With this week’s IPCC report set to take a hard line on agriculture, USDA could see heightened scrutiny.
A government climate scientist who says the Trump administration buried a groundbreaking report he authored has left the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in protest over the “political views” top officials allegedly imposed on his work.
Politico reported Monday that Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist who worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) for more than 20 years, quit due to an increasingly political atmosphere at the agency. Ziska had worked on a major rice study last year, one that found rising levels of carbon dioxide could imperil the critical source of sustenance for some 600 million people globally. According to Ziska’s work, the mineral and protein content in rice, along with key vitamins, is expected to drop as greenhouse gas levels rise.
Agency scientists have accused department officials of seeking to bury that report, among others, in keeping with President Donald Trump’s stance denying and downplaying climate change. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has similarly dismissedglobal warming as “weather patterns.”
View the complete August 5 article by E.A. Crunden on the ThinkProgress website here.