Climate business as usual.

• Position: George W. Bush response to climate change - Editorial

The Bush administration has undertaken a quest for "sound science" as its basis for addressing climate change. But as evidenced by reports of the past year alone, the administration's "science" is driven more by politics than by the pursuit of truth.

As reported in The New York Times, the administration's Climate Action Report, originally released in May 2002, was later altered to include sections that emphasize the uncertainties of climate science, following an initial uproar from administration officials and industry lobbyists. Shortly thereafter, the Environmental Protection Agency released its annual report on U.S. pollution trends, excluding a discussion of [CO.sub.2] and climate change for the first time in six years. The administration explained the omission by saying that [CO.sub.2] does not directly threaten people or ecosystems. Still, leaders around the country aren't waiting for Bush to firm up his science before moving ahead: New Jersey's attorney general David Samson, for example, has warned that climate change "poses real and immediate dangers to New Jersey's environment and the health of our citizens."

In mid-November, the administration published its draft strategy for the Climate Change Science Program, outlining a multi-billion dollar plan to study issues most scientists believe have been settled, such as the share of warming since 1950 that is attributable to human activities. The plan ignores several previous studies, including one released in September 2002 by NASA which concludes that global temperature change in the past 50 years is due mainly to human releases of greenhouse gases. According to the NASA report, a continuation of "business as...