Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2021
David Legates. Photo credit: The Heartland Institute/Youtube
David Legates, a political appointee at NOAA, attends a Heartland Institute conference in 2019. Legates is promoting researchers who reject climate science. Heartland Institute/YouTube
A climate denier working under the purview of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is attempting to publish cherry-picked and inaccurate research so that it can be permanently archived as a government record.
David Legates, who serves in a senior role at NOAA and is heading the U.S. Global Change Research Program, was brought to the Trump administration recently to challenge consensus climate science. A geologist from the University of Delaware and an affiliate of the Heartland Institute, he has said climate scientists make false claims for money and that humans need to burn more fossil fuels.
Controversial papers questioning the seriousness of climate change led by David Legates, a senior official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration appointed by President Trump, have been published online without White House approval.
The papers, which were published on nongovernment websites, bear the imprint of the Executive Office of the President and state they were copyrighted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). But they were disavowed.
“These papers were not created at the direction of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy nor were they cleared or approved by OSTP leadership,” OSTP spokeswoman Kristina Baum said in an email.