Trump Administration’s Strategy on Climate: Try to Bury Its Own Scientific Report

President Trump this month in Paradise, California on the site of devastating fires. Friday's report mentions climate change as a contributing factor to such disasters.

WASHINGTON - Trump's White House, determined to reject scientific discoveries and offer its own facts, released a scientific report Friday that directly contradicts its own climate change policies.

This opens the door to a remarkable political reality on the screen, divided in the years to come. In general, the administration must ignore or ignore the detailed conclusions of the report on the economic stress caused by climate change, even as it continues to reduce environmental regulations, while opponents use it to organize legal attacks against the same administration that published the report.

"This report will be used in court significantly," said Richard L. Revesz, an environmental law expert at New York University. "I can imagine a Trump government lawyer asking a federal judge:" How can the federal government recognize the seriousness of the problem and then set aside the rules that protect the American people from the problem? "Around to come with an answer."

The 1,656-page National Climate Assessment, required by the Congress, is the most comprehensive scientific study to date that details the effects of global warming on the economy, public health, coastal and marine infrastructure. United States. It describes in detail how global warming will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage over the coming decades.

President Trump has often questioned the basic science of man-made climate change and mocked him. He is now working energetically to encourage the burning of coal and the increase in pollution by greenhouse gases.

Historians and veterans of the public service said it was remarkable that policy makers did not attempt to soften the report's conclusions, as it indicated the strength of the government's belief that it could ignore conclusions in favor of ideology-based policies. policy. "This is a new frontier of disapproval of science, of disdain for the facts," said William K. Reilly, who ran the environmental protection agency of first president George Bush.

A report from the White House said the report, initiated under the Obama administration, was "largely based on the most extreme scenario" of global warming and that the next assessment would provide an opportunity for a better balance.

According to a 1990 law, the federal government must issue a climate assessment every four years. The latest version introduces a new complexity into the political struggle around regulations designed to combat climate change. Indeed, until the administration of President Barack Obama, there were no such regulations.

Mr. Trump has made it a central part of his administration's policy to override these rules. It ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly weaken the country's two major policies to combat global warming pollution: a rule that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from aviation exhaust fumes. vehicles and another that would limit them to the stacks of power plants.

The rules are based on a 2009 legal finding, upheld by the federal courts, that pollution caused by global warming is detrimental to the health and well-being of people and, as a result, government policy is necessary. to reduce it.

In releasing the assessment, White House officials said Trump's supporters would probably not care if their findings were so inconsistent with the president's statements and policies.

This opinion is supported by Steven J. Milloy, a member of E.P.A. from Mr. Trump. The transition team that manages the junkscience.com website, which aims to cast doubt on the established science of man-made climate change. "We do not care," he says. "From our point of view, it's a hysteria invented anyway."

Mr. Milloy echoed a topic of conversation used by other critics of the report, describing it as a product of "the deep state", a term that refers to the conspiracy of a secret alliance of bureaucrats and bureaucrats. other opponents to the president.

"Try to prevent this deep state from doing it in the first place, or try to edit the document, then create a new story, it's better to publish it and finish it," said Milloy. . "But do it one day when no one cares, and I hope tomorrow's news will win."

The climate assessment work, conducted by some 300 scientists, including professional scientists from 13 federal agencies, began shortly after the release of the previous report in 2014. The project was already underway when Trump took its functions. position. in 2017

The decision not to alter or delete the findings of the report, despite its scientific findings, thus contradicting the president's policies, reflected a clear political calculation, according to three people close to White House thinking.

Since the report was commissioned by Congress, not publishing it would have been a violation of the law. Although some political appointments within one of the agencies that contributed to the scientific work in the report suggest changing the summary of their findings to minimize the results, this idea was also deemed too risky politically and legally, said people.

Instead, these people said the administration officials expected to minimize the impact by making public the evaluation on Friday afternoon black, the big shopping day after the Thanksgiving holiday, thinking that the Americans probably would not lend. Warning.

People familiar with the publication's decision said White House officials had tried to avoid the political eruption that had affected George W. Bush's administration when it was revealed in 2005 that White House official and former oil lobbyist Philip A. Cooney had changed the language. Government climate reports weaken the link between fossil fuel pollution and global warming.

"This moment tells him that there is a difference between the White House and the President," said Douglas Brinkley, Presidential Historian at Rice University. The White House has "lawyers and policy experts who do not want to go down in history as falsified data".

In light of Friday's report, Mr. Brinkley drew a parallel between Trump's statements on climate science and the false statements made by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the American people half a century ago. on the Vietnam War. "Johnson told people that everything was fine in Vietnam, then you listened to the news and saw the chaos," he said. "It was this giant disconnect."

In interviews with a dozen climate review authors, everyone said that White House officials had not tried to soften or weaken their language.

"I'll give the credit at the right time: no one has made fun of it politically," said Andrew Light, co-author of the report and senior fellow of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based research organization. "Despite all the criticisms of the Trump administration that suppresses climatology, this is a case where they have not done so."

However, despite the satisfaction of seeing their scientific work made public, many authors have expressed disappointment that Trump's strategy seems to ignore the results and move forward with plans to reverse climate change policies.

"It's incredibly frustrating," said Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and co-author of the chapter's report on the effects of climate change on roads, bridges and other infrastructure. This chapter concludes that the most extreme storms, floods and heatwaves, as well as rising sea levels, will damage the country's roads, resulting in a collapse of infrastructure and damage of up to $ 21 billion. the century.

I see these arguments between politicians and scientists, but I'm on the ground with public works officials who say this argument is irrelevant, "Chinowsky said," people will hurt themselves and die if we do not change politics. "