Energy Secretary Chris Wright indicated this week that the Trump administration is reviewing and could seek to change past climate reports.
Wright, in a Tuesday evening appearance on CNN’s “The Source,” was asked why the administration removed past versions of the National Climate Assessment from government websites.
“Because we’re reviewing them,” he replied, “and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those.”
When reached for comment, the Energy Department declined to provide more information on the review efforts. Instead, spokesperson Andrea Woods referred The Hill to remarks from Wright during the same interview.
“I don’t know why they’re taken down,” Wright told host Kaitlan Collins. “They’re easy to find anywhere. If anybody can’t find the National Climate Assessment report, they just got to Google a little better.”
Woods told CNN that Wright “was not suggesting he personally would be altering past reports.”
The 1990 Global Change Research Act requires the federal government to produce a report about climate change every four years.
Earlier this year, the administration scrubbed the website that was hosting past iterations of the national climate assessment. President Trump also dismissed the scientists that were working on the next version.
Last month, the Energy Department released a report claiming that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed.”
There is a scientific consensus that climate change is exacerbating extreme weather.
Wright, a former fracking executive, has a history of downplaying the effects of global warming.
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