Trump’s environment chief pushes effort to question climate change science

The administration of President Trump is deciding these days if it should start questioning the science behind climate change, an attempt for which those who don’t agree with it say that its purpose is to change the long standing belief that the human activity is the main reason for the climate change. The situation has caused a debate in the higher ranks of administration.

For now, there are no formal plans to begin the experimentation, but according to the anonymous White House official, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is interested in the idea. There are discussions among officials if the initiative would go across several different agencies which all rely on this technology said several Trump staff members who all insisted on anonymity.

According to two officials, Rick Perry, Energy Secretary, known for his opposition to the science behind climate change is also involved in the project. The primary plan, as told by one senior administration official is to see what we know, what we don’t know and where are the holes.

EPA officials refused to provide comment two days ago, while the Department of Energy was unavailable at the moment.

Plenty of scientific research has concluded that human behavior, for example, burning of fossil fuels is the main driving force behind climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in its last report that it is extremely likely that the primary cause of climate change since the 1950s are humans their greenhouse effect. This research is not stopping a significant number of administration officials from raising doubts.

Kelly Levine from the World Resources Institute blogged that Pruitt’s ideas are better suited for the political debate than for the scientific research. The main idea behind Levine’s blog is that real scientific research has to be peer reviewed and 97 percent of peer reviewed literature supports the idea that humans are behind the climate change.

The initiative has been questioned both by the officials in the government and the industry whether is Pruitt trying to overturn 2009 endangerment finding which was the basis for Obama administration ecological regulations and which said that greenhouse gases pose a threat to humans. Sources within the administration say that the idea to overturn it isn’t exactly primary focus, but it is still discussed.

President Trump himself has questioned the science behind climate change several times during his 2016 campaign. Even so, he has not publicly said anything related to the issue since the inauguration. In a most recent case, in an interview for Fox News Sunday, he has said that no one knows if the climate change is real. After Trump announced in June that the US is going to pull back from the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, many reporters asked for the president’s view on the climate science from the various White House officials, but they have declined to do so.