A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Department of Energy violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright selected five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a large government report on global warming.
The Department of Energy released the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made the records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, later cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal basis for regulating climate pollution.
But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for decision-making purposes. Judge William Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts affirmed that the Department of Energy did not deny that it did not hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group…
Excerpt from the New York Times
Below: an article from The Wall Street Journal correlating food prices and climate extremes
