In an internal memo, the White House considered whether to simply 'ignore' federal climate research
Source: The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin
May 23 at 2:16 PM
White House officials last year weighed whether to simply “ignore” climate studies produced by government scientists or to instead develop “a coherent, fact-based message about climate science,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The document, drafted Sept. 18 by Michael Catanzaro, President Trump’s special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy at the time, highlights the dilemma the administration has faced over climate change since Trump took office. Even as Trump’s deputies have worked methodically to uproot policies aimed at curbing the nation’s carbon output, the administration’s agencies continue to produce reports showing that climate change is happening, is human-driven and is a threat to the United States.
Catanzaro, who prepared the memo for a meeting of senior White House and agency officials that took place a couple of days later, asked whether the Trump administration should “consider having a firm position on and a coherent, fact-based message about climate science — specifically, whether, and to what extent, anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the climate system, and what level of concern that warrants.”
The memo presented three options without endorsing any of them: conducting a “red team/blue team” exercise to “highlight uncertainties in climate science”; more formally reviewing the science under the Administrative Procedure Act; or deciding to just “ignore, and not seek to characterize or question, the science being conducted by Federal agencies and outside entities.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/05/23/in-an-internal-memo-the-white-house-considered-whether-to-simply-ignore-federal-climate-research/
Trump officials discussed whether or not to 'ignore' climate data: report
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/23/18 03:12 PM EDT
White House officials discussed the possibility of ignoring federal climate data according to an internal memo that highlights the Trump administration's struggles with established climate change science.
The Washington Post reports that a memo, drafted in September by Michael Catanzaro, the then-White House special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy, discussed three options for dealing with federal scientists' data about the effects of man-made climate change.
The options included highlighting uncertainties in the data, reviewing the scientific studies under the Administrative Procedure Act, or simply ignoring them altogether, the Post reports. None of the options suggested by Catanzaro involved publicly espousing the dangers of climate change highlighted in the data.
White House officials have not taken a formal stance on man-made climate change, and the Trump administration has faced criticism in the past for removing references to climate change from official websites.
more
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/389050-trump-officials-discussed-whether-or-not-to-ignore-climate-data
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and what's what. 
