Energy

SCOOP: ‘Climate Alarmism,’ ‘Propaganda’ Fill US Agency Websites, Report Finds

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• Multiple federal agencies are pushing agenda-driven climate science on their websites, according to The Heartland Institute.
• The Trump administration has taken a public stance supporting fossil fuels and questioning the scientific “consensus” of climate change research.
• Parts of federal websites should be overhauled or taken down completely to conform to the administration’s stance on climate change and fossil fuel energy production, Heartland says.

Trump administration agencies continue to push “climate alarmism” and publish “propaganda” on their websites despite President Donald Trump’s position on climate change and the use of fossil fuels, according to The Heartland Institute.

Heartland researchers audited the websites of federal agencies for information that seemed to contradict the public stance of President Donald Trump and his administration’s agenda to expand American energy production, including fossil fuel production. Heartland researchers found numerous examples of federal agencies pushing an anti-fossil fuel narrative, according to sections of a draft report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Federal executive branch websites are littered with political propaganda instead of objective science,” Heartland senior environment and energy policy fellow James Taylor said in a statement to TheDCNF. “To the extent scientific issues are discussed, they are presented in a biased and agenda-driven manner. This is wholly unacceptable and an insult to the American people.”

The agencies audited include NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Energy (DOE). While many parts of the agencies’ websites have endorsed Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda and plans to expand fossil fuel productions, other places have remained largely out of touch with the current administration.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA’s website “favorably cites thoroughly debunked claims by radical global warming activists John Cook and Naomi Oreskes” and the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group committed to combatting global warming, according to Heartland’s draft report.

NASA website on the “consensus” of human-driven climate change. (NASA/Screenshot)

For example, the website for space agency NASA pushes the misleading claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that “climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities,” Heartland found.

The claim is based on flawed research done by Cook, an Australian researcher, in 2013. A review of his work and methods found that the “consensus” of climate scientists who agree that human activity contributes to global warming is actually 32.6 percent. Roughly 66 percent of academic papers reviewed by Cook to make his claim took no stance on the issue.

NASA’s website section for children includes a story of the “The king who banned coal,” which tells of an attempt by King Edward I of England to ban coal in 1306, possibly enacting the “first environmental law ever.”

“Why is NASA, a science administration, teaching children radical left-wing political propaganda that the invention of the steam engine was a horrible development and the Industrial Revolution made people’s lives worse?” the Heartland draft report says.

NASA “should be focused on space-related science issues, not producing children’s stories attacking coal power and presenting ridiculous historical revisionism designed to brainwash children into believing that the Industrial Revolution was bad for human health and welfare,” Taylor told TheDCNF.

NASA website portal story of “The king who banned coal.” (NASA/Screenshot)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The NOAA portal for teachers and students includes a section titled “Teaching Essential Principle Seven: Climate Change Will Have Consequences for the Earth System and Human Lives.” NOAA warns that students may “succumb to [climate change] denial” without proper instruction.

The website also features apocalyptic warnings from “dying forests” to “species extinction” due to climate change.

The Heartland Institute report calls for the NOAA to either rewrite the entire portal set up to educate teachers and students or scrap the section of the website altogether.

Department of Energy

DOE’s page on fossil fuels is another portal that Heartland determined needs to be entirely rewritten or taken down.

“On its ‘Fossil Fuels’ page, DOE states at the outset, ‘Fossil energy sources, including oil, coal and natural gas, are non-renewable resources.’ Defining fossil fuels first and foremost as “non-renewable” is pointless, misleading, and unjustifiably negative. America has sufficient oil, coal, and natural gas resources to power our economy for hundreds of years,” according to the Heartland Institute draft report.

“Apparently, hundreds of career bureaucrats missed the final results of the 2016 election: Hillary Clinton was not elected President of the United States,” Heartland President Tim Huelskamp said in a statement to TheDCNF. “Despite the clear direction from President Donald Trump, his appointees, legal and regulatory changes, and mounting scientific evidence, propaganda and climate alarmism proper to a Clinton administration are still being promulgated across dozens of taxpayer-funded web sites.”

“This is a direct challenge to the proper authority invested in those elected by the American public and should be changed immediately,” Huelskamp said.

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