The Trump administration decided Sunday not to renew the charter for an advisory committee on climate change that has met only three times in more than 25 years.
The charter for the National Climate Assessment, a group designed to help policymakers incorporate climate assessments into various pieces of legislation, The Washington Post reported. President Donald Trump allowed the academic-studded Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment to expire over the weekend.
Committee members are supposed to meet every four years to flesh-out the National Climate Assessment, but the assessment has only come out three times since 1990, with the most recent one due out in 2018. Senior members of the committee believe it’s short-sighted to let the committee’s charter lapse.
“It doesn’t seem to be the best course of action,” said Richard Moss, the committee’s chair, and an adjunct professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences. “We’re going to be running huge risks here and possibly end up hurting the next generation’s economic prospects.”
City officials argue, meanwhile, that disbanding the committee essentially forces individual states and cities to translate the climate assessments without help from climate experts.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, for one, told reporters Saturday that dissolving the committee is “an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality.”
The president “has left us all individually to figure it out,” Murray added. An official on the Seattle Public Utilities has served on the committee for several years.
The committee’s expiration comes on the heels of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent moves to reconfigure advisory boards on climate change. The EPA revamped in May and June an advisory committee that conservatives believe rubber-stamped many of former President Barack Obama’s climate regulations.
Only a handful of subcommittee members on the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) will remain after the agency suspended the board’s meetings for the rest of the year. EPA head Scott Pruitt jettisoned five academics from the BOSC in May, and is considering replacing them with officials sympathetic to business concerns.
Scientists believe the EPA’s move to reshuffle the board is a blatant act meant to stifle scientific research on global warming. Those who were dismissed in May believe that the move was political.
Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.