WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has removed any mention of fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — from its popular online page explaining the causes of climate change.
Sometime in the past few days or weeks, EPA altered some but not all of its climate change webpages, de-emphasizing and even deleting references to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, which scientists say is the overwhelming cause of climate change.
The website’s causes of climate page mentions changes in Earth’s orbit, solar activity, Earth’s reflectivity, volcanoes and natural carbon dioxide changes, but not the burning of fossil fuels.
Seven scientists and three former EPA officials tell The Associated Press that this is misleading and harmful.
“Now it is completely wrong,” said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain, who also noted that impacts, risks and indicators of climate change on the EPA site are now broken links.
It was actually one of the best designed easy access climate change information websites for the U.S.”.
That now reads: “Natural processes are always influencing the earth’s climate and can explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. »