The Trump administration told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take down its global warming webpage, an anonymous EPA staffer said.
“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” the staffer told Reuters Tuesday. The staffer was not authorized to speak to the media and claimed EPA employees were scrambling to save data on the website.
The EPA’s global warming webpage is currently still up as of Wednesday morning. The page contains some links to EPA’s data on carbon dioxide (CO2) as well as other greenhouse gas emissions and lists the effects the agency says global warming will have. The site doesn’t host much of the data, however, and only aggregates links to it.
EPA was ordered Tuesday to stop handing out grants for projects and research on global warming, air quality monitoring and education, and the agency instructed employees not to discuss the spending freeze outside the agency, according to anonymous leaks to multiple media outlets.
TheWhite House global warming webpage was taken down seconds after President Donald Trump formally took office. The link for Obama’s old global warming webpage currently redirects to a Trump transition webpage.
The current White House energy policy page does not mention global warming or climate change, but pledges to bring the U.S. “An America First Energy Policy,” and notes that “President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.”
Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has battled the EPA numerous times in court, to head the agency. A leaked memo from Trump’s transition team indicates that the administration plans $513 million in cuts to the “states and tribal assistance grants,” $193 million from eliminating agency global warming programs, and another $109 million in savings cutting “environment programs and management.”
The Senate’s environment committee had a seven-hour long confirmation hearing for Pruitt last week, but no vote on his nomination has been scheduled.
Environmentalists have been terrified that Trump will censor scientists or delete government data about global warming. They even tried create back-ups of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature data to prevent this. The Trump administration has given little indication that it will actually delete government data.
Send tips to andrew@
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.