Did you hear? An Interior Department official has been inserting misleading language about climate change into scientific reports.
The New York Times found misleading language in at least nine Interior Department reports, including false claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial and that there is a lack of scientific consensus that the earth is warming.
Indur Goklany, an Interior Department employee in the office of the deputy secretary with responsibility for reviewing the agency’s climate policies, has inserted his own edits to environmental studies and impact statements affecting major watersheds in California and Oregon.
The Klamath and Upper Deschutes river basins provide critical habitats for spawning salmon and other wildlife. But Goklany’s additions could allow the reports to be used to justify weakening environmental protections and an unsustainable allocation of water resources. This would promote short-term profits at the expense of long-term ecological devastation.
President Trump has repeatedly rejected the idea that climate change is man-made and his hand-picked team of climate deniers are taking a red pen to climate science across multiple government agencies.
SEEC members are working to ensure that facts and science are heard and to provide robust oversight of the Trump administration and their attempts to deny climate science.