\n<\/p>\n
The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their \u201cworst fears\u201d were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would \u201cupdate\u201d the US\u2019s premier climate crisis reports.<\/p>\n
Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN\u2019s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate assessment reports published by past governments.<\/p>\n
Produced by scientists and peer-reviewed, there have been five national climate assessment (NCA) reports since 2000 and they are considered the gold standard report of global heating and its impacts on human health, agriculture, water supplies and air pollution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those reports,\u201d said Wright, who is one of the main supporters of the administration\u2019s \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d agenda to boost fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n
Wright was speaking days after his agency, the Department of Energy, produced a report claiming concern over the climate crisis was overblown. That energy department report was slammed by scientists for being a \u201cfarce\u201d full of misinformation.<\/p>\n
Speaking to CNN this week about the national climate assessment reports, Wright claimed they \u201cweren\u2019t fair in broad-based assessments of climate change\u201d. He added: \u201cWhen you get into departments and look at stuff that\u2019s there and you find stuff that\u2019s objectionable, you want to fix it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks the Trump administration deleted the website that hosted the periodic, legally mandated, national climate assessments (the most recent report is hosted on the Guardian website and can be read in full here).<\/p>\n
Asked about Wright\u2019s comments on the national climate assessment reports, respected climate scientist Michael Mann said in an emailed comment to the Guardian: \u201cThis is exactly what Joseph Stalin did.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement on Thursday, Dr Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and one of the authors of the sixth NCA report due in 2028 that the administration dismissed earlier this year, said she was dismayed by Wright\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecretary Wright just confirmed our worst fears \u2013 that this administration plans to not just bury the scientific evidence but replace it with outright lies to downplay the worsening climate crisis and evade responsibility for addressing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process for developing the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment reports is rigorous, with federal agencies and hundreds of scientists constructing this solid scientific foundation that decision makers, businesses and the public rely on to stay safe in a world made more perilous each day by climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople across the country are already reeling from climate-fueled worsening heatwaves, floods, wildfires and storms. Lying about that reality doesn\u2019t change it; it just leaves people in harm\u2019s way. We urge Congress to intervene to safeguard the integrity of the NCA reports so they remain vital, lifesaving tools in the fight against climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NCA reports are published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and a Department of Energy spokesperson told CNN that Wright was \u201cnot suggesting he personally would be altering past reports\u201d.<\/p>\n
In May, the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union said they would join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis\u2019s impact after the NCA contributors for the 2028 publication were dismissed.<\/p>\n
The energy department\u2019s climate report last week was published on the same day the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to undo the 2009 \u201cendangerment finding\u201d, which allows the agency to limit planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources.<\/p>\n
This raised concerns that the Trump administration was attempting to scrap almost all pollution regulations in steps likely to trigger battles in the courts in the coming years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their \u201cworst fears\u201d were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would \u201cupdate\u201d the US\u2019s premier climate crisis reports. Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN\u2019s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[794,4585,186,5666,611,1436,4000,384,8257,81,967],"class_list":{"0":"post-14638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-chiefs","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-decry","12":"tag-energy","13":"tag-plan","14":"tag-reports","15":"tag-scientists","16":"tag-stalin","17":"tag-trump","18":"tag-update"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}