Seattle Times By Brady Dennis, Jason Samenow and Andrew Freedman 11/11/2020
David Legates, a meteorologist who claims that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for plants and that global warming is harmless, has been tapped to run the federal agency that oversees a major scientific report on how climate change is affecting the United States.
Legates, a controversial figure who joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September, will move into a new slot as head of the U.S. Global Change Research Program as early as Thursday, according to two people familiar with the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Legates could not be reached for comment.
His views on climate run counter to the scientific consensus that human activities – primarily the burning of fossil fuels – have generated greenhouse gases that are causing global temperatures to rise, ice sheets to melt, sea levels to rise and other irreversible damage to the planet.
A NOAA spokesman declined to confirm Legates’s move.
The shift would put Legates in position at least to influence the authors chosen to craft the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that periodically examines climate change damage and includes projections for the United States, down to the local and regional level.
More:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/trump-administration-official-who-questions-global-warming-to-run-key-u-s-climate-program/