The Trump administration will push ahead with disbanding a federal advisory panel that reported on climate change, The Washington Post reports Sunday. The move follows the leak of a draft of a major climate change report warning of rising temperatures.
The panel, the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment, is a 15-member panel made up of academics, corporate employees and local officials charged with simplifying findings from the National Climate Assessment for those inside and outside of the federal government.
The group worked on the National Climate Assessment, the mandated quadrennial report that was leaked last month as a draft. The report is due to be released in 2018, but The New York Times reported that scientists working on it worried the Trump administration would try to bury some or all of its conclusions and may have leaked it for that reason.
The report concludes that Americans are already feeling the effects of climate change and says it is “extremely likely” that the majority of global temperature increases in the past 60 years are partially due to human influence. The White House is in the process of reviewing a final version of the assessment.
A spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which announced the panel would not be renewed, told the publication “this action does not impact the completion of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which remains a key priority”.
The news comes as the Trump administration continues to face backlash for its policies on climate change, which many have labeled as skeptical. Trump, who has favored nonrenewable energy industries such as coal, announced in June the U.S. would be leaving the Paris climate accord.
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