EPA has scrubbed references to people’s contribution to rising temperatures from some of its climate change webpages.
The agency modified sections of its website by deleting information about human-created greenhouse gases and the role they play in warming the planet. It also removed links to scientific data and information.
The website now directs visitors to a subsection on climate “causes” that mentions only natural phenomena as the drivers of warming, like changes in the Earth’s orbit and variations in solar activity. Two subsections titled “Climate Change Indicators” and “Climate Change Impacts and Analysis” have been removed.
An image of the agency’s “climate causes” website that was captured on Oct. 8, before it was changed, by the web archival site Wayback Machine, showed that it listed both human-induced and natural causes of warming with an emphasis on man-made emissions.
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” the earlier version of the website stated.
It also gave an over-95 percent probability that “human activities have been the dominant cause” of observable global warming since the 1950s. It also included charts outlining human emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping pollution.
A section on “natural causes” appears on the pre-edited version of the webpage, below the section on human emissions.
The newest version of the climate “causes” webpage begins with the sentence that introduced that “natural processes” subsection.
“Natural processes are always influencing the earth’s climate and can explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s,” it stated on Monday. “However, recent climate changes cannot be explained by natural causes alone.”
But the page makes no mention of people’s contribution to climate change. It discusses only “natural processes” including changes to the Earth’s orbit and rotation, variations in solar activity, changes in the planet’s reflectivity, volcanic activity and naturally occurring greenhouse gases.
An EPA spokesperson didn’t answer questions about when the changes were made, but characterized the changes as routine editing that aligned government information with the priorities of President Donald Trump, who rejects the basic tenets of climate science.
“Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA is focused on protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback, not left-wing political agendas,” the spokesperson said in an email that did not identify the sender. “As such, this agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult.”
Before the changes were made, the agency webpage on climate “indicators” said, “Climate change is happening,” according to a version captured by the Wayback Machine on Oct. 10.
The page included discussion and links to various sources of data on human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
“The indicators in this chapter characterize emissions of the major greenhouse gases resulting from human activities, the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere, and how emissions and concentrations have changed over time,” it stated.
Another page, captured before it was changed, featured EPA’s Climate Impacts and Risk Analysis project and showed modeled projections for how climate change would affect human health, infrastructure, water resources and other sectors of U.S. society and the economy.
The Climate Impacts and Risk Analysis project, or CIRA, contributed analysis to the National Climate Assessment, a long-running U.S. government report synthesizing the causes and risks of warming that the Trump administration has suspended.
Another subsection of EPA’s climate change website, devoted to the “basics of climate science,” appears to have changed little since Trump took office in January.
It still features the finding that most warming since the 1950s has been caused by people.
“Greenhouse gases come from a variety of human activities, including burning fossil fuels for heat and energy, clearing forests, fertilizing crops, storing waste in landfills, raising livestock, and producing some kinds of industrial products,” it stated on Monday.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, said he thought EPA’s erasure of references to human-caused climate change might be a work in progress.
“But the substantive stuff has … been removed,” he said, describing it as information and data visualizations that researchers and scientists frequently used to understand how climate change might impact various parts of the country.
“This was a clearinghouse for real time, updated information that was fairly authoritative and easily visualized, and all of that is now gone,” Swain said.
EPA is expected to soon release a final repeal of its 2009 endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions — a scientific finding that enables it to regulate climate pollution. The Trump administration’s proposed version relies on an Energy Department report by a handful of outside contrarian climate scientists and academics who emphasized natural causes of climate change.
Swain said EPA could be trying to strengthen its case for repealing the endangerment finding by removing information from its website that could contradict its argument that climate change isn’t being driven by human activities. Listing only natural contributors of climate change is misleading, he said.
“It was almost a pre-bunking effort,” Swain said.
Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said EPA was “trying to bury facts” about climate change.
UCS and the Environmental Defense Fund are suing DOE over the secret process that led to its contrarian climate science report. On Monday, a judge ordered DOE to release information about the report within a few weeks.
“Now, the question is, will they transparently share the documents?” Cleetus said.
Corbin Hiar contributed reporting.
