Trump’s EPA chief pushes back on climate skeptics being labeled ‘science deniers’
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin argues that climate projections represent a range of possible outcomes — not certainties — and warned against labeling those who disagree with them as “science deniers.”
“When someone looks at 2050 or 2100 and they say ‘This is exactly what the sea level is going to be. This is what the temperature is going to be,’ it doesn’t acknowledge correctly that there really is a range from the optimistic to the pessimistic,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head told Fox News Digital.
Zeldin’s comments at the Great American State Fair on Thursday come as he was asked what climate predictions made during under President Joe Biden’s administration he believes have been disproven by new evidence.
Rather than take a the layup on the former president by citing a specific prediction, he argued that climate projections, especially those decades in the future, should be interpreted as evolving estimates that need to be regularly updated as new data emerges.
“Relying on present day facts rather than bad assumptions from the past is incredibly important,” Zeldin insisted.
“Every day that goes by we learn what the reality is at that point in the future, and we’re able to compare it to what the predictions are,” he added.
Zeldin emphasized the importance of hearing out newer perspectives on climate change, alluding to the idea that using both long-term forecasts and current real-world data can more accurately estimate the present implications and impacts of climate change.
He argued that people who disagree with these climate projections, which could possibly reflect outdated research or data, should not automatically be labeled “science deniers.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea that if someone disagrees with someone else’s prediction of exactly what the temperature’s gonna be in the year 2100, that all of a sudden that person is just automatically some science denier,” Zeldin said.
“Hear them out,” he advised. “Maybe they have an opinion on some other study that they looked on, or other studies they looked on, because there really is a range of predictions, especially when you look further in the future.”
The Trump administration has moved to revisit several climate-related regulations, including efforts to reconsider the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which serves as the legal basis for many federal greenhouse gas regulations, as well as other greenhouse gas emissions rules.
Since taking over the EPA, Zeldin has spearheaded re-evaluating the agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding and is revisiting a number of climate-related regulations adopted under previous Democratic administrations.
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