Climate changes, and as far as the National Park Service under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is concerned, that is all anyone needs to know. As the Center for Investigative Reporting has detailed, a new Park Service report scrubs climate change free of all human influence.
National Park Service officials have deleted every mention of humans’ role in causing climate change in drafts of a long-awaited report on sea level rise and storm surge, contradicting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s vow to Congress that his department is not censoring science.
The report doesn’t dismiss climate change. It just takes the position that even Republicans like Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke are now embracing: There’s nothing we can do about it, and certainly no reason to put any limits on burning fossil fuels. Even though climate change is very definitely wiping out some of America’s most treasured sites.
The research for the first time projects the risks from rising seas and flooding at 118 coastal national park sites, including the National Mall, the original Jamestown settlement and the Wright Brothers National Memorial.
But while Zinke has promised that the results of studies are not being censored, this report was initially finished at the end of 2016. It still hasn’t been released to the public. What has been happening in the meantime?
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting obtained and analyzed 18 versions of the scientific report. In changes dated Feb. 6, a park service official crossed out the word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature, in five places. Three references to “human activities” causing climate change also were removed.
So much for that “vow.”
The report has been held up so long that much of the immediate impact it was designed to predict—such as storms during the 2017 hurricane season—have already passed. Park managers have been deprived of the data included in the report that could have helped them prepare for their needs over the last two years, while Zinke’s Interior Department gets out the red pen.
Several scientists said the editing appears to violate a National Park Service policy designed to protect science from political influence.
“It looks like a pretty clear-cut, blatant violation of what we generally would consider to be scientific integrity,” said Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Obama.
Donald Trump has a different term for such actions. He calls it “Doing a great job.”
Zinke’s actions in censoring the Park Service report exactly align with those of Scott Pruitt who removed climate change data from EPA sites, made previously public data unavailable, and has repeatedly made statements that paint climate change as unconnected to the release of carbon by burning fossil fuels.
When Republicans talk about Zinke and Pruitt “advancing the Trump agenda” and doing great work, this is exactly what they mean: Hiding information from the public, ignoring the science, and making America more ignorant.
Zinke testified at a Senate committee hearing last month that the Interior Department has not changed any scientific documents.
“There is no incident, no incident at all that I know that we ever changed a comma on a document itself. Now we may have on a press release,” Zinke told the senators. “And I challenge you, any member, to find a document that we’ve actually changed on a report.”
Zinke will surely have an excuse for this. Or not. Because experience has shown that Trump’s cabinet can lie to Congress all they want. There is no penalty.