I have spent a lot of time recently reading drafts of my PhD student’s excellent, and over 200 page, thesis. It is written in Microsoft Word so I am switching on this softare’s track-changes function and using it to add comments to my students’ draft chapters, and to tweak the English here and there (her first language is Malay not English). I am finding this feature of the software really useful. So are officials in Texas appointed by the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination to run for President of the USA: Rick Perry.

You can see the results at the bottom of an article in an American publication with the slightly odd name of Mother Jones. This shows a report prepared by Texan scientists about a part of Texas called Galveston Bay (the picture above was taken in this bay). The report presents the scientists’ careful study of this body of water that is important to Perry’s state of Texas.

Then Perry’s appointees put on track changes and got to work eliminating almost reference to any recent change in the bay, e.g., in the sea level in the bay, and almost any reference to any impact of humans on the bay. You can see all this in the document on the article webpage. For example on page 7 the figure showing recent sea levels was just completely deleted, as was the sentence describing the recent rate of increase of sea level in the bay.

I have to say that this is pretty shocking. Sea level in the bay is currently rising by around 4 mm/year. That is simply a measurement, and Microsoft software can’t alter it, and it can’t stop any consequences that may come from the rising sea level.

The scientists who wrote the report have without exception refused to put their name to the edited version. I am kind of proud of my fellow scientists. Scientists should try as carefully as possible to present all the facts on climate change, and then our elected representatives should make the decisions. That is how a democracy should work in areas such as this where the information needed to make decisions is highly technical and so is gathered by scientists. But politicians should not try and hide the facts they don’t like, they should face them and make rational decisions based on all the facts, those they like and those they don’t.