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Climate Change Denier Hired for Top Job at NOAA

David Legates has spent his career undermining widely accepted science.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has hired a professor who devoted his career to skepticism of the science of climate change for a top position at the federal agency, NPR reports. David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology, was brought on as the deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. He has pushed the debunked theory that the sun causes global warming rather than human activity that produces greenhouse gases. According to InsideClimate News, Legates is the author of a 2007 paper funded by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute that doubted the role of rising average temperatures in the destruction of Arctic polar bear habitats. Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA under President Barack Obama, told NPR of Legates, “He's not just in left field, he's not even near the ballpark.” The Trump administration has faced consistent criticism for attempting to bend the findings of nonpartisan scientific agencies toward its own political agenda.