Extreme Weather: White House Deletes Climate Language From Disaster Doc

"The White House scrubbed language about how climate change fuels more extreme weather events from draft EPA guidance, newly released documents show.

An earlier draft of the EPA guidance on planning for natural disasters contained language about how climate scientists have attributed recent extreme weather events to global warming. Key portions of that language were nixed during an interagency review led by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).

"Recorded changes in temperature, precipitation, and wind patterns, for example, are causing extreme weather events, attributed to climate change, that are creating new risks to communities and sites," the draft said. "Recently, there have been more frequent and intense storms, flooding, storm surges, droughts and wildfires."

During the interagency review, OIRA scrubbed the phrases "attributed to climate change" and "recently, there have been more." The altered draft was posted today to regulations.gov, the federal government's online clearinghouse for regulatory documents."

Maxine Joselow reports for E&E News PM April 25, 2019.

Source: E&E News PM, 04/26/2019