Scott Pruitt is taking the EPA past simply refusing to act on climate change, and acting as an idea factor for climate change deniers.
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is leading a formal initiative to challenge mainstream climate science using a "back-and-forth critique" by government-recruited experts, according to a senior administration official.
The program is designed to discover “vulnerabilities” in the scientific argument that can be exploited by climate change deniers.
The program will use "red team, blue team" exercises to conduct an "at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science," the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations.
Pruitt needs new ways to attack climate change, because he wants to go back to court and challenge the finding that rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere represent a danger that the EPA must address. The EPA is now engaged in spending millions to destroy its court-ordered function.
Executives in the coal industry interpret the move as a step toward challenging the endangerment finding, the agency's legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and other sources. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., said Pruitt assured him yesterday that he plans to begin reviewing the endangerment finding within months.
The transformation of the EPA from a tool to enforce environmental laws, into one aimed at destruction of the environment, is nearly complete. Under Scott Pruitt, the EPA has already stripped climate change from web pages and press releases. It’s destroyed vital databases that took decades to collect. It’s purged its “scientific advisory boards” of actual scientists. And it’s chopped programs related to the environment to provide their new leader with his own, personal Pruittorian Guard.
War-gaming the destruction of enforcement requirements reassures Trump and Pruitt that their energy supporters stay on board even though not protecting the climate won’t lead to creating a single new American job.
Pruitt told about 30 people attending a board meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity yesterday morning that he's establishing a "specific process" to review climate science, the administration official said. Murray and two other people in the room interpreted Pruitt as saying he would challenge the endangerment finding.