Interior Department Distorted Climate Change Evidence: Report

Agency documents, including scientific analyses, included language that misrepresents the uncertainty surrounding climate change, according to a New York Times investigation.

kerry grens
| 2 min read
department of the interior climate change global warming agriculture watershed indur goklany

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An official at the US Department of the Interior spearheaded the addition of misleading information about climate change and the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment to documents about watersheds in California and Oregon, The New York Times reports. Indur Goklany, who reviews climate policy in the office of the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, had language put into impact statements and scientific reports to promote the idea that climate change will be beneficial to agriculture and distort the widespread agreement among scientists about climate change predictions.

“Highlighting uncertainty is consistent with the biggest attacks on the climate science community,” Jacquelyn Gill, an associate professor of paleoecology and plant ecology at the University of Maine, tells the Times. “They’re emphasizing discussions of uncertainty to the point where people feel as though we can’t actually make decisions.”

Goklany has worked for the Interior Department ...

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  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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