Dick Cheney and climate change

A couple of weeks ago I linked to a New York Times article in which senior E.P.A. officials claimed that the White House told "agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document [describing E.P.A's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants] would not be opened". Today, there's this from the Times:

Vice President Dick Cheney's office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official's Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday.

The former official making the accusations, Jason K. Burnett, is a life-long Democrat, but he served as associate deputy director of the E.P.A. until he resigned in May.

In the letter, while declining to name individuals, Mr. Burnett said the offices of Mr. Cheney and the White House Council on Environmental Quality "were seeking deletions" of sections of draft testimony describing health risks from warming. The testimony was prepared by Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for a hearing last October before [Senator Barbara] Boxer's committee.

,,,

Marc Morano, a spokesman for James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and the ranking minority member on the Senate environment committee, ... said the criticism was unjustified.

Editing testimony is one thing. Distorting it is another. I'd say that removing "any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change" is distortion, not editing