Worries about climate are exaggerated, concludes a report from the Trump government

Will it work this time? The EPA, the American environmental agency, where some of the old climate experts were voluntarily left or the avenue has been sent out, has been fighting its former self for two weeks. In 2009 the agency came to the conclusion that greenhouse gases are bad for the health and well -being of the American population. Since then, the EPA has the duty to curb greenhouse gas emissions based on the Clean Air Act – the clean air law. Now, sixteen years old and many climate disasters later, the same agency tries to undermine that conclusion at the request of President Trump.

The so -called Endangerment Finding With regard to climate change – based on a judgment of the Supreme Court from 2007 that greenhouse gases can be considered as pollution – Trump was also a thorn in his first term. In 2017 he ordered the EPA’s findings to revise the risks of greenhouse gases. That was necessary, the president thought, because environmental groups and delivered citizens regularly successfully successfully repented the conclusion of the environmental agency if the government wanted to reverse climate and environmental rules.

Trumps attempt failed. It turned out to be both legal and scientifically difficult than expected to come to a milder conclusion about the consequences of carbon dioxide, methane, laughing gas and other greenhouse gases. Yet Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA designated by Trump, announced a new attempt this spring. According to him, there are plenty of indications to conclude that it is not so bad with the consequences of climate change.

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With the abolition of the Endangerment Finding, Zeldin says he hopes to initiate “the largest deregulation measure in American history”. If it is formally established that global warming is much less dangerous than previously thought, there is no more reason to limit the emission of coal-fired power stations, to absorb methane leaking in the event of oil and gas extraction, to regulate exhaust gases of cars, or to force farmers to do something about the methane output of their cattle.

‘Alarmism is exaggerated’

On the day that rarerly announced his plan, the government already gave a front in the intended direction. Commissioned by Minister of Energy Chris Wright, four climate scientists and an economist conclude A hundred and fifty pages report That alarmism about climate change is exaggerated.

According to the authors, plants will grow better from extra carbon dioxide. The warming effect of greenhouse gases is less strong than expected. Most climate models give an exaggerated image of the temperature on earth. The sea level does not rise as fast as is claimed, partly because the data does not take into account local subsidence.

The authors do not see long -term trends in the data about extreme weather

The authors also see no long -term trends in the data about extreme weather. Drought hardly gets worse, floods do not increase, hurricanes do not get stronger. The relationship between forest fires and higher temperatures is not as strong as that between forest fires and poor forest management. And it is not scientifically possible to attribute extreme events to climate change. They can also be the result of natural variation in the weather. In short, American climate policy will, according to the report, “have a hardly noticeable impact on the global climate or at most become visible with great delay”.

Minister Wright said to CNN That he had made a list with about twelve “real, honest scientists.” He called the top five and everyone said yes, Wright said. In the preface of the report, he writes: “I chose them because of their accuracy, honesty and willingness to take the debate to a higher level. I have not carried out any control over their conclusions.” His only goal was to restore confidence in science, Wright said to Fox News. It will be ‘time for a little common sense’.

Well -known climate skeptics

All five authors are known as ‘climate skeptics’. Regular climate scientists therefore doubt that Wright has actually chosen them on their merits. At the same time as the publication of the report, many official climate reports have been removed from government websites. In April, the government put around four hundred experts from their position, who were commissioned by the congress the sixth National Climate Assessmentthat should come true in 2027.

Ben Santer, who has worked for the US Department of Energy for thirty years and nowadays has an appointment at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, British, was stunned when he read the report. According to him, the authors have “a history of errors in important scientific issues.”

This report is only intended to suppress science, not to strengthen or encourage it

Santer is not the only one who thinks about it that way. “This report is only intended to suppress science, not to strengthen or encourage her,” said Joellen Russell, Oceanographer at the University of Arizona, in A commentary of the scientific journal Nature. “It’s terrible.”

That is also the conclusion of climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, two of whom are quoted in the report. In A detailed commentary On the newsletter platform Substitute he explains how his investigations are ‘abused’. In one of them, for example, he makes suggestions to improve climate models. The report makes it apparently not good.

The News website Wired Early various scientists who investigated in the report were used for a response. They said about the same: Their work was taken out of context or it is selectively quoted.

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For example, biologist Joy Ward concluded in a study that, under laboratory conditions, extra carbon dioxide is good for the growth of plants. But that does not mean that the same applies in natural ecosystems, as the report on the basis of its findings claims.

Another study that is quoted states that acidification of the ocean was much worse than now. The report makes it that the current acidification falls within the natural variation. But according to the researcher, the ocean now sends at an unprecedented speed and the consequences are catastrophic.

All mistakes are discussed

The American Academy of Sciences will come to the report at the beginning of September. There will be, one of the scientists said against CNNall mistakes and subjects that have been omitted. The research will itself According to a press release Focus on “evidence collected by the scientific community since 2009, when the EPA first declared the emission of greenhouse gases a danger to public health”.

The environmental agency will have great difficulty in actually revoking the Endangerment Finding. As it usually goes in the US, judges will bend over it and the Supreme Court may eventually have to make the decision. In the meantime, Trump will continue to dismantle the climate policy of his predecessors.

The question arises as to why Trump then puts so much effort into something that he doesn’t care about. In an analysis in The New Yorker Says Michael Gerrard, director of the renowned Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia University, that the environmental agency without Endangerment must be given permission for each measure from the congress distributed to the bone. As long as greenhouse gases are considered a danger to public health, the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases with an appeal to the Clean Air Act. “They want to remove that possibility forever – not just for the next three and a half years.”

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