The Trump administration is facing backlash from climate scientists who say the US government is bungling basic facts about the impact of industrial emissions on air quality.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new proposal this week that would roll back restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants for power plants that rely on fossil fuels.
The agency claimed in the proposal that heat-trapping carbon gas emissions "from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution".
But 19 scientists – experts in climate, health, and economics – told the Associated Press the agency’s statement was scientifically incorrect. Many of them called it disinformation.
Here's what five of them said.
'It's basic chemistry'
"This is the scientific equivalent to saying that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the temperature monitoring group Berkeley Earth, adding that the administration’s conclusion was "utterly nonsensical".
"It’s basic chemistry that burning coal and natural gas releases carbon dioxide, and it’s basic physics that CO2 warms the planet. We’ve known these simple facts since the mid-19th century," said Philip Mote, an Oregon State climate scientist.
Dr Howard Frumkin, former director of the US' National Center for Environmental Health and a retired public health professor at the University of Washington, said "coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change," which "increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms, infectious diseases, and many other health threats".
‘These are indisputable facts,” he added.
"Their statement is in direct conflict with evidence that has been presented by thousands of scientists from almost 200 countries for decades," University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs said.
Stanford climate scientist Chris Field, who coordinated an international report linking climate change to increasingly deadly extreme weather, summed it up this way: "It is hard to imagine a decision dumber than putting the short-term interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the long-term interests of our children and grandchildren".
