A brief guide to Bush administration language on global warming courtesy of
The Guardian, revisiting some classic moments we all know and love as well as the *brand new episode*.
Step one is changing the words without admitting that you've changed the words.
Until you get caught:
Philip Cooney, who was chief of staff of the White House council on environmental quality, quit his job two days after a report released by a watchdog group, the government accountability project, showed he had deleted some paragraphs and edited others drafted by government scientists.
Step two is to claim that the changes to the language are not changes at all:
The government accountability project was unavailable for comment yesterday, but revealed last week that he changed the documents in a way that would be more beneficial to the oil industry. In a section which gauged how sound evidence was for climate change he inserted "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties".
Still more from the
same story:
In another sentence which claimed: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is difficult," he included the word "extremely" before "difficult". The White House insisted the changes did not violate an administration pledge to rely on sound science, and defended them as part of the normal review process.
Step three is to claim that there were no untoward motives behind the not-changes-at-all changes to the language,
despite what events might suggest:
A senior White House official accused of doctoring government reports on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has taken a job with ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company.
Step four,
rinse and repeat for larger audience:
Tony Blair was today urged to break with George Bush over climate change as it emerged from leaked G8 papers that the US is unwilling to put its name to anything that says the world is getting hotter. [...]
The latest document - dated June 14 and seen by Channel 4 News - suggests negotiations since then have resulted in some of the document's most basic assumptions being called into question.
Parts of the earlier draft stating that "our world is warming", that the problem is "urgent" and that the G8 nations have "a responsibility to show leadership" and "cannot afford to postpone action" all have square brackets around them in the new text, indicating that they are not accepted by all parties to the discussions.
In the future, we'll skip past the scientist stage and cut straight to ammending the press release.