No distortion of facts in our climate change review

The June 16 editorial "Political Climate: The Bush Administration Fiddles With the Facts" brushes off the interagency review process for science documents at the federal policy level.

All such documents are rigorously examined by scientists and policy experts from multiple federal agencies and offices, including my own, to ensure accuracy with respect to science as well as stated policy. If a reviewer's comments distort scientific facts, we reject them. Those revisions suggested by other offices that survive our scrutiny accurately reflect current scientific knowledge.

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies, twice reviewed one of the documents in question, the Climate Change Science Program 10-year Strategic Plan. The NRC praised the final version for its scientific content and ambitious goals, but questioned whether funding would be available to implement such an aggressive agenda.

Under President Bush's leadership, climate change science is currently funded at approximately $2 billion in federal funds, and an additional $3 billion is allocated to technology development for significantly reducing or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.

For my office, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, one of the most important functions is to ensure accuracy in statements about science, and we are very concerned about striking the right tone in reports. We think the final versions of documents released by this administration are technically accurate both in content and in tone.

JOHN H. MARBURGER III
Science Adviser to President Bush and Director
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Washington, D.C.

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On happiness

Regarding "The Pursuit of Anything But Happiness" by Lisa Grunwald (June 12 Forum): I posit my experience in the classroom. Every semester I ask first-year college students what they would do if they suddenly had infinite money. Rare is the one who can come up with anything better than the piggish pursuit of pleasure: cars, sex, houses, vacations, bling and more cars, sex, houses, vacations and bling.

They imagine that pleasure, buying the fetishistic trinkets of our consumer culture will make them happy. But happiness is not pleasure. Ten more minutes on the playground will not make a child happy, nor will a house in Aspen make an adult happy. (Oh certainly they will provide pleasure, and so will heroin.)

Lisa Grunwald makes the same error. Grandma was right, money cannot buy happiness, and only the childish would think otherwise.

So do pursue happiness, with all your soul, pursue happiness. For happiness comes only from fulfilling your most personal gifts.

Happiness, as 2,500 years of Western culture teaches, comes only from being fully human and that means being virtuous -- or more simply, by being a good human being, a really human, human being.

Imagine a saw, and ask yourself if it would be happier if it were dull or sharp.

Imagine a dog: Would it be happier in a locker room or a hay field?

Now imagine yourself: Would you be happier acting like a pig or a person? As a fool who only knows appetite, or a human being who knows the intellect too?

So I urge you: Be happy and thereby be human too.

JAMES D. CARMINE
Chair
Department of Philosophy
Carlow University
Oakland

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On God

The Rev. Dr. N. Graham Standish believes ours is "A Country Divided by Christ" (Forum, June 12). He claims, "Mixing politics and religion causes too many people to confuse Caesar's empire with God's kingdom."

Such tunnel vision denies a vital part of the calling of Christians in this world: To be the salt and the light in the culture.

Historically, Christians have initiated countless changes in social convention -- without which our culture would be virtually unrecognizable.

In this country, the most obvious example is the abolition of slavery. Individual men and women of God campaigned at great personal cost to improve the plight of fellow Americans and the moral fiber of our nation.

God is the god of his followers, who with the encouragement of pastors and ministers throughout the ages, have confronted the evils around them and left a legacy of the peace and grace of God's kingdom here in the midst of Caesar's empire.

TOM MINNERY
Vice President
Government & Public Policy
Focus on the Family
Colorado Springs, Colo.

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Gasifying coal

In "CMU Study: New Coal Technology Could Help Reduce Emissions" (June 16), Dan Riedinger of the Edison Electric Institute, an electricity trade association, says that such deep geological sequestration of carbon dioxide "won't be viable for 15 years."

One promising way to keep carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and causing climate change is to inject it more than a kilometer underground where it can be permanently sequestered in deep geologic formations.

Perhaps Mr. Riedinger should visit the northern Great Plains where today a U.S. coal gasification plant is shipping carbon dioxide north via pipeline to Canada, where it is being injected deep underground into the Wayburn oil field. He could also visit Texas and Oklahoma where, for many years, carbon dioxide has been injected deep into old oil fields.

Or, he could visit the North Sea where Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, is injecting carbon dioxide into rocks deep under the sea so as to avoid the Norwegian government's tax on carbon dioxide releases to the atmosphere.

There are still a variety of regulatory and other issues to be worked out for deep geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. But the only way in which it won't be viable for 15 years is if we choose not to work seriously on those issues today.

M. GRANGER MORGAN
Head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Oakland

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Secondhand smoke

Ed Murry's point ("Smokers Just Want the Same Freedoms Others Enjoy," June 14) that tobacco taxes benefit all Pennsylvanians would carry more weight if it weren't dramatically overshadowed by the billions of dollars that tobacco-related illnesses drain from the health care system each year -- a bill footed largely by taxpayers.

Economic impact aside, however, Mr. Murry fails to appreciate that the decision to make local businesses smoke-free is a public health issue. Secondhand smoke is directly responsible for more than 50,000 deaths per year in the United States, of causes ranging from heart disease to lung cancer.

Employees of bars and restaurants have every right to work in a safe environment, free from the hazards of secondhand smoke and its health consequences.

Mr. Murry's argument that business owners should be free to decide smoking policies on their own makes no more sense than arguing that factory owners should be free to decide whether or not to adhere to industrial safety standards for their workers.

ADAM TOBIAS
Shadyside

Editor's note: The writer is a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

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Bush led us down a garden path

Two pieces in your June 12 issue address the appalling and frightening lack of credibility in the Bush administration.

The first, "Terror Case Numbers Are Misleading," reports misleading statistics spouted by President Bush and others regarding the effectiveness of government, anti-terrorism efforts to justify renewal of the USA Patriot Act.

The second, Ann McFeatters' White House Watch column "The Soybean Solution? The White House Draws Suspicion at Every Turn in Global Warming Debate," says with regard to administration ignorance of global climate change: "But with ideological control freaks in the White House, the reputation of the United States as an honest broker committed to the truth at all costs is being tarnished."

In truth, this reputation has all but corroded away.

We were told in 2000 that Mr. Bush, with his master's degree in business administration and as a former chief executive officer, would bring unique business sense to the White House. Good executives demand that staff provide reliable information to ensure that all statements and policy decisions are on solid ground, and they fire those who do not. George Bush does neither.

We now find that statements made during the 2003 State of the Union and United Nations addresses, the two primary events used by the administration to garner support for the war in no way support the president's claim that Iraq was a serious and mounting threat to our country.

Furthermore, the administration personnel responsible for conjuring the information behind these statements have been retained, promoted or allowed to move on to bigger and better things.

Our president is not a leader; he is a misleader, misleading us down a misguided path.

God help America.

BRIAN RAMPOLLA
Whitehall