May 30, 2019

U.S. Gov’t guts its own climate research mechanisms

located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

Since taking office in 2017, president Trump took it upon himself to both downplay the effects of climate change and dismantle the U.S. government’s mechanism for tackling it.

With the backing of his administration, the president has thus far initiated major-scale rollbacks of Obama-era regulations to curb CO2 emissions, gutted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and filled its offices with climate change deniers and oil industry loyalists, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, and effectively eliminated any reference to climate change and global warming from official statements and communiques. Now, the U.S. government decided to go one step further and undermine the science behind climate research and policies.

As reported by The New York Times, the Trump administration announced that it will significantly limit the scope of scientific reporting on climate change by various government agencies. One such agency is the United States Geological Survey, whose director, James Reilly – a former astronaut and petroleum geologist – announced that from now on his office will only produce assessments that use computer-generated climate models that predict the impact of climate change until 2040 (as opposed to through the end of the century).

Defending his policy, Reilly, who has no background in climate change research, has told the Times that the policy revisions are intended to produce more accurate reports on the effects of climate change, stating “We’re looking for answers with our partners and to get statistical significance from what we understand.”

Scientists, however, are adamant that limiting the scope of reporting to the time period until 2040 will produce a highly misleading picture, seeing as the most dramatic effects of climate change are predicted to occur following 2050. By the end of the century, scientists argue, the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere could increase by about 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which would result in catastrophic natural disasters, sea-levels rise, crop failures, increased migration trends, and more.

One of the administration’s main goals in its fight against climate science is also to weaken the impact of the National Climate Assessment – a report comprised by various government agencies about the effects of climate change that is published roughly every four years. They intend to do so by potentially removing the worst-case scenario predictions from the next National Climate Assessment (scheduled to be published between 2020 and 2021) as well as from other similar government reports.

A spokesperson for the EPA defended the proposed policy changes in an email to the Times, saying that, “The previous use of inaccurate modelling that focuses on worst-case emissions scenarios, which does not reflect real-world conditions, needs to be thoroughly re-examined and tested if such information is going to serve as the scientific foundation of nationwide decision-making now and in the future.”

Naturally, the vast majority of scientists and experts object the move and dread its ramifications. “Nobody in the world does climate science like that,” Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton told the Times. “It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags.”

Similar concerns were raised by Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served as a panelist that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. Duffy had told the Times that, “What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicise the science – to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics… It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”

It has been clear to members of the international community that the U.S. government, particularly under the current administration, constitutes more of an impediment than an aide in the global effort to tackle climate change. Yet, the environmental harm caused by the Trump administration is set to skyrocket to unimaginable heights should it go forward with its plans to eviscerate the national climate research tools – upon which scientists and governments from all over the world rely heavily.