Fossil fuels off list of warming causes

EPA’s revised climate change page mentions natural phenomena as the only sources.

- BY SETH BORENSTEIN

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed any mention of fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming— from its popular online page explaining the causes of climate change.

Now it mentions only natural phenomena, even though scientists calculate that nearly all of the warming is due to human activity.

Sometime in the last few days or weeks, the EPA altered some but not all of its climate change webpages, de-emphasizing and even deleting references to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, which scientists say is the overwhelming cause of climate change. The website’s causes of climate change page mentions changes in Earth’s orbit, solar activity, Earth’s reflectivity, volcanoes and natural carbon dioxide changes, but not the burning of fossil fuels. Seven scientists and three former EPA officials tell the Associated Press that this is misleading and harmful.

“Now it is completely wrong,” said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain, who also noted that impacts, risks and indicators of climate change on the EPA site are now broken links. “This was a tool that I know for a fact that a lot of educators used and a lot of people. It was actually one of the best-designed easy-access climate change information websites for the U.S.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration removed the national climate assessment from government websites.