Interior Department Arctic Drilling Study Concludes there is not a Climate Crisis
Interior Department Arctic Drilling Study Concludes there is not a Climate Crisis
In early September 2019 the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) quietly released its final environmental impact statement for the upcoming sale of drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain. The report dismissed concerns about climate change and instead stated:
The BLM does not agree that the proposed development is inconsistent with maintaining a livable planet (i.e., there is not a climate crisis). The planet was much warmer within the past 1,000 years, prior to the Little Ice Age, based on extensive archaeological evidence (such as farming in Greenland and vineyards in England). This warmth did not make the planet unlivable; rather, it was a time when societies prospered.
This idea that the world is warming naturally as part of an emergence from a “little ice age” is a talking point of climate change “skeptics” and is not supported by climate scientists. This statement appeared in five different places in the report and was discovered by attorneys for the Sierra Club who were tasked with reviewing thousands of pages of the statement. A spokesperson for the Sierra Club told Earther that “The entire document is one more instance of this administration cutting corners, suppressing science, downplaying the very real impacts of their actions, and they have been so sloppy about it.” The BLM has so far declined to comment on the matter.
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As long as the Republicans are in control of the executive and the Senate this country will continue to go backwards.
It’s a little bit unclear where the quoted language from the report ends. Perhaps set off the quote with indents? I was jarred when I started to read the part with “the idea …,” not realizing it was not a continuation of the quote at first.
Thanks for pointing that out for us, our formatting had dropped off when we published the entry but we have gone back in and reformatted and it looks like it is working now