The Environmental Protection Agency has scrubbed from its website information on how humans are driving warming. A web page that once explored the central role of fossil fuels in heating the planet now only mentions natural drivers of climate change.
Previously the web page on the causes of climate change explored the role of greenhouse gases in trapping heat, noting that it is “extremely likely” that humans are the “dominant cause” of recent warming. The agency has since updated a page to focus on factors such as volcanic eruptions, solar output, and changes in the orbit of the Earth.
The “near-exclusive emphasis on natural causes of climate change on the U.S. EPA’s website is now completely out of synch with all available evidence demonstrating overwhelming human influence on contemporary warming trends,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
Previous analyses from leading climate scientists have found that humans have likely caused more than 100 percent of warming since 1950. In the absence of humans, the Earth would have likely seen a slight cooling trend owing to volcanic eruptions that unleashed sunlight-blocking aerosols.
An EPA spokesperson told reporters that the changes to the website were part of routine editing, adding that the agency “no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult.”
The updates come on the heels of a new analysis from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, which found that 2025 will likely end as the second hottest year on record, surpassed only by 2024. Together, the past three years have measured more than 1.5 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial era.
“These milestones are not abstract — they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change,” said Copernicus climate scientist Samantha Burgess. The only way to slow warming, she said, “is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
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