World Bank Science Diluted

Finanicial Times story on Wolfowitz aide trying to take out references to climate change in World Bank report

via Brad deLong

Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, got passed up to be World Bank President

I wonder why family planning and climate change got "edited" by his deputy...
Read the whole thing, it is pretty disgusting.

"One of Paul Wolfowitz's two handpicked deputies, Juan José Daboub, tried to water down references to climate change in one of the World Bank's main environmental strategy papers..."

and

"He is already under fire for allegedly trying to remove references to family planning in the bank's Madagascar country assistance strategy and reduce its prominence in its new health sector strategy."

"He tried to water it down. He tried to take out references to climate change," Mr Watson said. Two other officials confirmed this account.

The chief scientist said Mr Daboub, who oversees the sustainable development division, tried to remove some references to climate change completely and, in other cases, replace them with the phrases "climate risk" and "climate variability", which convey greater uncertainty over the human impact on climate.

Mr Watson said: "My inference was that the words 'climate change' to him implied human-induced climate change and he still thought it was a theory and was not proved yet."

He said that went completely against bank policy. "We have always felt that climate change is a very serious environmental issue and very serious development issue," he said.