Tell the USGS—Don’t Bury the Truth About Climate Science

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

The administration’s latest attack on climate science is the most dangerous one yet.

The White House’s own National Climate Assessment, released last November, painted an alarming picture of what will happen if we don’t rein in global warming emissions: intense storms and flooding, extreme heat and wildfires, droughts that lead to reduced crop yields, and more.¹ The administration’s position may be to deny the effects of climate change — but the facts are the facts.

The administration’s response? Bury the science. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) — one of the agencies that contribute to the National Climate Assessment — will now only use models that predict the effects of climate change up to 2040, instead of through the end of the century as they normally would.²

In other words, the models will ignore most of the worst impacts of climate change because they happen after 2040, and paint an unrealistically optimistic picture of what will happen if we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere.³

Please stand up for climate science and tell the USGS not to bury the truth at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=33391.

This isn’t the first time the administration has tried to stifle climate science. Just three recent examples:

• The National Climate Assessment itself was released the day after Thanksgiving, when most people don’t pay attention to the news.
• A study published last year found that the administration had deleted or buried information about climate change across government websites.⁴
• The administration’s most recent budget proposal would have completely gutted key climate and sustainability programs.⁵

But this one might be the worst of all. We can’t solve the climate crisis with incomplete facts — and that’s what we’ll have if climate researchers can’t study and share with the public what’s likely to happen after 2040.

Tell the administration: Don’t silence climate science.

Thank you for standing up for science.

1. Coral Davenport & Kendra Pierre-Louis, “U.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Economy,” The New York Times, November 23, 2018.
2. Coral Davenport and Mark Landler, “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science,” The New York Times, May 27, 2019.
3. Coral Davenport and Mark Landler, “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science,” The New York Times, May 27, 2019.
4. Coral Davenport, “How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.” The New York Times, January 10, 2018.
5. Joel Achenbach, Ben Guarino, Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis, “Trump budget seeks cuts in science funding,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2019.