The Trump Administration came into office in part by denying climate change, and now it wants to deny the words themselves.

The US Department of Agriculture director of soil health Bianca Moebius-Clune is directing workers to avoid the phrases "climate change" and "climate change adaptation", and instead use the less precise language of "weather extremes" and "resilience to weather extremes" respectively.  The term "reduce greenhouse gases" will be replaced with the practically meaningless "increase nutrient use efficiency".

This Orwellian bending of the language has already had disastrous results in right-wing states.  In 2012, the North Carolina state government passed legislation to prevent communities from planning for sea level rise.  Hurricane Matthew hit in 2016, driving the storm surge to new highs up the Cape Fear River, and the bill for the damage was US$4.8 Billion. 

Things are likely to become even stupider because of the Ag Department's new chief scientist, appointed by Donald Trump:  He is Sam Clovis, who is not a scientist and has no degrees in science.  He's a former right-wing talk radio host who declared climate change to be "junk science" and believes followers of former President Barack Obama were "Maoists".

Meanwhile, climate change caused by human activity  is real and is being observed in real time having negative impacts on the US.  Scientists - real scientists with advanced degrees in science - have compiled a report that said it was "extremely likely that more than half of the global mean temperature increase since 1951 was caused by human influence on climate."

The "US Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report" (.pdf link) continues:  "Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are primarily responsible for observed climate changes in the industrial era," the report stated.  "There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate."

The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft report, and there is significant fear in the climate change science community that Trump will either block its release or pull some stunt to soften its impact.