The White House has reassigned the federal government's top climate change official, according to The Hill.
Michael Kuperberg, the executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), will now return to his prior position at the Department of Energy.
“He was extremely dedicated,” a White House official told The Washington Post. “He did a very good job of figuring out how to walk that political line. He had no idea it was coming.”
Kuperberg will no longer run the Fifth National Climate Assessment, which is responsible for recruiting scientists to evaluate climate change.
The assessment often created gloomy warnings about the United States' inactivity in addressing climate change.
In October, the environmental watchdog group Center for Biological Diversity criticized USGCRP for delaying the release of this year's assessment.
“Refusing to take the basic steps to prepare the next Climate Assessment is outrageous and dangerous,” said Howard Crystal, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“We can’t prepare for the droughts, floods, fires and hurricanes to come unless we understand how climate change is affecting our country. Congress set a strict four-year timetable for these reports precisely because timely information related to climate change is so important, and the agency must move forward to comply.”
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