For America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “climate” is now a dirty, or rather, nonexistent, word.

EPA’s climate change website reappears, missing the word ‘climate’, Mashable, BY ANDREW FREEDMAN, On April 28, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) abruptly took down its long-standing treasure trove of online climate change resources, and put up a message stating that they were being updated to reflect the new priorities of the Trump administration.

It’s becoming more and more clear that one of those priorities is to downplay the threat of climate change. And one way way to do that is to ignore it altogether.

To that end, on Friday, a group that monitors federal websites for changes in climate change content reported that the some of the climate websites taken down in April have returned to the EPA’s site, with all references to climate change removed.

According to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative’s website monitoring group (EDGI), an EPA website that previously offered climate and energy resources for state, local, and tribal governments has been stripped of its references and links to climate science and policy. Prior to April 28, the site had contained programs and tools to assist these government entities in becoming more energy efficient, using more renewable energy, and developing climate change policies.

Instead, that main site is now a page on “energy resources,” including a “Clean Energy Finance Tool,” Energy Information Administration state reports, newsletters, and other resources with links to previously existing EPA climate sites removed as well. The new webpage, which went online in late July, but was just analyzed in detail on Friday, omits about 15 mentions of the word “climate” from the main page for local governments.

“Large portions of climate resources that were formerly found on the previous website have not been returned, and thus have ultimately been removed from the current EPA website,” the EDGI web monitoring group stated.

The new website’s main page has no links to pages such as the “State Climate Action Framework”, “Local Climate Action Framework”, and “Climate Showcase Communities,” among others, the report found………

he EPA’s voluminous climate change website had previously been maintained under both Republican and Democratic administrations dating back at least to the first Bush administration, and it had served as a valuable tool for teachers and students, researchers, and government officials looking for data and advice on climate resilience efforts.

However, the site has become another casualty of an administration that appears hellbent on erasing as much climate science and climate policy from the books as possible.

Since becoming EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt has pursued an aggressive agenda of dismantling the Obama administration’s climate change regulations, culminating in his action on Oct. 10 to withdraw the Clean Power Plan, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Pruitt has said he doesn’t believe that science shows greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming, even though scientific evidence demonstrates exactly that link.

Pruitt instead wants to hold televised “red team, blue team” debates between climate scientists and deniers to contest the merits of mainstream climate science research. …… http://mashable.com/2017/10/20/epa-climate-website-missing-climate-change-references/#yfrYCTm9CPqM