HOUSTON, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- A professor has accused a Texas environmental agency of censorship for deleting references to climate change and rising sea levels from an article he wrote.
Rice University oceanography Professor John Anderson said the deletions by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from the article he wrote about changes in Galveston Bay are ideological and political, The Houston Chronicle reported Monday.
"I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global change," Anderson said. " ... It's not about the science. It's all politics."
"The sea level rates presented in this chapter are scientific fact, not speculation," Anderson wrote in a letter to TCEQ Commissioner Buddy Garcia complaining about the deletions.
Anderson wrote the article for The State of the Bay, a periodic report published the TCEQ's Galveston Bay Estuary Program.
The dispute -- Anderson said the TCEQ won't allow the article as written and he refuses to accept the changes -- has delayed the publication of the reports.
The TCEQ has not commented on the matter, the Chronicle reported.