Trump White House Elevates Climate “Skepticism”
Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
It’s not exactly big news that the Trump administration – famous for slashing Biden era clean energy subsidies and cheering on fossil fuels to the tune of “Drill Baby, Drill” – is not interested in policies to address climate change. And lately they have been busy finding new ways to undermine the science that enhances our understanding of the threats posed by a warming planet.
Back in April, the administration announced that it was dismissing the academics and experts who compile the federal government’s National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally mandated report that is released every few years. The next edition had been planned for 2027, and was intended to address how warming would impact public health, agriculture, water, and the broader economy. The report is used widely by researchers and government officials.
That was just the start. In July, NPR reported that the website that hosts the most recent assessment had stopped working. It is hard to imagine a clearer sign of the administration’s disdain for science. But the next step came weeks later, when the Department of Energy published a new report titled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate.” It was authored by a small group of well-known climate ‘skeptics’ who argue that the overwhelming scientific consensus should not be considered ‘settled,’ and that there is generally too much alarmism about the impacts of climate change. As the New York Times noted, the report could be seen as Trump’s intention to “wage a battle against climate change research, a long-held goal of some conservative groups and fossil fuel companies.”
The hurried report did not sit well with some of the researchers cited in the document. Among the reactions: One said it “completely misrepresents my work,” another called it “a serious misuse of my research,” while one more said her work “was taken out of context.” One researcher found that a supplementary graph in one of his papers was cited, but noted that “the actual content of my paper went counter to the narrative they were trying to present, and thus was ignored.”
More broadly, scientists who were willing to speak said the DOE report “gives a terribly skewed view of the underlying climate science” that cherry-picks data to support specific conclusions (in one case, to support the contention that sea level rise is not actually accelerating). Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania sumed it up this way: “They constructed a deeply misleading antiscientific narrative, built on deceptive arguments, misrepresented datasets, and distortion of actual scientific understanding. Then they dressed it up with dubious graphics composed of selective, cherry-picked data.”
On the same day that this climate ‘review’ was released, the administration had more news: It was seeking to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding, which forms the legal basis for the rules crafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit climate pollution from sources like cars and power plants. It is, as Politico put it, “the most audacious attempt yet by President Donald Trump to undo federal restrictions on fossil fuels.” Indeed, their intentions could not be any clearer.
This first appeared on CEPR.
The post Trump White House Elevates Climate “Skepticism” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.