Tag: Extends

WASHINGTON – President Trump’s Twitter megaphone may be silenced, but disinformation from his administration continues.

David Legates, a climate denier installed last year by the Trump administration to oversee scientific work on climate change, has released a series of debunked reports that appear to purport to represent global warming research produced for state government -United, pulling a disavowal from the White House Science Office.

His reports do not appear on a government website but on a private site that espouses climate denial. However, they bear the logo of the President’s Executive Office and claim to be the copyrighted work of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy depicting the “current state of science” on climate change. .

The response from the White House science office was swift.

“These documents were not created under the direction of the Office for Science and Technology Policy of the White House, nor were they approved or approved by the leadership of the OSTP,” said Kristina Baum, door -Office speech, in a statement Monday evening.

The articles include long discredited claims that climate change happens naturally; that the sun, and not human pollution, is responsible for recent warming; and that the effects on the planet, if any, of climate change will be minimal. One of the featured authors is William Happer, a physicist who compared the emphasis on carbon dioxide to “demonizing the poor Jews under Hitler”. Another is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, an astrophysicist whose work in minimizing the risk of greenhouse gas emissions has been funded by the fossil fuel industry.

Mr. Legates’ bet appears to be a dishonest effort by some of the more extreme elements of Mr. Trump’s administration to put the federal government imprimatur on research that aims to undermine the established science of climate change . In doing so, many deniers have openly acknowledged, could give more weight to such studies when they are subject to prosecution, testimony in Congress or even the next national climate assessment, the government’s main contribution to the knowledge of climate.

According to a Trump administration official and an outside adviser, both familiar with the effort, officials from the White House personnel office asked Mr. Legates last year to compile a body of research for Mr. Trump in what was supposed to be an internal project. . Mr. Legates is currently head of the Global Change Research Program in the United States, which oversees the National Climate Assessment. Kelvin K. Droegemeier, chief science adviser to the president and director of the White House’s science office, was unaware of the project, according to the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the episode. .

Dr Roy Spencer, a climate denier who wrote an article for the package titled ‘The Religious Nature of Man-Made Global Warming’, said in a blog post Monday night that Mr Legates “hopes he can get them. . posted on the White House website by Jan. 20, “probably for inclusion in the official record of the outgoing administration.” But, he added, “there is no guarantee given recent events.”

Mr. Legates did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, the legal implications of putting the studies on a private site while using the White House logo and copyright in a seemingly unauthorized manner were unclear on Monday evening. Federal law states that anyone who “fraudulently or falsely” affixes the seal of a US department or agency can be fined or jailed for up to five years.

John Holdren, who headed President Barack Obama’s science office, said a disavowal from a spokesperson for the disinformation effort was not enough.

“Kelvin himself must step up and strongly denounce this farce committed in the name of the OSTP,” he said.

Peter Gleick, a climatologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences who noticed the posts and drew attention to them on Twitter, called them “ridiculous” and a clumsy effort to give a veneer of government respectability to junk science before president- elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office Jan. 20. He said he expected the studies to have no lasting political implications.

“Maybe as part of the next national climate assessment, someone will try to cite them as having some merit,” Dr Gleick said. But, he added, “for climate science itself, they pose very little danger because they are pseudoscience, because they are ridiculous and because no one in the scientific community is serious. will not pay them any attention. “

The articles appeared late last week on the website of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences, an organization associated with Dr. Soon.

In an introduction, Mr. Legates describes the articles as “the current state of science on various topics related to climate change”. He called the documents leaflets written by “top scientists from leading institutions” across the country.

“The Office of Science and Technology Policy is pleased to bring you these notes to deepen your understanding of climate change by learning from these scholarly researchers,” he wrote. The introduction identifies Mr. Legates as a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware rather than by his government title.

Many reports, the scientists noted, are repackaged summaries of previously published articles. One of the articles is touted as being written by Ryan Maue, a senior official in the White House’s science office, who downplayed the effects of climate change and the links between global warming and extreme weather events. On the site, Dr Maue’s article does not list his government affiliation, but rather describes him as a “private sector meteorologist.” Dr Maue could not be reached for comment.

Current and former federal officials involved in the national climate assessment have expressed dismay that the documents are being presented as representing the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The documents, they said, marked the latest low point in the Trump administration’s approach to climate science.