science

Experts say the report being used to justify the mass rollback of climate regulations has many claims based on long-debunked research

A new Trump administration report which attempts to justify a mass rollback of environmental regulations is chock-full of climate misinformation, experts say.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to undo the 2009 “endangerment finding”, which allows the agency to limit planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources. Hours later, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a 150-page report defending the proposal, claiming scientific concern about the climate crisis is overblown.

“Climate change is a challenge – not a catastrophe,” wrote the energy secretary, Chris Wright, in the report’s introduction.

Esteemed climate scientist Michael Mann said the report was akin to the result he would expect “if you took a chat bot and you trained it on the top 10 fossil fuel industry-funded climate denier websites”.