John McConnico/AP
The White House prevented State Department officials from submitting testimony to Congress that warns of climate change catastrophe.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday that after reviewing the written testimony, White House officials tried to remove references to the government’s own scientific findings on global warming. The prepared statement included references to catastrophic damage due climate change. “Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible future scenarios where significant—possibly catastrophic—harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change,” the testimony warned.
Several anonymous Trump administration officials told the Post that the State Department testimony strayed too far from the White House’s official stance on climate change.
The move is the latest in a series of attempts by the Trump administration to deny the science behind climate change. The president has frequently called global warming is a hoax perpetrated by China and falsely claimed that occasional cold weather disproves that the planet is warming. Last week, during an interview with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain after a meeting with Prince Charles, Trump clumsily repeated a popular climate-denier talking point that the climate is always changing. “I believe that there’s a change in weather,” he said. “And I think it changes both ways.”
