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Officials at the state environmental agency in Texas have altered a scientific report they commissioned on Galveston bay, deleting mentions of human-induced climate change and rising sea levels.

The 2010 State of the Bay report has been delayed for a year by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center, who are contracted to provide the state with regular reports on the bay.

John Anderson, an oceanographer at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who wrote the chapter of the report that was apparently edited by TCEQ management, told British newspaper The Guardian that the cuts reflected what he called "denial" throughout the state of Texas about the effects of global warming.

The TCEQ is headed by Bryan Shaw, known for saying that scientific arguments that human activities are changing the climate are a hoax. He was appointed by Texas governor Rick Perry, who has publicly said that such science is inconclusive.

"They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence - it was edited or eliminated," Anderson told The Guardian. "That's not scientific review, that's just straightforward censorship."

The three scientists involved in the paper have asked that their names be removed from the edited version of the publication, reports the Houston Chronicle. "We feel it would impact our credibility as scientists on something where the data on sea-level rise has been censored," said Jim Lester, the vice-president of the research center and editor of the report.

News organisation Mother Jones has published the report with tracked changes made by two of Shaw's collegues, the director of water quality planning, Kelly Holligan, and her assistant director, Katherine Nelson.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow told the Houston Chronicle in an email that the agency disagreed with information in the article, saying: "It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it."

But the changes made by Holligan and Nelson go against known scientific evidence. In addition to editing references to the role humans play in climate change, they deleted a sentence noting that water levels in the bay have been rising five times faster than the long-term average.

"There's no denying the fact that sea-level rise has significantly accelerated. The scientific community is not at all divided on that issue," Anderson told Mother Jones.

"I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change," he told the Houston Chronicle. "It's not about the science. It's all politics." http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/10/texas-offi
cials-censored-clima.html

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