President Trump has tapped a climate skeptic to help run the federal agency charged with overseeing the government’s research on climate change.
David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware and a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that denies that climate change represents a serious threat to the world, was appointed last week to serve as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s deputy assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and prediction, NPR reported.
“Natural forces have caused climate changes and extreme weather events throughout history. What proof is there that what we see today is due to fossil fuel emissions and not to those same natural forces?” Legates and co-author Paul Driessen wrote. Story continuesBut the agency where Legates was just appointed also notes on its website that “the annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.”
Sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking by as much as 14 percent per decade, leading to starvation among some populations of polar bears who depend on it for hunting seals. NOAA did not respond to a request for an interview for this story. On its website, however, the lead story on Wednesday highlighted the findings of the agency’s latest global climate report.
While Legates has made a career of downplaying the threat of climate change, he doesn’t have much company in the scientific community, including within the administration.
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