Cancelling Climate Science

The New York Times recently published a list of “woke” words and phrases that federal agencies have been instructed to limit or remove from their publications, websites, and other public-facing products. “Climate crisis” and “climate science” are, unsurprisingly, on the list (importantly, “climate change” is not on the purge list, reflecting a shift in rhetoric that’s worth some attention).

The NYT reported finding deletions or amendments of the words on the purge list on more than 250 government websites. For example, the NYT spotted these changes on the Key topics page of the State Department’s Office of Global Change website:

The climate crisis knows no boundaries, and both the challenge and its solutions range from local to global in scale. Because of this, international cooperation and collaboration through negotiation and implementation of international agreements are essential. The Negotiations Team represents the United States in negotiations under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and in many other international fora that address climate change, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), G7, G20, and others.

That’s the State Department. We get it. It’s not going to ignore climate change (if for no other reason, because every other nation in the world is going to keep pounding the United States about it), but it’s not going to treat it like a crisis.

What about an agency whose very purpose is climate science? How is NOAA going to be reshaped? Will it stop doing climate science or just stop talking about it? So far, its public webpages don’t reflect a dramatic shift in direction. For example, the following NOAA website excerpt is alive and well as of today.

Global warming frequently asked questions:

Isn’t there a lot of debate and disagreement among climate scientists about global warming?

No. By a large majority, climate scientists agree with the following statements:^{[9] [10] [11] [12]}

• Earth warmed over the last century and will continue to warm this century.
• Most of the global warming is due to the addition of heat-trapping gases (particularly carbon dioxide) from humans burning fossil fuels.
• The combined harmful impacts of global warming on human systems and natural ecosystems will increasingly outweigh positive benefits.
• We can slow or stop the human causes of global warming if we choose to.

This scientific consensus is clearly summarized in the climate assessment reports of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.^{[1] [4] [5]} NOAA scientists played lead roles in authoring and editing both sets of reports.

Additionally, the United States’ foremost science agencies and organizations have all recognized global warming as a human-caused problem that threatens human and natural systems and, therefore, should be addressed. These agencies and organizations include (but are not limited to) NASA; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the American Meteorological Society; the American Geophysical Union; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the American Physical Society; the American Chemical Society; the American Medical Association; the Geological Society of America; and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Have you seen any changes?