How sea level rises could damage some national parks has been detailed in a report that was delayed, bringing charges of censorship from its lead author, E&E News reported Monday.
The report had been under administrative review since early 2017, and some charged that the federal officials wanted references to human's role in climate changes taken out of it, E&E News wrote.
The study's lead author disputed National Park Service claims that the report was handled properly, complaining that the government was trying to suppress information, E&E News said.
"Censorship is a good word for that," said Maria Caffrey, the lead author and researcher at the University of Colorado, according to E&E News. She threatened to file a scientific integrity complaint.
The study said the National Capital Region could experience the greatest effects from sea-level rise, while the Southeast region would see the greatest uptick in storm surge, E&E News reported.
Parks in North Carolina's Outer Banks faced the greatest sea-level rise of any national parks, where the sea level near Wright Brothers National Memorial is projected to rise 2.7 feet by 2100, according to the publication Reveal, from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
According to past research, a sea level increase of one meter could cost the National Park Service billions of dollars, E&E News wrote.
"This was really a first step, a broad brush, to addressing what's going on in these parks," Caffrey told E&E News.
Reveal published a draft of the study early on that showed that park service officials had deleted all mention of humans causing climate change, but those references were restored in the final draft.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a House subcommittee hearing he had been unaware of the attempted changes Reveal pointed out and told Congress that he would never change a scientific report.
National Parks spokesman Jeffrey Olson told E&E News that suggested edits "focused the report on issues specific to national park units."
"Scientists normally conduct experiments, gather and analyze data, write about and argue conclusions to a point of consensus, often through multiple drafts and usually out of public view," Olson told E&E News.
"The scientists preparing this report were doing just that when working drafts of the report were published in the news media before the authors had completed their deliberations," Olson added.
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