NASA Fights To Keep Debunked 97% Climate-Consensus Claim On Website

by V. Richardson, April 15, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Nothing sends climate skeptics into orbit faster than seeing NASA repeat the 97% climate-consensus claim, but the effort to have the Obama-era declaration removed from the government website is suffering from a failure to launch.

NASA officials rejected the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s July 9 request for correction under the Information Quality Act, concluding that “changes to the Web site are not needed at this time,” prompting the free-market group to file an appeal Tuesday.

On its Global Climate Change page, NASA states: “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”

CEI attorney Devin Watkins, who called the statement “inaccurate, unreliable, and biased,” said that NASA has refused to budge even though President Trump has expressed reservations about the consensus argument on anthropogenic global warming.

In 2017, for example, Mr. Trump told The Associated that “you have scientists on both sides of the picture.”

“It’s really weird when the President of the United States seems to say the 97% figure is incorrect, but an agency he is responsible for overseeing continues to say on their website that the President is wrong,” Mr. Watkins said in an email.

In her reply to the CEI, NASA chief information officer Renee P. Wynn said that the Global Climate Change website “presents the state of scientific knowledge about climate change and honors the role that NASA has played and plays in researching and communicating climate science.”