Wisconsin Officially in Climate Change Denial: DNR Website

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website has finally caught up with a policy shift away from bold insistence that human activity and heat-trapping greenhouses gases are the culprits behind climate change — a conclusion generally accepted by scientists worldwide. Now, that language has vanished and has been replaced with skepticism

The change is dramatic. It strikes language stating “scientists agree” climate change would lengthen summers and shorten winters in the Great Lakes region, resulting in decreased ice cover on the lakes and changes in rain and snow patterns “if climate change patterns persist.”

The shift illustrates not only deep political fissures on climate issues, but also how disinterested Gov. Scott Walker has been in the topic since taking office in 2011. When it comes to the gradual warming of the planet, politicians generally fall into two camps: those who believe humans have a role, and those who don’t. Walker is in the second camp, and his critics say the language change is another way he is diluting the influence of the DNR.

The language change on Dec. 21, came a couple of days after DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp, Walker's appointee to lead the agency in 2011, was interviewed by a reporter from northern Wisconsin’s Lakeland Times.

The reporter asked Stepp about the incongruity in a website that citied the findings of respected climate-change groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Walker administration’s public comments that the science behind it is debatable.

“At the end of the day, the policy direction is ultimately in the purview of the elected officials,” Stepp told the Lakeland newspaper. “Our jobs as the elected work force is to carry out the will of the elected officials. ... The policy direction is ultimately in their hands. ... I’m very careful about weighing in. It doesn't matter what my personal opinion is. I’m not a policy person like I was in the old days. My job now is to implement.”

Within two days of the interview, the following was deleted from the website: “Earth’s climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat-trapping ('greenhouse') gases are the main cause.”

In its place is a neutral statement:

“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 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 effects of such a change are also being debated but whatever the causes and effects, the DNR's responsibility is to manage our state's natural resources through whatever event presents itself; flood, drought, tornadoes, ice/snow or severe heat. The DNR staff stands ready to adapt our management strategies in an effort to protect our lakes, waterways, plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.”

DNR spokesman Jim Dick told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the reporter brought up a legitimate issue and the website was changed “to reflect a policy of neutrality on its causes and effects, rather than embracing the dramatic manmade hypothesis the web page has touted since the Doyle administration.”

Climate Change in the Campaign

Wisconsin is the latest of several Republican-controlled states refusing to prioritize a response to changing climate and its potential effect on the ecosystem.

The issue registered barely a blip on the Republican campaign trail.

President-elect Donald Trump famously called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to steal jobs. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the chairman of a Senate subcommittee on science, called climate change a “pseudo-scientific theory” and a “religion.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio scoffed at worries that his state could slip into the ocean.

And on Capitol Hill, climate change skeptics in Congress number about 180, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

An in-depth study by the Pew Research Center found wide political divides in how the potential devastation of the Earth’s ecosystems should be addressed, as well as partisan differences among the political left and right in the interpretation of scientific discussions about climate .

Party divides weren’t exclusive drivers of whether people accept or reject the science of climate change. Republicans who believe the planet is warming were far less likely than liberal Democrats to think there's much that can be done to reverse the effects of climate change. And they’re not nearly as worried as liberal Democrats about the dire effects of climate change on the Earth’s ecosystem.

An analysis of about 200 polls and studies in 57 countries challenged some of the stereotypes of climate change doubters, including that they’re less educated and primarily older, white men.

There is a “kernel of truth” in both assumptions, but “the effects are so tiny you’d have to squint to see them,” Matthew Hornsey, a psychology professor at the University of Queensland in Australia and the paper’s lead author, told The Washington Post.

“What really popped was people’s ideologies, political values, worldviews,” Hornsey said.

Photo by via Dean Hochman Flickr Commons