The EPA is wiping mention of human-caused climate change from its website

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed references to human-caused climate change from its website — tweaking some pages to focus on the “natural processes” driving climate change and wiping other pages from the internet.

In October, the EPA page on “Causes of Climate Change,” for example, included a statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that noted, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.”

That clear statement has been deleted from the page, which now mentions only climate changes from natural sources, such as volcanic activity and variations in solar activity.

“This is, I think, one of the more dramatic scrubbings we’ve seen so far in the climate space,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, in an online live chat with reporters and followers. “More and more pages have either been completely removed from the public internet — or perhaps worse, have been replaced with inaccurate information.”

Another page, which once described the key indicators of a changing climate — such as rising seas and shrinking Arctic ice — has been deleted entirely.

“Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA is focused on protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback, not left-wing political agendas,” Brigit Hirsch, EPA press secretary, wrote in an email. “As such, this agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult.”

Another page, which listed frequently asked questions on climate change, has been scrubbed of questions like “Is there scientific consensus that human activities are causing today’s climate change?” and questions on how climate change might affect human health. Instead, the page now focuses on questions about natural variability.

“This website is now completely incorrect regarding the changes in climate that we’re seeing today and their causes,” said Swain. “It’s clearly a deliberate effort to misinform.”

Other pages on how climate change can affect children’s health and low-income populations have also been deleted.

The Trump administration has slashed many government websites over the past year, removing mentions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from pages and deleting pages on LBGTQ rights. In February, in response to executive orders that called for removing gender ideology and DEI, many pages were scrubbed from the internet. Data was also deleted — and in some cases later restored, including surveillance data on diseases including HIV. In some case, court orders forced agencies to return sites to their original form.

But the changes to EPA’s website indicate that the Trump administration is continuing to take aim at government communication it finds objectionable.

An earlier version of one page warned that the buildup of greenhouse gases had resulted in “dangerous effects” to human health and ecosystems. The current page says simply that the greenhouse effect “is natural and necessary to support life.”