Global warming is a reality, and there is nothing Philip Cooney or the rest of the blundering executive branch can do to keep it quiet any longer.

It turns out that Cooney, the former chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality and a one-time oil industry lobbyist, got a little too red-pen happy with some of the federal government's official documents about climate change, including 294 separate edits to one governmental strategic climate change plan.

And as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is discovering through the current U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on political interference with science, Cooney wasn't editing for grammar. Through preliminary conclusions from looking at the more than eight boxes of documents received from the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, Waxman and Co. already have found that Cooney was able to wield tremendous influence over the direction of both federal policy and science.

Waxman said in his opening statements on Monday that there appeared to be a "concerted effort directed by the White House to mislead the public" about climate change science and potential future dangers to humans across the globe.

As a journalist raised and taught under the First Amendment, I'm very sensitive to any semblance of censorship. Throw the Bush administration, an oil lobbyist and lies about science into the mix — and I get angry.

But I'm not surprised.

This hearing and Waxman's initial findings simply confirmed what I already knew about the administration's efforts to distort scientific information. I even learned about it in a class this semester.

I just can't fathom why so many people would go to such lengths to alter information that has the potential to affect them as much as anybody else. I know Bush and Cooney have strong ties to the oil industry, which is understandable considering their pasts and the people who helped put each of them in power. But even many major players in the oil industry recognize the future potential of climate change and have started investing their money accordingly.

What better way for oil companies to avoid competition than by creating their own alternatives? Shell Oil Co. and BPAmoco PLC both have been investing money into hydrogen fuel cell research since 1999 — and Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil Corp. all are starting to shift their main focus away from oil and toward natural gas as the next big fuel.

As for Cooney and the CEQ, holding loyalties to the oil companies is not a bad thing. Sticking to those loyalties to the point that they actively misinformed and misrepresented important issues to a nation of 300 million and the most powerful, influential leader on the planet is another issue. When even the oil companies themselves are recognizing a necessary shift toward alternative fuels, a public relations quest to deny reality seems superfluous.

This is especially since Cooney was representing the CEQ, the group responsible for working with the White House and other federal agencies to develop environmental policies, and keeping the feds in check environmentally. The CEQ also serves as the principal environmental policy adviser to the president.

This is not to say any alternative energy is the golden answer to global warming issues or that oil companies and their employees are the origin of the problem and the root of all evil. Every viable alternative to carbon-based fuels has shortfalls.

When it comes to energy and global politics, there is no easy answer. No one, not even scientists, knows exactly how to solve climate change issues or what fuels will lead us away from high carbon dioxide emissions, which is why an active governmental campaign to distort the science that does exist is preposterous.

I'm convinced Cooney is a very intelligent man, and I don't understand why he didn't recognize the gravity behind his actions when he, as Waxman found, made changes that "injected doubt in place of certainty, minimized the dangers of climate change, and diminished the human role in causing the planet to warm."

Distorting information about an already difficult and important topic is tragically crippling to our country's progress and our planet's future. Hopefully the United States can move beyond Cooney's mistakes, get the facts and start to make some positive changes.

Elizabeth Kersjes is a State News copy editor. Reach her at kersjes@msu.edu