2004, CCSP has released only 12 substantive written products, none of which exceed four pages in length. Since January 2006, the only new materials to emerge from CCSP have been three press releases. CCSP currently employs a staff of 14. Though OMB's exact involvement cannot be quantified, Tarek Maassarani, the author of the GAP report, says, "OMB has a presence in a lot of the decision making processes" in CCSP.

GAP released the report in conjunction with a hearing held by an oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee. Like the report, the hearing focused on political interference in climate science communications.

The testimony of James McCarthy, a Harvard professor of biological oceanography, underscored the importance of sound science in the global climate change dialogue and the danger of scientific manipulation. Speaking of recent consensus on rising global temperatures and the anthropogenic causes thereof, McCarthy said, "Despite this strong scientific understanding, media coverage and political debate on global warming science often give undue credence to the views of little known organizations and statements by individuals purporting to be experts on climate science."

Both the report and the hearing point to other offices within the Executive Office of the President as involved in climate science manipulation. Most notably, internal documents have identified the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as perpetrators.

CEQ and OSTP have been more involved in political interference than OMB, according to the report. However, OMB's role in the political manipulation of climate science communication is not to be understated. According to Maassarani, "OMB is very hostile to the policy implications of this science."