Report: EPA administrator was directly involved in climate data purge

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt was directly involved in wiping scientific data relating to climate change and air pollution, according to documents and correspondence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by environmentalist activists, ThinkProgress reported Monday. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) was investigating the removal and modification of thousands of pages of data that began disappearing soon after President Donald Trump took office. The organization was particularly interested in an apparent purge of the agency’s web page on the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which detailed the then-administration’s plan to tackle carbon emissions. The EDF discovered emails from J.P. Freire, Pruitt’s associate administrator for public affairs, asking staff to archive web pages related to “climate change, “climate change science,” or “climate change impacts.”...more