Interior employee inserts misleading language about climate change into scientific reports about agriculture and more - Entrepreneur Generations

Longtime Interior Department official Indur Goklany inserted misleading and sometimes debunked language about climate change into the agency's scientific reports, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

"The misleading language appears in at least nine reports, including environmental studies and impact statements on major watersheds in the American West that could be used to justify allocating increasingly scarce water to farmers at the expense of wildlife conservation and fisheries," Hiroko Tabuchi reports for the Times.

In early 2017, near the beginning of the Trump administration, Goklany was promoted to the office of the deputy secretary responsible for reviewing the agency's climate policies. "The Interior Department’s scientific work is the basis for critical decisions about water and mineral rights affecting millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of acres of land," Tabuchi reports.

Goklany pushed department scientists to change the wording in studies to cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding global warming. "He also instructed department scientists to add that rising carbon dioxide — the main force driving global warming — is beneficial because it 'may increase plant water use efficiency' and 'lengthen the agricultural growing season,'" Tabuchi reports. "Both assertions misrepresent the scientific consensus that, overall, climate change will result in severe disruptions to global agriculture and significant reductions in crop yields."

The Interior Department emails, which span 2017-2019, "provide the latest evidence of the Trump administration’s widespread attacks on government scientific work," Tabuchi reports.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2Tn0XW9 Interior employee inserts misleading language about climate change into scientific reports about agriculture and more - Entrepreneur Generations

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