Green Watch

Texans Wrangling Over Global Warming


Texas Democratic state senators Rodney Ellis and Leticia Van de Putte are accusing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality of scientific censorship in a state-commissioned report on Galveston Bay. Rice University professor Dr. John Anderson claims that, for political reasons, the environmental agency intentionally edited an article he contributed to the report; sections of Anderson’s article in which he linked sea level rise and wetlands destruction to human activity were removed from the final publication. As reported by the L.A. Times, Commission spokesman Andy Saenz defended the State of the Bay 2010 report, explaining that the “intent is to give an accurate portrayal of the state of the bay. You don’t have to get into the debate about whether man-made global warming contributes to that…that was outside the scope of what we asked him to do.” The focus of the report, says the Commission, was issues such as “salinity, the drought, the effects on the ecosystem, is enough water getting to the bay,” and not “to get involved in a global debate.” Anderson and his two Democrat allies in the Texas state senate pull the censorship victim card, but the Commission is standing by its decision to provide strictly pertinent information about Galveston Bay.