While NASA and NOAA warn of a climate emergency, they resist last-minute denial by Trump nominees

While NASA and NOAA warn of a climate emergency, they resist last-minute denial by Trump nominees

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But at this point, says NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, the ratings are worthless. It’s all about that horrible trend towards an uncontrollable level of global overheating.

“What really matters, and what I find really significant and worrying, is that the seven hottest years on record have been the last seven,” Marvel told CNN.

Their work is part of a global consensus among scientists – from the UK Met Office, Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Berkeley Earth and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – that human-caused fever on the planet shows no signs of burst and that land, sea and sky may be heating up faster.

The seven-year period “almost indicates a small acceleration in the rate of warming we see globally,” Russ Vose, NOAA’s head of climate monitoring, told CNN. “Each decade has been hotter than the one that preceded it over the past four or five decades.”

If the trend continues, it means that this was also the coldest period of seven years for the rest of our lives, if not for the rest of recorded human history. And all the scientists who wrote these most recent reports agree.

Humanity will determine exactly how bad it will get.

“It’s not the sun. It’s not the natural variability of the climate. It’s human actions, specifically human emissions of greenhouse gases, dioxide and methane,” said Marvel emphatically. “I’m a scientist. I go out with scientists all the time. We don’t agree on anything. Scientists will fight for absolutely everything. So the fact that scientists agree that it is human activities that are causing climate change that we see, that it’s very, very, very significant. ”

Trump nominees promoting climate misinformation

But even as experts were finishing their annual global climate assessments, climate skeptics appointed by President Donald Trump to senior scientific positions at NOAA last September, and later temporarily assigned to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), were publishing connected pseudoscience to the contrary.

“The Office of Science and Technology Policy is pleased to present these summaries to you to deepen your understanding of climate change, learning from these learned scholars,” says the introduction written by one of Trump’s nominees, David Legates, a professor at the University Delaware, which supports the Heartland Institute, which denies the climate.

But the essays, now known as “Climate Change Leaflets”, were written by former contrarians and full of theories debunked by work reviewed by peers from US agency scientists, and even by public recognition by major oil companies that the climate crisis is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Without permission, Legates and his Trump-nominated colleague Ryan Maue posted the pamphlets on a website affiliated with world skeptic Willie Soon and sported the seal of the President’s Executive Office.

OSTP director Kelvin Droegemeier “was outraged to learn of materials that were not shared or approved by the OSTP leadership,” said spokeswoman Kristina Baum in an email to the Washington Post. “He first became aware of the documents when contacted by the press. As a result, Dr. Droegemeier acted quickly and the responsible individuals were relieved of their duties at OSTP.”

Legates and Maue ended their tenure at the White House this week and returned to NOAA, where the incident is being analyzed, according to the Washington Post. CNN contacted Legates and Maue for comment, but received no response.

“I know David Legates from my graduate school, but I haven’t seen him in a long time and I can’t explain the actions he and others took in this case,” Vose told CNN. “I can’t speak for everyone at NOAA, but I can say that where we are, our morale is high,” he said. “I have already gone through four governments. Fortunately, I served everyone. I look forward to serving in the next government.”

Scientist expecting less politics, more politics

Despite the politicization of science under Trump, Vose compares the role of NOAA scientists to Department of Labor statisticians responsible for job reporting: neutral distributors of accurate numbers.

“Fortunately, we do our work independently, without interference,” he said. “And please hold us accountable if you feel that this has happened.”

“I hope the long-term effects will be almost nil,” said Marvel. “I think the fact that these things were released and most people said, ‘Well, that’s a little bit silly’ and then moved on gave me a lot of hope.”

With Joe Biden’s new government committed to reversing the course of U.S. climate inaction, the conversation around this difficult topic is bound to change. The question is how long before the debate turns into politics and action.

“My goal is to become completely irrelevant to the climate conversation,” said Marvel. “I don’t want scientists to debate whether this is happening or not or who is responsible for it. I think we went beyond that. I think we should have a much better fight. We should be debating policies. We should be debating solutions. We should be debating the morality of climate change. None of these things is my specific area of ​​expertise. But I think we’re getting there. ”

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