Another example of how election-year politics can infect an issue surfaced this week when Democrats accused the Bush administration of trying to cover up damaging information on the effects of global warming.

You can't exactly put President Bush in the sky-is-falling camp with regard to the debate over global warming, but this is an incident that has been blown out of proportion by those seeking political advantage.

At issue is a two-page report prepared for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that suggests global warming is part of the cause for the frequency and increased strength of hurricanes. The fact sheet was to have been included in a press kit that went out to the media before the start of this hurricane season.

But a call to NOAA from a top official in the Commerce Department kept the fact sheet from going into the kit. The official reason given is that the report wasn't ready for distribution.

Democrats saw that as Bush administration censorship. One Democratic lawmaker said it was proof that the Bush administration had “declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda. ...”

According to NOAA officials, the report was only a discussion of the current state of hurricane science, as it might relate to global warming, not a policy statement. Commerce Department officials, confronted with the conspiracy theory, said the report was fine, it just needed to be made less technical, so more people could understand the issue.

Two things about this. First, our government officials need to give ordinary people more credit for being able to understand technical issues. Second, everyone needs to take a deep breath. It'll all be over on Nov. 8.

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Sept. 28, 2006