Democratic Senator Markey Warns Trump: Don’t Meddle With Climate Change Reports

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.