Democratic Senator Edward Markey warned the White House on Wednesday not to interfere with climate science, after a report emerged earlier this week that the Trump Administration was considering excluding the worst-case emissions scenario from a report on the impact of climate change on the United States and its economy.
Senator Markey, who is chair of the Senate Climate Change Task Force and member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, sent on Wednesday a letter to the White House office responsible for monitoring the drafting of the National Climate Assessment "asking the White House to explain why it is interfering with the climate science activities of the federal agencies."
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the Trump Administration is considering providing models on the impact of climate change only though 2040, not until the end of this century, as U.S. administrations have previously done in the National Climate Assessment report. The National Climate Assessment report is a Congressionally mandated report that has been prepared every four years since 2000.
According to scientists who spoke to the New York Times, excluding models after 2040 would be misleading because the direst effects of the global warming will be felt after that.
"Political interference cannot be permitted to suppress the work of our scientists. I'm demanding answers on the Trump administration's reported efforts to exclude information about the worst impacts of climate change from the next National Climate Assessment," Senator Markey tweeted on Wednesday.
"Any political interference into the climate science that underpins this report could have a chilling effect on the scientific research going forward and could potentially put American lives and property at increased risk by understating the urgency of climate action," he said in his letter to the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Excluding the highest-emission scenarios would "artificially and unjustifiably understate the risks that climate change presents to the United States, and would misinform federal and state action taken in response to this threat," Senator Markey said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads from Oilprice.com:
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
U.S. Power and NatGas Prices Plummet to Below Zero
Ukrainian Drones Hit Major Rosneft Refinery in Russia
First Niger Oil Bound for China Blocked in West Africa Border Row
Gas Prices Likely to Keep Falling Ahead of Peak Driving Season
Drone Attacks Take Khor Mor Gas Field Offline, Claims Lives
Comments
I disagree and here's why. As polar ice continues to melt and recede (a consequence of global warming), the Arctic Sea becomes more opaque and therefore capable of absorbing more heat from the sun. Rather than reflecting that heat back into the atmosphere, called the albedo effect, the sea surface temperatures continue to rise in proportion to the loss of sea ice.
Most of the storm low pressure systems that originate Gulf of Alaska are forced farther south in the winter months in the northern hemisphere driven by strong jet stream winds into the lower 48 states (mainly along the West Coast).
In the spring months when the systems arrive with a greater amount of moisture are lifted up over the Rockies into the Midwest states the airmass becomes more unstable as it collides with the warmer air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico.
Today, government scientists and National Weather Service forecasters (most of whom possess a B.S. in meteorology) who work for NOAA intimidated and prohibited by Trump from even uttering a word about global warming which he calls a "Chinese hoax."
His hirelings, mostly science illiterates and rank amateurs, are directed to order government agencies to cease using the term global warming.
It upsets Big Oil who have a stranglehold on our economy and are resisting change from the status quo dependency on oil forever -- or at least until more efficient alternative energy sources and technology force them to adapt.