Precedence:A webpage run by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources used to explain to visitors that climate change is both occurring and is the result of human activity. Now, visitors to the same webpage will find false information claiming that the cause of climate change is still a matter of scientific debate.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the department, which is in charge of the state’s environmental policy, among other things, quietly scrubbed language from a page about the Great Lakes and climate change, striking out entire sentences about human contributions to climate change.
The website used to explain that “Earth’s climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat-trapping (‘greenhouse’gases are the main cause,” and went on to discuss how climate change might affect Wisconsin directly — longer summers, shorter winters, changes in precipitation patterns.
Instead, the webpage now reads: “As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth’s long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.”
The claim that the causes of climate change are still subject to scientific debate is false. There is a 97 percent consensus among publishing climate scientists that the climate is indeed changing, and that human activities — especially the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels — are the primary cause. Scientists are about as sure that humans cause climate change as they are that smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer.
Larger implications:
Full article here: https://thinkprogress.org/wisconsin-dnr-climate-change-information-purge-d9ac20755540#.dimk9q89n
See the Before and After of the mentioned website for yourself:
Before: https://web.archive.org/web/20161030222446/http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/greatlakes/climatechange.html
vs.
After: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/greatlakes/climatechange.html
