Tag: Trump climate change denial

U.S. has entered unprecedented climate territory, EPA warns

Washington Post logo

The Trump administration delayed the report, which cites urban heat waves and permafrost loss as signs of global warming, for three years

For years, President Donald Trump and his deputies played down the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and delayed the release of an Environmental Protection Agency report detailing climate-related damage. But on Wednesday, the EPA released a detailed and disturbing account of the startling changes that Earth’s warming had on parts of the United States during Trump’s presidency.

The destruction of year-round permafrost in Alaska, loss of winter ice on the Great Lakes and spike in summer heat waves in U.S. cities all signal that climate change is intensifying, the EPA said in its report. The assessment, which languished under the Trump administration for three years, marks the first time the agency has said such changes are being driven at least in part by human-caused global warming.

As it launched an updated webpage to inform the public on how climate change is upending communities throughout the country, the Biden administration gave the agency’s imprimatur to a growing body of evidence that climate effects are happening faster and becoming more extreme than when EPA last published its “Climate Indicators” data in 2016. Continue reading.

As Election Nears, Trump Makes a Final Push Against Climate Science

New York Times logo

The administration is imposing new limits on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would undercut action against global warming.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency.

The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United States government information about climate change that underpins federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of the direction the agency will take if President Trump wins re-election.

An early sign of the shift came last month, when Erik Noble, a former White House policy adviser who had just been appointed NOAA’s chief of staff, removed Craig McLean, the agency’s acting chief scientist. Continue reading.

‘Dangerous’: National Climate Report Held Back By Trump

Environmental advocates want to know why a U.S. government agency hasn’t yet released a crucial climate report.

On Tuesday, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency oversees government research on the threats posed by climate change.

The environmental nonprofit asked why NOAA has not yet released the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a cross-government report on climate change that spans 13 government agencies. Continue reading.

As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’

New York Times logo

The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said.

WASHINGTON — With wildfires raging across the West, climate change took center stage in the race for the White House on Monday as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called President Trump a “climate arsonist” while the president said that “I don’t think science knows” what is actually happening.

A day of dueling appearances laid out the stark differences between the two candidates, an incumbent president who has long scorned climate change as a hoax and rolled back environmental regulations and a challenger who has called for an aggressive campaign to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for increasingly extreme weather.

Mr. Trump flew to California after weeks of public silence about the flames that have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, wiped out communities and forests, burned millions of acres, shrouded the region in smoke and left at least 27 people dead. But even when confronted by California’s governor and other state officials, the president insisted on attributing the crisis solely to poor forest management, not climate change. Continue reading.

Two major Antarctic glaciers are tearing loose from their restraints, scientists say

Washington Post logo

Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute 5 percent of sea-level rise.

Two Antarctic glaciers that have long kept scientists awake at night are breaking free from the restraints that have hemmed them in, increasing the threat of large-scale sea-level rise.

Located along the coast of the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute around 5 percent of global sea-level rise. The survival of Thwaites has been deemed so critical that the United States and Britain have launched a targeted multimillion-dollar research mission to the glacier. The loss of the glacier could trigger the broader collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to eventually raise seas by about 10 feet.

The new findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from analysis of satellite images. They show that a naturally occurring buffer system that prevents the glaciers from flowing outward rapidly is breaking down, potentially unleashing far more ice into the sea in coming years. Continue reading.

The president who says the coronavirus will go away makes the same prediction about global warming

Washington Post logo

There are a range of policy issues on which President Trump’s approach varies dramatically from that of his opponent in this year’s presidential contest, former vice president Joe Biden. But on none is the difference more stark than on the issue of climate change.

Even on the coronavirus pandemic, Trump at least will occasionally pay lip service to the need to follow the lead of scientific experts. But on atmospheric warming — manifested dramatically in recent weeks in massive wildfires on the West Coast — Trump is far more likely to smirk.

Consider an exchange that took place in California at an event focused on the fires. Wade Crowfoot, head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, called on Trump to recognize the role of climate change in the historic conflagrations. Continue reading.

In Visiting a Charred California, Trump Confronts a Scientific Reality He Denies

New York Times logo

A president who has mocked climate change and pushed policies that accelerate it is set to be briefed on the scorched earth and ash-filled skies that experts say are the predictable result.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet.

To the global scientific community, the acres of scorched earth and ash-filled skies across the American West are the tragic, but predictable, result of accelerating climate change. Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states.

But the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels, chiefly by rolling back or weakening every major federal policy intended to combat dangerous emissions. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied or minimized the established science of human-caused climate change. Continue reading.

California and nearly two dozen other states sue Trump administration for the right to set fuel-efficiency standards

Washington Post logoLawsuit marks the latest in an escalating fight over one of the nation’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

California and 22 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from stripping the nation’s most populous state of its long-standing authority to set its own fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks.

“We’ve said it before, and we will say it again: California will not back down when it comes to protecting our people and our environment from preventable pollution,” the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement announcing the action. “No matter how many times the Trump administration attempts to sabotage our environmental progress, we will fight for clean air.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, marks the latest round in an escalating fight between the White House and California officials over how quickly the nation’s auto fleet must increase its fuel-efficiency. Already, the feud has led to several legal skirmishes, a divided automotive industry and uncertainty in the nation’s car market.

View the complete November 15 article by Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Praises Bolsonaro As Brazilian Leader Lets Amazon Burn

Trump praised Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, after he rejected millions of dollars in international aid pledged to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest.

“I have gotten to know President @jairbolsonaro well in our dealings with Brazil,” Trump wrote on Tuesday. “He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil – Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!”

Trump’s support of the Brazilian authoritarian comes a day after Trump skipped the G-7 session in which climate change was discussed, and world leaders announced a $20 million aid package for the rainforest.

View the complete August 27 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

White House blocked intelligence agency’s written testimony calling climate change ‘possibly catastrophic’

Officials sought to excise the State Department’s comments on climate science because they did not mesh with the administration’s stance

White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change.

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn that climate change could undermine the United States’ national security — a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday.

View the complete June 8 article by Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey and Brady Dennis on The Washington Post website here.