Thirty-five Republican senators and more than 100 representatives are on the roster of the congressional climate science deniers brigade. A bunch of others tend to join them and vote as if the climate crisis is, at best, a low priority for action. During his four years in office, the squatter now short-timing it in the White House has commanded tendentious redactions of government reports and other documents that even mention climate change and appointed deniers to environmentally related positions. The latest is David Legates, whom Donald Trump has chosen to head up the U.S. Global Change Research Program, according to unnamed sources cited by The Washington Post, and now confirmed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where Legates has been since September. While many deniers have at least partially modulated their climate views—retreating from claims that temperatures haven’t been climbing—Legates remains hardcore.
President-elect Joe Biden, on the other hand, has packed his transition team with climate experts, a precursor to doing the same when he puts his administration together. The research program falls under the supervision of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Legates presumably won’t be around long. But he could cause some damage before the moving vans pull out of the White House driveway in January. That’s because the research program produces the National Climate Assessment Program. That assessment is mandated by Congress to be presented every four years by scientists at 13 federal agencies.
The fifth such assessment is now in the works. The two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment were released in 2017 and 2018. As I reported then, the assessment noted that climate change isn’t some far-in-the-future problem, but is already happening, inflicting “substantial damages” on communities, and it’s going to get worse. Denier-in-Chief Trump didn’t like the assessment, and claimed he didn’t believe it. The only surprise is that he didn’t move sooner to screw things up with the next assessment. The Post notes:
The move [to appoint Legates] has rattled rank-and-file scientists at NOAA, the lead agency working on the climate assessment, according to people inside and outside the organization. For much of Trump’s tenure, there has been little political interference at NOAA, the notable exception being Trump’s hand-drawn alteration of an official hurricane forecast, an incident known as “Sharpiegate.”
“I think [Legates] can make messes that the Biden people are going to have to clean up, especially with respect to personnel appointments and author nominations and assignments,” said a former scientist with the research program, who stressed that new leadership could reverse any changes implemented by Legates.
Said Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and head of NOAA under President Barack Obama: “He's not just in left field—he's not even near the ballpark.” And Michael Mann, climate scientist at State University, emailed to National Public Radio to say that Legates has, throughout his career “misrepresented the science of climate change, serving as an advocate for polluting interests as he dismisses and downplays the impacts of climate change.”
Legates has signed the Oregon Petition, which caught a lot of well-deserved flak for trying to pretend it was something it was not—a peer-reviewed study. The petition states:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
In testimony to Congress last year, Legates said, “Climate has always changed and weather is always variable, due to complex, powerful natural forces. No efforts to stabilize the climate can possibly be successful. […] The current emphasis on climate change abatement will do far more harm than good.”
Legates is one of the many Trump appointments who ought to be out the door before the sun goes down Jan. 20.
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/3pi8HXg
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