Follow The Oil Money

So what are we going to call this example of the Bush administration "fixing intelligence and facts" around the policy? Kyoto-gate, Exxongate...maybe even G8Gate?

The New York Times reports that a former oil industry lobbyist edited the Bush administration's official policy papers on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

Meanwhile, across the pond, The Guardian has US Sate Dept. documents obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation which show that President Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries.

The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.

In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.

Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.

Which proves that Exxon isn't above telling lies in high places:

In evidence to the UK House of Lords science and technology committee in 2003, Exxon's head of public affairs, Nick Thomas, said: "I think we can say categorically we have not campaigned with the United States government or any other government to take any sort of position over Kyoto."

As a rightwing commenter I know of is fond of saying "it's all about the ooooiiillllll."

Well no, it's all about the oil moooonnneeeeyyyyyyyy.

Even Iraqi reconstruction hasn't been about the oil. As I noted some time ago, the neocons lost the fight for cheap floods of oil when Bush backed the oil companies who wanted supply restricted because higher prices benefit them more than higher levels of supply.