CWG cli working gp
---
SEE RED-BLUE TEAM FOR OLDER
HACKADEMICS?
NOTE 400 PP RESPONSE KOPP
---
WIKI 1 26 A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate - Wikipedia
---
ZOE LTR SEP 18 2025
:{:{Dr. Judith Curry Professor Emeritus Georgia Institute of Technology School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 311 Ferst Drive Atlanta, GA 30332}:
:{:{Dear Dr. Curry, I write to you to express my deep concern about the matters you brought to light in an interview for a September 11th, 2025, article in E&E News regarding the recently dissolved Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Working Group (CWG). 1}:
For months now,2 Democrats on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have sounded the alarm about the procedural irregularities in the Administration’s attempt to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Endangerment Finding.3 Given your public disclosures, I request that you participate in a formal interview to elaborate on your observations and experiences participating in the CWG during and after the preparation of the report entitled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.”4}:}:
In your interview with E&E News, you stated that DOE “really didn’t dot all the I’s and cross the T’s,” and that the Department “dropped the ball on really making us an official group affiliated with the DOE, rather than, you know, just sort of an ad hoc group.” The article paraphrased your 1 Scott Waldman, “Disbanded DOE climate group vows to continue work,” E&E News, September 11, 2025, accessed here:
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/09/11/disbanded-doe-climate-group-vows-tocontinue-work-00556267. }:}:
2 “Ranking Member Lofgren calls Trump Administration out for risking public health with Endangerment Finding reconsideration,” House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Democrats, March 13, 2025, accessed here: https://democrats-science.house.gov/news/press-releases/ranking-member-lofgren-calls-trump-administration-outfor-risking-public-health-with-endangerment-finding-reconsideration.
3 Letter from Ranking Members Zoe Lofgren and Gabe Amo to Environmental Protection Administrator Lee Zeldin, August 18, 2025, accessed here: https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2025-08- 18%20SST%20RM%20Lofgren%20Amo%20-%20Letter%20to%20Administrator%20Zeldin%20- %20Endangerment%20Finding%20Repeal.pdf.
4 “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” Department of Energy, July 23, 2025, accessed here: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025- 07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025.pdf.}:
P2
remarks as frustration that “DOE had not properly set up the group to follow federal laws” due, in part, to “paperwork errors.”5 This is consistent with Science Committee Democrats’ own observations, as well as a lawsuit brought against DOE by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists.6}:
During your time on the CWG, you had a front row seat to the part DOE has played in – as you put it in the preface to the CWG’s report – “[challenging] the mainstream consensus” on climate science. While Democrats on the Science Committee strongly disagree with you and your co-authors’ conclusions in that report, we believe that it is in no one’s interest to allow the federal government to break the law on matters of grave public importance.
The CWG’s report underpins one of the Trump Administration’s most far-reaching environmental goals: the repeal of the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. We can all agree that this would be extremely consequential. In the eyes of Science Committee Democrats – as well as climate scientists, environmental researchers, medical doctors, and peer agencies the world over – this repeal would be an abandonment of public health in favor of the preferred policy outcomes of industries that stand to benefit massively from the ability to pollute our air unfettered by greenhouse gas regulations.
In the eyes of allies of the Trump Administration and of individuals like yourself who disagree with the scientific consensus on climate change, this repeal would finally unburden the United States from the shackles of climate alarmism and unleash a prosperous future that runs on fossil fuels. Regardless of anyone’s perspective on the substance of this matter, we should all care deeply that such a consequential decision is made transparently and legally, dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s.
This Committee has the responsibility to ensure that science-based decision-making in the executive branch complies with the laws enacted by Congress. In order to fulfill the Committee’s oversight obligations, I request that you participate in a formal interview with Committee staff. Please be prepared to address the following matters:}:
:{:{:{The process by which you were selected for and onboarded to the CWG;}:
2. The responsibilities of the CWG, as expressed to CWG members by DOE Secretary Chris Wright;
- The work of the CWG from the initiation of the group through the dissolution of the group;
4.
:{:{The September 3rd, 2025, dissolution of the CWG;}:
5. The “paperwork errors” you referenced in your interview for the aforementioned E&E News article; and
6. The work you intend to conduct with your former CWG co-members, as you referenced in the aforementioned E&E News article. I request that you participate in this interview no later than October 10th, 2025.}:}:
:{:{5 Scott Waldman, “Disbanded DOE climate group vows to continue work,” E&E News, September 11, 2025, accessed here: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/09/11/disbanded-doe-climate-group-vows-tocontinue-work-00556267.}:
6 “EDF, UCS File Lawsuit Against Trump Administration Secret Convening of Climate Skeptics, Use of Their Hidden ‘Science’ Report in Attempt to Overturn Endangerment Finding,” Environmental Defense Fund, August 12, 2025, accessed here: https://www.edf.org/media/edf-ucs-file-lawsuit-against-trump-administration-secret-conveningclimate-skeptics-use-their.}:
P3
:{:{Pursuant to Rule X of the House of Representatives, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology “shall review and study on a continuing basis laws, programs, and Government activities relating to nonmilitary research and development.”7}:
The Committee possesses jurisdiction over “all energy research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor, and all federally owned or operated nonmilitary energy laboratories, as well as the commercial application of energy technologies,” as well as “environmental research and development.”8
If you have any questions regarding this letter, and for the purposes of scheduling the requested interview, please contact Sara Palasits or Josh Schneider with the Committee’s Minority staff at (202) 225-6375. Thank you for your attention to this important matter. Sincerely, Zoe Lofgren Ranking Member Committee on Science, Space, and Techno}:
BABIN
REF
---
OMG
REF GRNWIRE
https://www.eenews.net/articles/its-the-gold-standard-of-us-climate-research-contrarians-could-write-the-next-one/}:
It’s the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians could write the next one.
By Scott Waldman | 12/22/2025
Researchers who have downplayed the threat of global warming have been asked to author the next National Climate Assessment.
The Trump administration has invited a small group of climate contrarians to help write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, the nation’s preeminent report on global warming, says one of the researchers involved.
The move would advance efforts by the White House to inject widely disputed ideas about climate change into the federal government’s official appraisal of global warming. And it would almost certainly provoke a response from the hundreds of mainstream climate scientists who have worked for years on the National Climate Assessment.
Judith Curry, a former climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of the climate contrarians in line for the new assignment. Earlier this year, Curry joined with four like-minded researchers to produce a separate report for Energy Secretary Chris Wright that downplayed the threat of global warming and called into question the basic tenets of climate science.
Now Curry says that same team — known as the Climate Working Group — has been asked to write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, or NCA, a congressionally mandated report that comes out every few years and outlines the many ways that global warming is expected to impact the United States and its people.
“The Climate Working Group has been contacted about the NCA,” said Curry, who added that she was open to the idea. “Personally, I would work with whoever’s in charge to get a reasonable outline and get reasonable authors.”
Curry said she expected all five members of the Climate Working Group to work on the National Climate Assessment.
Three of the other authors did not respond to requests for comment from POLITICO’s E&E News. The fourth, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick, said late Sunday that he had not yet been contacted about working on the assessment but declined to comment as to whether he would participate in the next version.
Curry also said that the Trump administration was looking to revive the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the initiative in charge of producing the National Climate Assessment. Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismantled the program and dismissed hundreds of scientists who were already at work on the sixth version of the National Climate Assessment.
Curry said the new effort is starting to take shape. She said the Trump administration already has interviewed candidates for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and she expected the administration would name a new program chief as soon as next month.
“I think in January, we should have a director of the USGCRP in place,” she said.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. Nor did the Energy Department nor the Office of Management and Budget.
But there’s at least one other sign the Trump administration is looking to write a new version of the National Climate Assessment.
Ryan Maue, who served as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump administration, said last week on the social media site X that he was working on the new climate report.
He described it as a “volunteer effort” and said it would be “mostly completed before end of 2025.”
Maue did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. But he wrote on X that he was enlisting artificial intelligence to help with the latest National Climate Assessment. He cited the Gemini 3 Pro program as well as Grok, an AI chatbot developed by xAI, the artificial intelligence company led by tech tycoon Elon Musk.
Grok in the past has downplayed the danger of global warming when compared with other AI programs.
The Trump administration’s push to revive the National Climate Assessment and resurrect the U.S. Global Change Research Program adds a new twist to the complicated history of the long-running research effort.
The program was created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Its most visible product is the National Climate Assessment, which comes out roughly every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure projects.
Five installments of the National Climate Assessment have been published since 2000. The reports explore more than just climate change — they also examine land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems and the atmosphere.
But earlier this year, the Trump administration fired the federal employees who work for the research program — and it was effectively shuttered. The administration also deleted interactive webpages for the first five versions of the National Climate Assessment and then buried the documents on government websites.
The moves prompted a sharp outcry from the scientific community in part because the National Climate Assessment has earned a reputation for top-notch research. The document includes hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to inform its conclusions, and it relies on the work of hundreds of scientists to write its contents and review its findings.
In contrast, the Energy Department report written by Curry and her colleagues involved a much smaller group of researchers.
Her four co-authors were: McKitrick; Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP who also served as an undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Obama administration; as well as John Christy and Roy Spencer, atmospheric scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
One climate scientist said the size of that group was indicative of how far the team members’ views fall outside the scientific consensus.
“Serious experts agree and action (on climate change) is needed as soon as possible,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has served as a lead author on multiple versions of the National Climate Assessment.
If the Trump administration wants “people who are not going to tell them those truths,” she added, “those are the only people they have.”
The Energy Department report written by Curry and the rest of the Climate Working Group has been roundly criticized by climate scientists for its reliance on cherry-picked data and its omission of research that disproved its claims.
Scientists whose work was cited in the report said their research was distorted and manipulated. Dozens of scientists produced a 450-page report challenging its claims, and the National Academies offered its own rebuttal of the report as well.
Hayhoe said it’s critical the United States and its leaders get a clear-eyed view of climate change and its impacts.
“This is a matter of safety, security, well being, resilience and preparation for a better future for everyone,” she said. “Regardless of where they live and regardless of how they vote.”
Related Articles
Climatewire
DOE reframes climate consensus as a debate
:{by Scott Waldman, Benjamin Storrow | 07/31/2025 :
Climatewire
DOE reframes climate consensus as a debate
By Scott Waldman, Benjamin Storrow | 07/31/2025 EDT
Energy Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers to write a report that assaults what he called the “cancel culture Orwellian squelching of science.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright (left) and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) listen during the annual Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference on June 3 in Anchorage, Alaska. Jenny Kane/AP
The Trump administration has given a government stamp of approval to the contrarian claims of a group of conservative researchers who for years have positioned themselves as being part of a Galileo-like quest to question mainstream climate science.
On Tuesday, those researchers appeared to reach the apex of that journey.
Less than two months after joining the Department of Energy, they produced a 141-page report that often conflicts with and distorts the consensus view of climate scientists to support President Donald Trump’s effort to repeal the endangerment finding, the scientific underpinning for greenhouse gas rules on carmakers, energy companies and other industries.
The group that helped with the DOE report includes: John Christy and Roy Spencer, climate scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville: Steve Koonin, a former DOE official in the Obama administration and former top scientist at the oil giant BP; Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Canada.
In a prologue to the report, Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote that he intentionally assembled a “diverse team of independent experts” who were chosen for“their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate.” That team did not include any of the hundreds of government climate scientists from NOAA or NASA, two of the world’s leading science agencies.
Climate scientists Judith Curry (left) and John Christy (center) are advising Energy Secretary Chris Wright. | Mike Theiler/UPI/Newscom MANN AND PIELKE?
DOE declined a request to comment. But in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Wright said the report pushes back on the “cancel culture Orwellian squelching of science.”
Scientists say the DOE Climate Working Group’s findings sound a lot like the misleading climate claims Wright has made over the years and the fringe views he has elevated. Much of the report is based on the authors’ own disputed claims, research funded by the fossil fuel industry or assertions made by groups opposed to climate regulation. Some of its primary assertions were debunked years ago.
And while the report frequently draws on mainstream climate research as well, multiple scientists said their work was misrepresented.
That includes Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, who said the report’s reliance on his sea-level rise research was misrepresented by “cherry-picking” a single tide gauge. It’s a common technique used by the report’s authors, he said.
Kopp emphasized that few scientists in the field agree with the authors’ sweeping assertions even after years of claims.
“They found like five people who’ve made their careers over multiple decades in climate skepticism,” he said of the DOE author selection. “They haven’t managed to bring anybody else along to think of, there’s still the same set of five people, most of whom are rather late in their careers at this point.”
The DOE report comes as the Trump administration seeks to eliminate federal climate jobs en masse through the deletion of billions of dollars of climate research, entire science divisions at multiple agencies, government climate information and climate data-gathering instruments, including satellites now in orbit.
The Trump administration has also ended work on the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated, yearslong report produced by hundreds of scientists, and removed earlier versions of the report from government websites.
The assessment, which the DOE team repeatedly contradicts, involves scores of scientists, public comment and peer review from the National Academy of Sciences, said Phil Duffy, a physicist who studies climate change and served at the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden administration.
“If the administration wanted to have a good review of climate science and the impact of climate change on the United States, then they shouldn’t have pulled the plug on that assessment,” Duffy said.
‘Red team’ ideas
Wright’s team began work in early April and finished before the end of May, with the explicit mission of producing a report that would “challenge the mainstream consensus.”
It is just the beginning of a more expansive process that will solicit public feedback, respond to that feedback and then produce a longer report that stands to serve as the final record, according to report co-author Curry, who wrote about it on her blog. The ultimate goal, she wrote, is “breaking the link between energy policy and human-caused climate change, whereby anthropogenic climate change currently ‘mandates’ emissions targets, preferred energy production methods, etc.”
At first glance, the report appears to be the “red team” review of climate science that Koonin began working on in the first Trump term, before it was shut down.
Climate scientist Steve Koonin pitched the idea of publicly debating climate scientist during the first Trump administration. | Charles Watkins/DOE/Flickr
Earlier this year, Koonin told POLITICO’s E&E News that he wanted to challenge the science behind the endangerment finding, while highlighting uncertainties in established bodies of science including the National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“I think that the science has for a long time not been well represented to nonexperts,” Koonin said. “The people who have been misrepresenting should be embarrassed by it, but they’re not.”
But the DOE report Koonin helped write omits the mainstream science part of the original “red team, blue team” idea.
“It’s a red team report without the blue team, and it’s explicit about that,” said Matt Burgess, an economist who studies environmental policy at the University of Wyoming.
Burgess is sympathetic to some of DOE’s claims. His research on the overcitation of worst-case climate scenarios is referenced in the report, and Burgess said he was cited accurately. He thinks assessments like the National Climate Assessment could do a better job of incorporating feedback from researchers outside of the mainstream.
In his view, the report raises legitimate concerns about the uncertainty in some climate research, like the economic costs of climate damage.
“There’s way more uncertainty in the social cost of carbon and in climate economic damages than sometimes the mainstream narrative gives it credit for,” Burgess said. “Where I would disagree a little bit with the report is uncertainty cuts both ways. You can’t say this is uncertain, and therefore we know there’s no problem.”
Burgess said he hopes the Trump administration will ultimately conduct a National Climate Assessment, including climate critics like the authors of the DOE report and people the president’s allies “don’t like.”
“The only way they’re going to change the narrative, the discourse scientifically, is to have some kind of an adversarial collaboration,” he said.
Scientific discourse?
The decision to attack the science underpinning the endangerment finding is part of a wider escalation in Trump’s attempts to rollback climate policies. EPA announced a plan to rescind the endangerment finding earlier this week, arguing it was based on faulty science.
Mark Menezes, who served as deputy Energy secretary during Trump’s first term, said he recalled the endangerment finding coming up in internal deliberations about “things you aim to accomplish.”
“The endangerment finding was probably on the list, but it was a ways down the list,” he said. A pair of subsequent Supreme Court decisions, one knocking back an Obama-era proposal to curb greenhouse gases from power plants and another concerning the legal deference afforded to federal agencies, have changed the political calculus, he said. Those decisions have collectively narrowed federal agencies’ ability to act without the express intent of Congress, Menezes said.
The report also fulfills Wright’s goal of reframing long-established climate science as a debate.
The Energy secretary rose to prominence in conservative political circles in VID] 2021, when he posted a
criticizing North Face for refusing to make jackets for an oil and gas company. Wright, who was the CEO of the oil field service company Liberty Energy at the time, argued that North Face wouldn’t have been able to make any of its products without the oil and gas industry, and that people would not even have time for outdoor recreational pursuits without fossil fuels.
Now Wright’s five-person climate team is taking aim at the consensus of thousands of climate scientists scattered across the world’s top science agencies and universities. The DOE report attacks the extensive scientific record, conducted through thousands of studies around the world over decades, that shows fossil fuel use is pushing the planet toward dangerous climate tipping points, including more intense weather extremes.
“Attribution of climate change or extreme weather events to human CO2 emissions is challenged by natural climate variability, data limitations, and inherent model deficiencies,” the group concluded. “Moreover, solar activity’s contribution to the late 20th century warming might be underestimated.”
Such factors have been considered, studied, measured and addressed for more than two decades, and they don’t disprove clear evidence linking a warming planet to more extreme weather events.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, saw his own research on how climate change affects mortality rates included in the report. But the report, he said, omits context and some key facts to create a misleading impression.
The report focused on Dessler’s finding that climate change could cut down on cold weather deaths, as could adaptation, but downplayed the forecast spike in heat deaths in some cities.
“As a general rule, what they say is correct, but it’s carefully filtered to give an impression that’s counter to a full reading of the analysis,” he said.
The DOE team “have shown no interest whatsoever in intellectually honest scientific discourse,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.
“Instead, they have served as loyal soldiers in the ongoing war on science being waged by polluters, petrostates, and plutocrats, and the politicians — which includes the current administration and its enablers in Congress — who do their bidding.”
How Chris Wright recruited a team to upend climate science
by Benjamin Storrow | 08/11/2025 06:15 AM EDT
Climatewire
NO LNX
Climatewire
How Chris Wright recruited a team to upend climate science
:{By Benjamin Storrow | 08/11/2025
The Energy secretary handpicked climate contrarians to write a report that EPA is using to undermine U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright addresses members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee during a May 21 hearing.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright addresses members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee during a May 21 hearing. Mark Schiefelbein/AP
It started with a call from Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
In late March, a little over a month into his job leading the Department of Energy, Wright phoned a research scientist named Roy Spencer at his home. Wright wanted to know if Spencer, a former NASA scientist, would be interested in contributing to a climate study.
Spencer said yes.
Other scientists received similar calls from Wright. They included Judith Curry, a climatologist and professor emerita at the Georgia Institute of Technology; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; and Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP who also served as an undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Obama administration.
All the researchers had one thing in common: Each had spent years questioning the mainstream consensus around climate science. Most have worked with conservative activists and fossil fuel interests to cast doubt over the dangers of a warming planet.
“He had been following my research for many years,” Spencer said, recalling his conversation with Wright in a recent blog post.
The end result of Wright’s hand-picked team was a 141-page DOE report released last month that questioned the basic tenets of climate science, including the accuracy of climate models, the threats posed by sea-level rise and the links between extreme weather events and humanity’s use of fossil fuels.
The document could serve as a legal battering ram for President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate climate regulations; EPA cited the study 16 times when it released a proposal last month to rescind the legal designation underpinning climate regulations.
The study also represents a personal triumph for Wright, a former executive at fracking services company who has spent years arguing that the benefits of burning fossil fuels outweigh the costs. In an interview on CNN, Wright said the study was intended to promote “a real debate and discussion about climate change, and get away from the cancel culture.”
He told a Wall Street Journal podcast that “these claims of disaster and impending meltdowns, they’re just at odds with the actual facts.”
Such assertions have attracted fierce criticism from many climate scientists, with some going as far to label the study “fossil fuel propaganda” and accusing its authors of cherry-picking scientific evidence to suit their narrative.
John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, struck a less strident tone.
Advocates and opponents of climate policy are both prone to making exaggerated claims about the science. But climate science itself is sound while the dangers posed by a warming planet are real, he said.
“There’s a risk that has real consequences in lives and property if society as a whole ignores the changes that are taking place,” Nielsen-Gammon said.
A priority for Wright
Vice President JD Vance (left) listens to Energy Secretary Chris Wright speak during a March 28 visit to the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland.
Just how much Wright personally invested in DOE’s study has become clear in his media appearances over the last week and in public comments by the report’s authors.
“Only one of the executive-level appointees in the Administration had the background knowledge and interest to invest in making this science report happen: Energy Secretary Chris Wright,” Spencer wrote on his blog.
In an email, Curry said she spoke with Wright three times, once when he invited her to participate, once regarding the White House vetting process and a third time with the wider group.
“He invited me because he regarded me as objective, and willing to listen to and consider a broad range of perspectives,” she wrote.
Wright also tapped Travis Fisher, an energy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, to coordinate the study.
“The secretary’s plan was simple,” Fisher wrote in a blog post on Cato’s website. “We would reorient the debate about climate science and climate policy by confronting the gatekeepers head-on.”
Fisher and Spencer did not respond to requests for comment.
DOE’s study comes at a time when the Trump administration has launched an attack on climate science, pulling down the National Climate Assessment from its government webpage, proposing deep cuts in scientific research and exploring a plan to end the mission of a pair of satellite’s used to measure carbon dioxide levels around the world.
DOE did not respond to a request to interview Wright or a list of written questions. But Wright told the Wall Street Journal he was seeking “honest, true scientists” who were “really driven by the data” to lead the study. In a forward to the study, Wright wrote that he had sought “a diverse team of independent experts” to review climate science.
“I exerted no control over their conclusions,” he wrote.
Yet all the researchers he selected were well known as outliers in the field of climate science with a reputation for questioning the dangers of a warming planet.
In 2017, when then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt proposed the idea of pitting climate contrarians against their mainstream counterparts in a “red team, blue team” exercise, the conservative Heartland Institute sent EPA a list of skeptics who could fill out the red team.
Four of the DOE study’s authors — Christy, Curry, Koonin and Spencer — were on it. The work of the fifth DOE researcher, the Canadian environmental economist Ross McKitrick, is cited on that list, but his name wasn’t put forth by Heartland for a red team position.
The decision to select a handful of scientists known for their skepticism of climate science fit a pattern for Wright, who over the years has pressed the idea that fossil fuels are key to human prosperity and that efforts to curtail their use is harmful.
Liberty Energy, the fracking services company Wright ran until becoming Energy secretary, released a report last year that argued climate policy threatened to slow human progress unleashed by fossil fuels. It listed 10 key takeaways.
No. 9 read, “Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.”
No. 10 said, “Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.”
The forward Wright penned to DOE’s study hits on those same points.
“Climate change is real, and it deserves attention. But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity,” it reads. “That distinction belongs to global energy poverty.”
Critics: It’s about advancing an agenda
(From left) Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pose for a photo with the Trans-Alaska pipeline in the background after a June 2 news conference in Alaska.
Scott Denning, a climate scientist who recently retired from Colorado State University and who debated Wright on a Denver television show in 2015, said he recognized many of Wright’s talking points.
It is telling that the secretary had personally phoned the report’s authors and asked them to conduct a study, he said.
“He has this shtick about how fossil fuels have made the world much better,” said Denning, who then paraphrased what he sees as Wright’s viewpoint: “Everything uses fossil fuels. If we don’t have fossil fuels, we’re going back to pre-modern times.”
But Denning said, “I think that’s just such a false choice.”
Nielsen-Gammon said there is “sensitivity” within the community of climate scientists about publishing results that might be viewed negatively.
But he said that feeling is counteracted by the sheer amount of scrutiny climate science receives and the “extraordinary process” used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “where international communities of scientists get together regularly and hash through the evidence and figure out what’s well supported and what isn’t.”
Nielsen-Gammon said he disagreed with the DOE report’s finding that extreme rainfall events were not increasing in frequency and intensity — his area of expertise — noting that the report did not cite a number of studies on the subject, including one he published last year.
Others have been even more strident in their criticism.
In a recent Substack post, the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the DOE study incorrectly cited his 2019 paper on the performance of climate models. That study compared climate models’ past emissions projections to observed emissions. DOE used it to bolster a claim that climate models had tended to overestimate emissions.
The only problem: the paper concluded just the opposite, Hausfather wrote.
“They scoured my paper on the performance of climate models to find the one figure (deep in the supplementary materials) to reinforce the point they were trying to make, and never actually referred to the broader conclusion of the paper that old models had by-and-large performed quite well,” he said.
The study’s authors largely have dismissed such criticisms. In an interview on the Heartland Institute’s ”The Climate Realism Show,” Curry called such critiques ”petty.”
“If we’re going to reference their paper, they would have liked us to make a different point,” she said, referring specifically to Hausfather. “Well, no, that’s not the point we’re making, but we do think that your graph is particularly informative, and we’re going to use that as part of our narrative.”
In her email, Curry called the cherry-picking claim “rather bizarre.”
“All of the issues that we supposedly ‘cherry picked’ were somehow not included in previous assessment reports (which were also arguably cherry picked),” she wrote.
Several prominent climate researchers argue the goal of DOE’s climate study is not to advance a scientific debate. Rather, it’s about advancing the Trump administration’s political agenda.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, wrote on X that the study “should be thought of as a law brief from attorneys defending their client, carbon dioxide.”
The study figures prominently in EPA’s recent proposal to revoke the endangerment finding, the legal designation obligating the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
DOE sent the study to EPA on May 27, after which it was reviewed by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as part of his deliberations over whether to repeal the endangerment finding, according to a copy of the proposal posted in the Federal Register.
EPA’s proposal cites DOE’s study 16 times, according to a review by POLITICO’s E&E News, using its conclusion to bolster the agency’s case that the endangerment finding should be repealed.
They include claims that “recent data and analyses suggest that aggregate sea level rise has been minimal,” that climate models “may be based on inaccurate assumptions, and that attributing anthropogenic emissions to extreme weather events “is more difficult than previously believed and demand additional analysis.”
In the Heartland interview, Curry said the DOE researchers were aware EPA was interested in their study. She said the report was completed in May, but its publication was delayed to coincide with the release of EPA’s proposal.
But she added: “We were not, you know, instructed in any way to deal with endangerment finding related issues. We figured these were on the table, but we didn’t focus on that at all.”
This story also appears in Energywire.
Trump team readies more attacks on mainstream climate science
by Scott Waldman | 08/18/2025}:
One author of a recent Department of Energy report that assailed established climate science said the 141-page document is only the beginning — and that the Trump administration plans to do more to undercut research that shows humanity’s use of fossil fuels is warming the planet and endangering its inhabitants.
Steve Koonin, one of the report’s five main contributors, told POLITICO’s E&E News last week that the document likely is a precursor to a sustained assault on mainstream global warming research. Under discussion are plans to hold a public debate about climate science, write a line-by-line rebuttal of the National Climate Assessment and ready a counterattack against climate scientists critical of last month’s Energy Department report.
A key next step, Koonin said, is to expand the Trump administration’s team of climate contrarians beyond the five scientists who wrote the initial report. The document already has attracted hundreds of responses through the Federal Register, and Koonin said they need the reinforcements to push back against the criticism.
“It can’t be five against the world,” said Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP. “We will have to enlist other scientists.”
But that may be easier said than done — as there is only a small pool of credentialed researchers who back the claims of the DOE report.
The document, for example, questions the link between climate change and humanity’s output of carbon dioxide. And it suggests that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed.”
The claims run counter to the findings of tens of thousands of scientists from around the world who have spent decades studying climate change. The overwhelming consensus from these researchers is that the modern world’s burning of oil, gas and coal is pumping planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide into atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect. And with a hotter planet comes a cascade of consequences, from rising sea levels to more intense hurricanes and wildfires.
Numerous researchers cited in the DOE report said their work had been cherry-picked and presented in a misleading way — and that it recycled arguments that had long been debunked.
“If you are a sophisticated academic — which I would put all of them in that category — you know how to basically torture the data long enough so it’ll tell you what you want to hear,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University who is leading an academic response to the DOE report.
But Koonin, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, said that kind of pushback was expected — and in fact plays into a long-running plan to conduct a “red team vs. blue team” exercise for climate science.
The term is a nod to a type of military planning that uses adversarial reviews to identify potential weaknesses. The report is, in effect, the red team’s opening move and Koonin said the criticism will start to make up a blue-team response.
“What we do is a more accurate depiction of climate science for the general public,” he said.
Koonin was preparing a similar effort during the first Trump administration, but it was blocked by White House aides preparing for the 2020 election. At that time, Trump had personally considered a televised prime-time climate debate.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who recruited Koonin and the other four researchers to write the DOE report, told CNN last week that he wants to “update” the National Climate Assessment but did not provide any details. He also endorsed the idea of climate debates.
“We’ll probably have public events here in D.C. this fall,” Wright said. “We want to have an honest dialogue with the American people about climate change.”
Koonin said he expects to carefully scrutinize and challenge every paragraph of the National Climate Assessment, a long-running report mandated by Congress that identifies the threats that global warming poses to the United States.
Judith Curry, one of the other five authors of the DOE report, said she wants a debate — but also wants the chance to recast the National Climate Assessment and other government science reports by emphasizing uncertainty. She envisions a release of a new report infused with disagreements and disputes.
“A public debate is one approach, but I would like to see a broadening of the tent for the ‘official’ assessments to include disagreement, debate, uncertainty,” she wrote in an email.
Curry is a former climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to Curry and Koonin, the report’s five authors include Canadian environmental economist Ross McKitrick, as well as John Christy and Roy Spencer, atmospheric scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
A DOE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
2014: Red team, blue team
If there is a climate debate, Koonin said he wants to structure it much like a 2014 event at New York University that pitted a team of climate scientists against some of the DOE report authors, including Curry and Christy.
It was a daylong effort organized by Koonin, in which the two teams presented their case to a panel of distinguished physicists from the American Physical Society. For the upcoming debate he now envisions, Koonin said both sides would exchange research notes and talking points ahead of time.
“Healthy debate, challenge response is just the way you do science, and that has been sorely absent from this business for far too long,” Koonin said. “If you can show that it’s wrong, we’ll change it.”
Exaggerating uncertainty in science while downplaying broad-based findings long has been a strategy of conservative groups and lawmakers opposed to fossil fuel regulations, scientists say. The current Trump administration has made it a priority to slash climate regulations and boost U.S. production of fossil fuels.
Ben Santer, a climate scientist who worked at DOE for 30 years before retiring in 2021, participated in Koonin’s 2014 debate at New York University — and he remembers it differently.
He said the red team failed to make a compelling case to the panel of physicists, who ultimately rejected their argument and did not issue a statement that questioned climate science findings. The red team has refused to acknowledge any weakness to their arguments, which have long been rejected by the vast majority of climate scientists, he said.
After the debate, Koonin resigned from the effort he organized and soon after dismissed the field of climate science in the conservative *Wall Street Journal* editorial page for being “not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it,” Santer noted.
In response, Koonin acknowledged that he resigned but disputed the notion that the red team “lost” and said a transcript of the event shows a strong response by the red team.
Santer also pointed out that debate — and the weighing of disparate hypotheses — long has been an essential part of science. He said the scientific community for years has accounted for the arguments of Koonin’s team.
“The notion that they have not been part of the community and have not had the opportunity to convince others of the correctness of their arguments is just plain wrong,” Santer said. “The bottom line is, they haven’t succeeded in defending the arguments that they now present in the DOE report.”
The report is not a genuine effort to gain a new understanding, he said, but rather “provide political cover for rescinding the endangerment finding.”
The report was released the same day the Trump administration announced it was trying to overturn the finding, which gives EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Santer said the claims by Koonin and Energy Secretary Wright that the small group of fringe researchers had been silenced by the larger scientific community were not true.
Their arguments have been explored and debunked already, he said, by years of good science.
“These are questions,” he said, “that we’ve been adjudicating for decades in thousands of peer-reviewed publications.”
This story also appears in*Energywire.
---
Climatewire
EPA attacks climate science. Here are the facts.
by Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman | 07/30/2025 06:20 AM EDT
EPA attacks climate science. Here are the facts.
:{By Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman | 07/30/2025
The Trump administration’s proposal to roll back the endangerment finding includes many misleading and inaccurate claims.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday that the administration wants to "end the cancel culture" in climate science. Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The Trump administration’s proposal Tuesday to revoke the so-called endangerment finding is rife with climate disinformation, scientists say.
The proposed rule — which would undo a key scientific finding that underpins federal climate regulations — relies heavily on legal arguments. But it also includes an “alternative” justification that attacks the scientific consensus on climate change, drawing from a Department of Energy report authored by scientists known for denying accepted climate science.
“This is a general theme in the report; they cherrypick data points that suit their narrative and exclude the vast majority of the scientific literature that does not,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the science nonprofit Berkeley Earth, said in an email.
The proposed rule cites — and misrepresents — some of his research, Hausfather said, adding, “This gives a terribly skewed view of the underlying climate science, and highlights a number of fringe studies that have been subsequently shown to be riddled with errors.”
Climate science has long been based on data and facts, as well as extensive peer-reviewed research. Thousands of studies conducted throughout the globe over decades have unequivocally shown that humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels is pushing the planet toward dangerous climate tipping points, such as significant sea-level rise, more deadly heat waves and increased extreme weather.
On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright characterized that scientific record as flawed.
“What we really want to do is bring climate science into the same realm we treated all science in the past, which is critical thinking, challenging, basing things on data and facts,” Wright said at a press conference at an Indiana trucking company. “And if your model doesn’t match the data, you can’t hide the data, you’ve got to fix your model. We want to end the cancel culture.”
The proposed rule suggests that scientists’ projections of global warming are flawed, that scientists have overstated the dangers of climate change and that rising temperatures even pose a net benefit to humankind. It’s all part of the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the endangerment finding, which determined that greenhouse gas emissions drive warming and endanger public health and welfare.
Here is a fact check of some claims made in the EPA proposal.
Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are “not the exclusive source” of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations and rising global temperatures.
The links between climate change and human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have been established beyond any mainstream scientific doubt. That’s thanks to a combination of real-world observations and sophisticated climate models.
Scientists have been collecting detailed temperature records at weather stations around the world for over a century. These observations indicate that the planet has been warming since the 19th century. By the 1980s, the warming trend had clearly statistically diverged from the previous global temperature average — in other words, the rising temperatures weren’t just a blip, but an obvious shift into a new climate regime.
Climate models have allowed scientists to attribute this warming trend directly to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. With these computerized simulations, researchers can test the influence of different factors on the Earth’s climate system — from natural variables like solar radiation and volcanic eruptions to manmade ones like fossil fuel emissions.
The models clearly demonstrate that natural variables can’t explain the recent increase in Earth’s temperatures, while greenhouse gas emissions closely track the warming trends. Studies have agreed on this point for decades.
“Recent data and analyses suggest, however, that despite increased public attention and concern, such extreme weather events have not demonstrably increased relative to historical highs.”
Numerous studies have demonstrated that weather extremes are becoming more frequent or more intense over time — including heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes and floods.
At the same time, climate models have become so sophisticated that they can demonstrate links between greenhouse gas emissions and individual weather events.
The most recent version of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment — which the Trump administration removed from the internet — found that “communities across the country are built for a climate that no longer exists” because of weather extremes. The observed climate effects happening now include “drought in the Western U.S. and heavier precipitation and increased flood risk across much of the U.S.,” according to the federal assessment, which draws upon the peer-reviewed research of hundreds of scientists.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization has concluded that weather and climate disasters caused $4.3 trillion in global economic losses over the last 50 years and killed at least two million people.
“The Endangerment Finding consistently cites climate models as showing or predicting warming trends, melting ice, anthropogenic droughts, shrinking snowpack, damage to aquatic systems of life, and increased ocean temperature and acidity. However, the data relied upon as inputs to these models may be based on inaccurate assumptions.”
Those who deny climate science have frequently attacked the performance of climate models, suggesting that they overestimate global warming and other climate impacts. But research shows that climate models have been highly accurate for decades.
A groundbreaking 2019 study examined all the global climate models used by scientists between 1970 and 2007, including the models used to support the first three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It found that most of them closely predicted the actual warming rates observed on Earth. That includes long-obsolete models built decades ago; today’s simulations are far more advanced and just as accurate.
The fossil fuel industry’s own computer models have also accurately predicted global warming. A study published in 2023 revealed that Exxon Mobil’s state-of-the-art climate models have correctly predicted global warming since at least the late 1970s.
“Our findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn’t just know ‘something’ about global warming decades ago — they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew,” the study’s authors concluded.
Critics of climate models have also often suggested that the underlying data used to feed the simulations — including on-the-ground measurements of Earth’s temperatures — are untrustworthy. Some have pointed out that urban areas are hotter than their natural surroundings — a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect — and that this phenomenon can skew the measurements collected by weather stations around the world.
But that’s not actually a problem. Scientists adjust their datasets to account for factors like the urban heat island effect. And weather stations around the world — on land and sea and in cities and wilderness — all demonstrate that global average temperatures are rising.
At the same time, on-the-ground weather stations aren’t the only ways scientists monitor global warming. Satellites have been observing the planet’s temperatures for decades, and instruments operated by countries around the world — from the U.S. to Europe to Japan — all agree that the Earth is heating up.
“Recent data and analysis show that even marginal increases in CO2 concentrations have substantial beneficial impacts on plant growth and agricultural productivity.”
This well-worn claim — asserting that increased carbon dioxide is “greening” the planet and causing crop yields to spike — is misleading, experts say.
“The statement that higher CO2 is good for plants is sort of facile and self-serving and doesn’t reflect the depth of the research done on this,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
It’s a selective fact that ignores or downplays the major role played by decades of agricultural innovation, including vast improvements in long-term weather predictions, high-yield crop varieties, hybrid seed developments, mechanization, irrigation methods and infrastructure, as well as herbicides and pesticides.
It also ignores numerous studies which suggest that rising temperatures, intensifying drought and increasing extreme weather events — all driven by climate change — are expected to damage crop yields in many regions of the world over the coming decades.
A study published just last month in the scientific journal Nature found that climate change is likely to drive down global food production by as much as 120 calories per person per day with every degree Celsius the world warms — even if farmers take steps to adapt.
The claim that climate change benefits agriculture overall “presumes that all you’re doing is changing carbon dioxide,” Dessler said. “Other things also change. Temperature goes up, soil moisture goes down, precipitation patterns change.”
“Contrary to the Endangerment Finding’s assumptions, data continue to suggest that mortality risk from cold temperatures remains by far the greater threat to public health in the United States,” the proposed rule reads. “Although the risk of heat waves featured prominently in the Endangerment Finding … the data since 2009 suggest that the balance of climate change as a whole appears to skew substantially more than previously recognized by the EPA in the direction of net benefits.”
This is a carefully selected data point, which is frequently invoked by climate policy opponents such as Wright. But it ignores an important counterpoint. While it’s true that the warming of the planet is cutting down on the number of cold-related deaths — largely in sub-Saharan Africa — it is rapidly increasing the number of extreme-heat related deaths.
In the U.S., extreme heat kills more Americans than any other natural disaster. In fact, most official estimates probably underestimate the number of people who die each year as a result of high temperatures.
Another degree or two of warming means the places where people in the U.S. die from temperature extremes will also shift and increase, Dessler said. The balance of science since 2009 certainly does not show more “net benefits,” he said.
Places like Phoenix — which has set repeated high temperature records in recent years — may not see a major spike in deaths because the built environment includes air conditioning and other protections, he said. But he added that places like Chicago, which is built for months of extreme cold, will see many more deaths from an increase in extreme heat waves since the city is unprepared for that climate.
The world is actually on track for less warming than the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios — and these studies have led the public to believe that climate change is more harmful than it actually is.
It’s true that many climate studies have explored a worst-case scenario that assumes world leaders will take no steps at all to address climate change in the coming decade. Such scenarios predict as much as 5 degrees Celsius, or 9 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming by the end of the century. It’s also true that this “business as usual” scenario is unlikely to actually occur.
But many more studies have focused on the consequences of small amounts of warming, like exceeding the Paris Agreement’s targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.
Hausfather, the Berkeley Earth climate scientist, has himself critiqued worst-case climate scenarios in a paper the Trump administration cited in its move to revoke the endangerment finding. But he has also published studies demonstrating the overall accuracy of climate models and the dangers of rising temperatures — research he notes the Trump administration “somehow neglected to mention.”
Numerous studies have shown that the impacts of climate change are already happening and affecting human health and well-being at warming far less than forecast in worst-case scenarios.
Sea levels are already rising. Extreme weather events are already worsening. Climate-related disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and floods already cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year, and they’re growing more intense over time.
Dessler emphasized that skepticism is normal in science, with researchers often debating and arguing the merits of plenty of findings. But the recently hired DOE researchers behind the proposed rule’s climate claims make general proclamations that certain bodies of research are not “believable,” he said.
“There’s a lot of stuff that happens in science that relies on the good faith of the people arguing,” he said. “And it breaks down in the face of these people that are professional contrarians.”
EXPERIENCE E&E NEWS FIRSTHAND
---
WIKI 1 26 CURRY
...
Publications
Curry co-authored Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999), and co-edited Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (2002). She has published over 130 scientific peer-reviewed papers.[14]
In February 2010 Curry published the essay "On the Credibility of Climate Change, Towards Rebuilding Trust" on Watts Up With That? and other blogs.[30]
In November 2018, Curry submitted for publication a report on sea level rise titled Sea Level and Climate Change[31] in which she argues against the scientific community's consensus. She presents a case that sea level rise has been a "slow creep" over the last 150 years and has been unaffected by anthropogenic climate change. Though these arguments place her outside the academic consensus, Curry said that her findings were compatible with those presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
An Associated Press article suggested that Curry's arguments could dampen moves by cities and municipalities to start lawsuits against oil-and-gas companies seeking recompense for anticipated sea level rise damages.[10]}:
:{:{In 2025, Curry was appointed a member of the United States Department of Energy's newly-formed Climate Working Group along with scientists John Christy, Steven E. Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer, all of whom are known for promoting contrary views of climate change.[32][33]}:
In July 2025, the group released A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate,[34] which argues that rising CO2 "appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial."[35][36]
An international group of 85 scientists lead by climate scientists Andrew Dessler and Robert Kopp wrote a 434-page rebuttal entitled Climate Experts' Review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report,[37] criticizing it for lacking peer review, cherry-picking evidence, misinterpreting citations, and having a predetermined outcome.[38][39][40]}:
Climate_Experts_Review_of_DOE_CWG_Report.pdf - Google Drive
MANYPP OF BIOS
ZEKE KERRY
Robert E. Kopp is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
at Rutgers University and Director of the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH).
His research focuses on sea-level change, climate risk, and the economic impacts of climate
change. Kopp was a Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (on sea-level change)
and the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment (on sea-level change and potential
surprises), and is a Lead Author of the ongoing IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (on abrupt
changes). He co-founded the Climate Impact Lab, co-chaired the National Academies’
Roundtable on Macroeconomics and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities, and has served
on climate and sea-level advisory panels for multiple states and cities. As a AAAS Science &
Technology Policy Fellow at DOE (2009-2011), he helped develop the U.S. government’s first
interagency estimates of the social cost of carbon. He is a fellow of AGU and AAAS, and a
Guggenheim Fellow (2024). He earned his Ph.D. in Geobiology from Caltech (2007).
---
Benjamin D. Santer is an Honorary Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the
University of East Anglia in England. He earned his Ph.D. in Climatology from the University of
East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in 1987. Santer is renowned for his work in climate
detection and attribution, using statistical methods to identify human fingerprints in climate
records. He was the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 in the IPCC Second Assessment
Report (1995), which concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human
influence on global climate.” He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the
recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal.
---
HUH?
SEC 43 W KOPP
Richard S.J. Tol is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, specializing in environmental and climate economics. He earned his M.Sc. in
Econometrics and Operations Research (1992) and Ph.D. in Economics (1997) from Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam. Tol has contributed to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report as a
Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group II. His research focuses on the economic impacts
of climate change and cost-benefit analyses of climate policy. He is a member of the Academia
Europaea and a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society and listed among the top 100
economists in the world
---
---
NYT
NO LNX
Environmental Groups Sue Over D.O.E. Report Downplaying Climate Change
The lawsuit seeks to block the Trump administration from repealing the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.
By Lisa Friedman
Aug. 15, 2025
A new lawsuit in federal court alleges that the Trump administration violated the law by secretly recruiting a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming.
The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, both environmental groups, accused the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency of “flagrant violations” of a law that governs advisory committees.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Tuesday. It alleges that in March Chris Wright, the energy secretary, “quietly arranged for five handpicked skeptics of the effects of climate change” to form a committee called the Climate Working Group that then wrote a report downplaying the threat of rising greenhouse gas emissions. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.
But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow federal agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups when engaging in policymaking, according to the lawsuit. The law requires that any groups developed to advise federal policy must be disclosed and that meetings, emails and other records be made public.
“This is one of the most brazen violations of federal law on one of the single most consequential issues to the lives of millions of Americans,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.
The lawsuit alleges that the agencies “have sought to manufacture a basis to reject” widespread scientific agreement that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary contributor to global warming, and that swift action is needed to avoid the worst consequences.
On Thursday the environmental groups filed a separate motion asking the court to block the E.P.A. from moving forward with a plan to repeal a scientific determination made by the government in 2009 that climate pollution harms public health and welfare. That assessment, known as the endangerment finding, is the basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Officials with the Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. An E.P.A. official said the agency does not comment on current or pending litigation.
The authors of the Department of Energy report were Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a best-selling book that calls climate science “unsettled”; Judith Curry, a climatologist who has cautioned of alarmism about warming; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Dr. Koonin said in an email that he is not an attorney and not qualified to offer an opinion on the lawsuit. Dr. Curry said in an email that the Climate Working Group “provided technical information to the DOE, not policy advice.” Dr. Christy and Mr. McKitrick declined to comment, and Dr. Spencer did not respond to a request for comment.
Documents obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under public records laws show that Dr. Koonin began contacting Trump administration officials within weeks of President Trump’s inauguration. In one email exchange, Dr. Koonin reached out in February to Mr. Zeldin’s chief of staff, Eric Amidon.
“I was told (through a mutual friend of mine and the Administrator’s) that I should contact you to set up a meeting with Mr. Zeldin,” Dr. Koonin wrote. “The subject is to offer technical assistance from me and colleagues in the review of the Endangerment Finding.”
Mr. Amidon replied that the agency was “moving right along on this topic” and said he would set up a call for Dr. Koonin with E.P.A. officials. On Friday Dr. Koonin said the call never occurred, writing in an email, “A search of my records shows no further contact with the EPA (whether by phone, video, or in person)” after the Feb. 16 email exchange.
Dr. Koonin did send Mr. Amidon a memo of what he called “inconvenient truths” on climate change, including a claim widely rejected by mainstream scientists that “there is no basis to conclude that human emissions enhance natural ‘greenhouse’ warming in any amount.”
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 16, 2025, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Suit Says U.S. Used Skeptics for Report Dismissing Climate Change. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
See more on: U.S. Politics, Environmental Defense Fund, Union of Concerned Scientists
---
How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change
Congress
Pro
E&E News
How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change
The Trump administration recruited five marginalized researchers to challenge the international consensus on global warming. Here’s how it went wrong.
By Benjamin Storrow, Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman and Paula Friedrich
:{:{09/27/2025}:
Energy Secretary Chris Wright argues that climate science is a victim of cancel culture: Scientific debate is stifled, alarmist claims are elevated and the truth is buried by partisan and corrupt researchers.
Now, he claims to have the evidence to prove that climate change isn’t dangerous.
A review of climate science commissioned by Wright argues that “climate change is a challenge — not a catastrophe.” The Trump administration is using the 141-page report to bolster its case for repealing rules that limit planet-warming pollution from cars, power plants and factories.
But a detailed examination by POLITICO's E&E News found that the report obscures key facts about climate change. It relies on outdated studies and cites analyses that were not peer reviewed. It cherry-picks mainstream research and omits context. It revives debunked arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on long-term warming trends.
The result is a report that promotes ideas starkly at odds with the vast majority of scientific evidence. That prompted a remarkable response from the National Academies last week that stated, “Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting climate change harm the health of people in the United States.”
Here is how DOE’s report hides the facts about climate change.
‘A real debate’
Wright, who rose to prominence and wealth as a fossil fuel executive, has pushed the idea that dissenting views are unwelcome in climate science.
"We want to have a real debate and discussion about climate change, and get away from the cancel culture,” he said on CNN after the report was released.
So when Wright was looking for authors to write the report, he made a list of 12 “honest, true scientists,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
“What I’ve found is that media coverage often distorts the science. Many people walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete. To provide clarity and balance, I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science."
Chris Wright’s foreword to DOE report
DOE report authors John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Authors
Amr Abdel-Aziz
Amjad Abdulla
Assem Abu Hatab
Adolf Acquaye
Lawrence Agbemabiese
Keigo Akimoto
Barbara Amon
Denis Angers
Jacobo Arango
Jun Arima
Mustafa Babiker
Esther Badiola
Quan Bai
Xuemei Bai
Igor Bashmakov
Christopher Bataille
Stefano Battiston
Göran Berndes
Paolo Bertoldi
Preety Bhandari
Gabriel Blanco
Hilda Blanco
Kornelis Blok
Elin Lerum Boasson
Mercy J. Borbor-Cordova
Valentina Bosetti
Sarah Burch
Mercedes Bustamante
Luisa F. Cabeza
Katherine Calvin
Nick Campbell
Alejandro Caparrós
Pasha Carruthers
Pablo Esteban Carvajal Sarzosa
Vaibhav Chaturvedi
Lynette Cheah
Wenying Chen
Ying Chen
Christa Clapp
Harry Clark
Leon Clarke
Brett Cohen
Annette Cowie
Felix Creutzig
Jonathan Michael Cullen
Diriba Korecha Dadi
Julius Partson Daka
Dipak Dasgupta
Heleen De Coninck
Stéphane De La Rue Du Can
Angel De La Vega Navarro
Fatima Denton
Patrick Devine-Wright
Shobhakar Dhakal
Subash Dhar
El Hdaji Mbaye Madien Diagne
Laura Diaz Anadon
Cristobal Felix Diaz Morejon
Julio Diaz-José
Ogheneruona Diemoudeke
Kamal Djemouai
Navroz K. Dubash
Nokuthula Dube
Carolina Burle Schmidt Dubeux
James A. Edmonds
Ismail Elgizouli Idris
Joseph Kow Essandoh-Yeddu
Nicholas Eyre
Fernando Farias
Solomone Fifita
Maria Josefina Figueroa
Manfred Fischedick
Sha Fu
Marzio Domenico Galeotti
Amit Garg
Oliver Geden
Frank Geels
Yong Geng
James Gerber
Veronika Ginzburg
Alex Godoy
Michael Grubb
Arnulf Grübler
Céline Guivarch
Shreekant Gupta
Kevin Gurney
Andrea N. Hahmann
Erik Haites
Kirsten Halsnaes
Tomoko Hasegawa
Petr Havlik
Hermann Held
Jean-charles Hourcade
Joanna House
Klaus Huabacek
Antonina Ivanova Boncheva
Marc Jaccard
Raphaël Jachnik
Arnulf Jäger-Waldau
Gilberto Jannuzzi
Paulina Jaramillo
Kejun Jiang
Inge G.c. Jonckheere
Frank Jotzo
Tae Yong Jung
Joni Jupesta
Suzana Kahn Ribeiro
Tsutomu Kajino
Sivan Kartha
Jesse Keenan
Smail Khennas
Jacob Kihila
Şiir Kilkiş
Yong-gun Kim
Alexandre Koberle
Silvie Kreibiehl
Volker Krey
Elmar Kriegler
Izumi Kubota
Snorre Kverndokk
Xavier Labandeira
Franck Lecocq
Arthur Lee
David Simon Lee
Adrian Leip
Yun Seng Lim
Inês Margarida Lima De Azevedo
Hans Lofgren
María José Lopez Blanco
Andreas Löschel
Jason Lowe
André Lucena
Oswaldo Lucon
Shuaib Lwasa
Nagmeldin Mahmoud
Nadia Maizi
Arunima Malik
Girma Mamo Diga
Eric Masanet
Toshihiko Masui
Érika Mata
Ritu Mathur
Robert Matthews
Cheikh Mbow
Jan Christoph Minx
Sebastian Mirasgedis
Catherine Hilary Claire Mitchell
Emi Mizuno
Kanako Morita
Rachid Mrabet
Yacob Mulugetta
Jin Murakami
Gert-jan Nabuurs
Sasha Naidoo
Gregory Nemet
Peter Newman
Lars J. Nilsson
Karachepone Ninan
Aleksandra Novikova (Novikova-Rodi)
Sudarmantobudi Nugroho
Chukwumerije Okereke
Chioma Daisy Onyige
Xunmin Ou
Shonali Pachauri
Jiahua Pan
Anthony Patt
Alberto Pedace
Jacqueline Peel
Walter Alberto Pengue
Patricia Perkins
Glen Peters
Ramón Pichs Madruga
Alexander Popp
Joana Portugal Pereira
Lavanya Rajamani
Anand Rao
Nijavalli Hanumantharao Ravindranath
Andy Reisinger
Keywan Riahi
Simon Robertson
Stephanie Roe
Patricia Romero Lankao
Joyashree Roy
Ambuj Sagar
Yamina Saheb
Nahla Samargandi
Alessandro Sanches Preira
Agus Pratama Sari
Roberto Schaeffer
Petra Schweizer-Ries
Adam Mohammed Sebbit
Maria Isabel Serrano Diná
Karen Seto
Ali Shareef
Ayyoob Sharifi
Wei Shen
Mykola Shlapak
Ralph Sims
Ajay Kumar Singh
Peter Smith
Brent Sohngen
Mohamed Youba Sokona
Benjamin Kenneth Sovacool
Detlef F. Sprinz
Linda Steg
Julia Steinberger
David Stern
Goran Strbac
Anders Hammer Strømman
Masahiro Sugiyama
Taishi Sugiyama
Linda Yanti Sulistiawati
Xianchun Tan
Kanako Tanaka
Kenji Tanaka
Massimo Tavoni
Fei Teng
Julio Torres Martínez
Ferenc L. Toth
Sirintornthep Towprayoon
Diana Ürge-Vorsatz
Detlef Van Vuuren
Elena Verdolini
Maria Virginia Vilariño
Kenichi Wada
Can Wang
Elke Ursula Weber
Yi-ming Wei
Jørgen Wettestad
Jake Whitehead
Thomas Wiedmann
Mariama Williams
Harald Winkler
Jan Witajewski-Baltvilks
Libo Wu
Yoshiki Yamagata
Francis Yamba
Nan Zhou
Eric Zusman
Rawshan Ara Begum
Robert Lempert
Elham Ali
Tor Arve Benjaminsen
Thomas Bernauer
Wolfgang Cramer
Xuefeng Cui
Katharine Mach
Gustavo Nagy
Nils Christian Stenseth
Raman Sukumar
Philippus Wester
Roberto Sánchez Rodríguez
Michael Sutherland
Mike Morecroft
Camille Parmesan
Yongyut Trisurat
Rita Adrian
Gusti Zakaria Anshari
Almut Arneth
Qingzhu Gao
Patrick Gonzalez
Rebecca Harris
Jeff Price
Nicola Stevens
Gautam Hirak Talukdar
Yakiv Didukh
Andreas Fischlin
Carol Franco Billini
Sarah Cooley
David Schoeman
Laurent Bopp
Philip W. Boyd
Simon Donner
Dawit Yemane Ghebrehiwet
Shin-ichi Ito
Wolfgang Kiessling
Paulina Martinetto
Elena Ojea
Marie-fanny Racault
Björn Rost
Mette Skern-Mauritzen
Karim Hilmi
Lisa Levin
Martina Angela Caretta
Aditi Mukherji
Md. Arfanuzzaman
Richard A. Betts
Alexander Gelfan
Yukiko Hirabayashi
Tabea Katharina Lissner
Junguo Liu
Elena López-Gunn
Ruth Morgan
Sixbert Mwanga
Seree Supratid
Blanca E. Jiménez Cisneros
Zbigniew Kundzewicz
Rachel Bezner Kerr
Toshihiro Hasegawa
Rodel Lasco
Indra Bhatt
Delphine Deryng
Aidan Farrell
Helen Gurney-Smith
Hui Ju
Salvador E. Lluch-Cota
Francisco Meza
Gerald Nelson
Henry Neufeldt
Philip Thornton
Pauline Dube
James Morison
David Dodman
Bronwyn Hayward
Mark Pelling
Vanesa Castan Broto
Winston Chow
Eric Chu
Richard Dawson
Luna Khirfan
Timon Mcphearson
Anjal Prakash
Yan Zheng
Gina Ziervogel
Gian Carlo Delgado Ramos
Patricia Romero Lankao
GuÉladio Cissé
Robert Mcleman
Helen Adams
Paulina Aldunce
Kathryn Bowen
Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum
Susan Clayton
Kristie Ebi
Jeremy Hess
Cunrui Huang
Qiyong Liu
Glenn Mcgregor
Jan C. Semenza
Maria Tirado
Bettina Menne
Sergey Semenov
Jean-françois Toussaint
Joern Birkmann
Emma Liwenga
Rajiv Pandey
Emily Boyd
Riyanti Djalante
François Gemenne
Walter Leal
Patricia Fernanda Pinho
Lindsay Stringer
David Wrathall
Taikan Oki
Marta G. Rivera-Ferre
Taha Zatari
Ibidun Adelekan
Edmond Totin
Christopher Trisos
Ayansina Ayanlade
Jackson Efitre
Adugna Gemeda
Felix Kanungwe Kalaba
Christopher Lennard
Catherine Masao
Yunus Mgaya
Grace Ngaruiya
Daniel Ochieng Olago
Nicholas Simpson
Sumaya A. Zakieldeen
Mark Howden
Pius Yanda
Tae Sung Cheong
Yong Luo
Rajib Shaw
Sharina Abdul Halim
Sanjay Chaturvedi
Masahiro Hashizume
Gregory E. Insarov
Yoichi Ishikawa
Mostafa Jafari
Akio Kitoh
Juan Pulhin
Chandni Singh
Kripa Vasant
Zhibin Zhang
Soojeong Myeong
Joy Jacqueline Pereira
Judy Lawrence
Brendan Mackey
Francis Chiew
Mark Costello
Kevin Hennessy
Nina Lansbury
Uday Bhaskar Nidumolu
Gretta Pecl
Lauren Rickards
Nigel Tapper
Alistair Woodward
Anita Wreford
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
David Wratt
Edwin Josue Castellanos Lopez
Maria Fernanda Lemos
Laura Astigarraga
Julio C. Postigo
Noemí Chacón
Nicolás Cuvi
Christian Huggel
Liliana Raquel Miranda Sara
Mariana Moncassim Vale
Jean Pierre Ometto
Pablo Peri
Laura Ramajo Gallardo
Lisandro Roco
Matilde Rusticucci
Carlos Mendez
Avelino Gumersindo Suarez Rodriguez
Birgit Bednar-Friedl
Robbert Biesbroek
Daniela N. Schmidt
Peter Alexander
Knut Yngve Børsheim
Jofre Carnicer
Elena Georgopoulou
Marjolijn Haasnoot
Gonéri Le Cozannet
Piero Lionello
Oksana Lipka
Christian Möllmann
Veruska Muccione
Tero Mustonen
Dieter Piepenburg
Lorraine Whitmarsh
Georg Kaser
Jose Manuel Moreno
Jeffrey Hicke
Simone Lucatello
Linda Mortsch
Jackie Dawson
Mauricio Domínguez Aguilar
Carolyn Enquist
Elisabeth Anne Gilmore
David Gutzler
Sherilee Harper
Kirstin Holsman
Elizabeth (libby) Jewett
Timothy (tim) Kohler
Kathleen Miller
Margot Hurlbert
Michelle Mycoo
Morgan Wairiu
Donovan Campbell
Virginie Duvat
Yimnang Golbuu
Shobha Maharaj
Johanna Nalau
Patrick Nunn
John Pinnegar
Olivia Warrick
John Agard
Mahmood Riyaz
Brian O'Neill
Maarten Van Aalst
Zelina Zaiton Ibrahim
Lea Berrang Ford
Suruchi Bhadwal
Halvard Buhaug
Delavane Diaz
Katja Frieler
Matthias Garschagen
Alexandre Magnan
Guy Midgley
Alisher Mirzabaev
Adelle Thomas
Rachel Warren
Tong Jiang
Michael Oppenheimer
Mark New
Diana Reckien
David Viner
Carolina Adler
So Min Cheong
Cecilia Conde
Andrew Constable
Erin Coughlan De Perez
Annamaria Lammel
Reinhard Mechler
Ben Orlove
William Solecki
Richard Klein
Zinta Zommers
Benjamin L. Preston
Aromar Revi
Lisa Schipper
Edward R. Carr
Siri H. Eriksen
Luis Fernandez-Carril
Bruce Glavovic
Nathalie Jeanne Marie Hilmi
Debora Ley
Rupa Mukerji
Maria Silvia Muylaert De Araujo
Rosa Perez
Steven K. Rose
Pramod Kumar Singh
Diana Liverman
Nobuo Mimura
José Manuel Gutiérrez
Richard Jones
Gemma Teresa Narisma
Muhammad Amjad
Irina Gorodetskaya
Michael Grose
Nana Ama Browne Klutse
Svitlana Krakovska
Jian Li
Daniel Martínez-Castro
Linda Mearns
Sebastian H. Mernild
Lincoln Muniz Alves
Thanh Ngo-Duc
Bart Van Den Hurk
Jin-ho Yoon
Inés Camilloni
Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen
Fatima Driouech
Deliang Chen
Maisa Rojas
Bjørn H. Samset
Kim Cobb
Aïda Diongue-Niang
Paul Edwards
Seita Emori
Sergio Henrique Faria
Edward Hawkins
Pandora Hope
Philippe Huybrechts
Malte Meinshausen
Sawsan Mustafa
Gian-kasper Plattner
Anne Marie Treguier
Nares Chuersuwan
Gabriele C. Hegerl
Tetsuzo Yasunari
Sergey Gulev
Peter Thorne
Jinho Ahn
Frank Dentener
Catia M. Domingues
Sebastian Gerland
Daoyi Gong
Darrell Kaufman
Hyacinth Nnamchi
Johannes Quaas
Juan Antonio Rivera
Shubha Sathyendranath
Sharon Smith
Blair Trewin
Karina Von Shuckmann
Russell Vose
Timothy Osborn
Azar Zarrin
Veronika Eyring
Nathan P. Gillett
Krishna Achutarao
Rondrotiana Barimalala
Marcelo Barreiro Parrillo
Nicolas Bellouin
Christophe Cassou
Paul Durack
Yu Kosaka
Shayne Mcgregor
Seung-ki Min
Olaf Morgenstern
Ying Sun
Tomas Halenka
Jose Antonio Marengo Orsini
Daniel Mitchell
June-yi Lee
Jochem Marotzke
Govindasamy Bala
Long Cao
Susanna Corti
John Dunne
Francois Engelbrecht
Erich Fischer
John Fyfe
Christopher Jones
Amanda Maycock
Joseph Mutemi
Ousman Ndiaye
Swapna Panickal
Tianjun Zhou
Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla
Vladimir Kattsov
Masahide Kimoto
Josep Canadell
Pedro Scheel Monteiro
Marcos Costa
Leticia Cotrim Da Cunha
Peter M. Cox
Alexey V. Eliseev
Stephanie Henson
Masao Ishii
Samuel Jaccard
Charles Koven
Annalea Lohila
Prabir Patra
Shilong Piao
Joeri Rogelj
Stephen Syampungani
Sönke Zaehle
Kirsten Zickfeld
Victor Brovkin
Richard Feely
Vaishali Naik
Sophie Szopa
Bhupesh Adhikary
Paulo Eduardo Artaxo Netto
Terje Berntsen
William D. Collins
Sandro Fuzzi
Laura Gallardo
Astrid Kiendler-Scharr
Zbigniew Klimont
Hong Liao
Nadine Unger
Prodromos Zanis
Yugo Kanaya
Michael Prather
Noureddine Yassaa
Piers Forster
Trude Storelvmo
Kyle Armour
William Collins
Jean-louis Dufresne
David Frame
Daniel Lunt
Thorsten Mauritsen
Matthew Palmer
Masahiro Watanabe
Martin Wild
Hua Zhang
Robert Colman
H. Damon Matthews
Venkatachalam Ramaswamy
Hervé Douville
Krishnan Raghavan
James A. Renwick
Richard Allan
Paola Andrea Arias Gomez
Mathew Barlow
Ruth Cerezo Mota
Annalisa Cherchi
Thian Yew Gan
Joelle Gergis
Dabang Jiang
Asif Khan
Wilfried Pokam Mba
Daniel Rosenfeld
Jessica Tierney
Olga Zolina
Pascale Braconnot
Arona Diedhiou
Baylor Fox-Kemper
Helene Hewitt (Nee Banks)
Cunde Xiao
Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir
Sybren Drijfhout
Tamsin Edwards
Nicholas Golledge
Mark Hemer
Robert Kopp
Gerhard Krinner
Alan Mix
Dirk Notz
Sophie Nowicki
Intan Nurhati
Lucas Ruiz
Jean-baptiste Sallée
Aimée Slangen
Yongqiang Yu
Unnikrishnan Alakkat
Benjamin Horton
Simon Marsland
Francisco Doblas-Reyes
Anna Amelia Sörensson
Mansour Almazroui
Alessandro Dosio
William Gutowski
Rein Haarsma
Rafiq Hamdi
Bruce Hewitson
Won-tae Kwon
Benjamin L. Lamptey
Douglas Maraun
Tannecia Stephenson
Izuru Takayabu
Laurent Terray
Andrew Turner
Zhiyan Zuo
Gregory Flato
Fredolin Tangang
Muhammad Irfan Tariq
Sonia Seneviratne
Xuebin Zhang
Muhammad Adnan
Wafae Badi
Claudine Dereczynski
Alejandro Di Luca
Subimal Ghosh
Iskhaq Iskandar
James Kossin
Sophie Lewis
Friederike Otto
Izdine Pinto
Masaki Satoh
Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano
Michael Wehner
Botao Zhou
Johnny Chan
Asgeir Sorteberg
Carolina Vera
Roshanka (rwmrjb) Ranasinghe
Alexander Ruane
Robert Vautard
Nigel Arnell
Erika Coppola
Faye Abigail Cruz
Suraje Dessai
Akm Saiful Islam
Mohammad Rahimi
Daniel Ruiz Carrascal
Jana Sillmann
Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla
Claudia Tebaldi
Wen Wang
Rashyd Zaaboul
Edvin Aldrian
David J. Karoly
Murat Türkeş
He called just five people, all of whom said yes. After years of being in the margins of their field, the researchers suddenly had the backing of the federal government.
The most recent IPCC global assessment on climate change, meanwhile, included 743 experts from around the world.
The DOE report, written by a small group of high-profile climate contrarians, stands in stark contrast to decades of assessments published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s preeminent authority on research into the planet’s warming.
:{:{The DOE launched its science review in March and published the findings just four months later, after a secretive process that drew a sharp rebuke from a federal judge}:. DOE disbanded the group, but the authors pledged to advance their work outside of government.
At the IPCC, scientists are nominated and vetted for their expertise and spend years reviewing hundreds of studies to evaluate their strengths and look for trends. One section of the IPCC report alone, on climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities, had more than 270 reviewers, 34,000 citations and received more than 62,000 comments. }:
Contrary to Wright’s assertions that divergent voices are pushed out of the scientific process, experts said, scientific papers that disagree often receive more attention and discussion from reviewers.
Wright’s claim that dissenting views are silenced is “at best preposterous and arrogant and at worst a deliberate ruse to undermine decades of rigorous science,” said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the National Scientific Research Institute of France who served as a coordinating author for the IPCC.
“I personally believe this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage real science and replace it with unfounded and dangerous ideology,” Parmesan wrote in an email.
‘Clearly designed to mislead’
The DOE report cites a surprising source for its claim that climate change is not as dangerous as scientists say it is: the IPCC itself.
But it often takes the IPCC’s analysis out of context or overplays areas of uncertainty, giving a distorted impression of mainstream science.
Take hurricanes as an example. The DOE authors suggest that there’s not enough data to draw conclusions about the effects that climate change is having on the intensity of storms.
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 11.7.1.2
There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) trends ... due to changes in the technology used to collect the best-track data. This should not be interpreted as implying that no physical (real) trends exist, but rather as indicating that either the quality or the temporal length of the data is not adequate to provide robust trend detection statements, particularly in the presence of multi-decadal variability.
DOE’s authors imply the IPCC agrees with them by citing a passage in the panel’s most recent assessment.
But they leave out the very next sentence that specifically warns against making assumptions that no link exists between rising temperatures and stronger storms.
Some of the discrepancies are semantic. Climate scientists are reluctant to declare a trend, for instance, unless they have decades of data to back it up.
In the case of hurricanes, the best data extends only to around 1980, when satellites began comprehensively tracking storms as they crossed oceans. Curry, one of the DOE report authors, says that timeline is “not good enough to discern a meaningful trend.”
But a large majority of scientists disagree, arguing that the data shows rising dangers.
The percentage of intense hurricanes has likely grown compared to the overall share of storms, said Jim Kossin, a prominent hurricane researcher and a retired NOAA atmospheric scientist who served as a lead author for the IPCC.
He said the DOE report “is clearly designed to mislead the audience into believing that there are no trends.”
There’s another problem: Scientists have not predicted that climate change would lead to more hurricanes, as DOE suggests. Instead, they have found that hurricanes are intensifying and dropping more rain.
The lack of discussion in the DOE report about water — not wind speed — being the biggest danger from hurricanes is “a dead giveaway” that the report authors had downplayed the climate risks, said Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Focusing on the wrong data
The DOE report also cherry-picks data to support its claims.
The authors contend that temperature measurements in the U.S. show falling extreme heat trends — a debunked assertion that climate skeptics have pushed for years.
They argue that the U.S. saw its most intense heat in the 1930s — and that maximum temperatures have never been that hot again.
Figure 6.3.1
Daily heat wave magnitude index since 1900
Source: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, page 53
The report includes a chart showing that U.S. heat waves were most intense in the 1930s.
Average temperature in the Continental United States, January-December year-to-date
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental information, Climate at a Glance: National Time Series
But average temperatures across the U.S. are clearly rising. That’s also true worldwide.
The DOE report’s focus on the hottest daytime summer temperatures is misleading. The 1930s were unusual because of the Dust Bowl, a period of intense drought and high heat across parts of the central and southern U.S., exacerbated by severe soil erosion caused by unsustainable farming practices of the time. Many temperature records at locations in the region did topple nearly a century ago — but most scientists say it was a statistical outlier that skewed heat trends for decades afterward.
“It was hot in the 1930s, yes! But that does not undermine the rising trend in extreme heat over the past few decades and the associated societal consequences,” said Deepti Singh, a climate scientist at Washington State University Vancouver.
It’s true that some areas of the central and southern U.S. haven’t seen an increase in daytime summer temperatures, a pattern known as the “U.S. warming hole.” Scientists believe many factors are at play, including the Dust Bowl’s statistical legacy. But outside the warming hole, the U.S. is seeing increases in extreme summer heat.
All kinds of other highs are also rising in the U.S., including maximum temperatures over the entire year, winter temperatures, and nighttime summer temperatures.
Researchers are aware that not all regions of the country are warming evenly. But there’s a clear upward pattern. One regional anomaly doesn’t change that fact.
Hidden connections
The DOE report relies on studies or reports that have sometimes been amplified by the fossil fuel industry, or are connected to conservative groups that oppose government efforts to address climate change.
For example, the report cites a blog post that DOE report author Roy Spencer wrote about “faulty” climate models. He wrote the post for the Heritage Foundation, the same organization that produced the Project 2025 playbook that called for jettisoning climate policy and defunding science.
Spencer argued in his writing that climate models are biased and show no meaningful warming trends. He urged policymakers to “proceed cautiously and not allow themselves to be influenced by exaggerated claims based on demonstrably faulty climate models.”
But his assertions about the models’ track record are false. Climate models in the 1970s accurately predicted current global warming. And peer-reviewed assessments of models since then have shown that they generally performed well.
“This notion that there's a fundamental disconnect between simulations and observations is incorrect,” said Ben Santer, a former climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “The DOE report also cherry picks in terms of which model simulations and which observations they show.”
The Heritage piece is one example of some of the DOE authors’ current and past affiliations with conservative groups that have tried for years to undermine climate regulations placed on polluting industries.
The author biographies in the DOE report primarily emphasize academic and government experience.
But they largely avoid mentioning the authors’ affiliations with groups that advocate against climate policy.
“Any current or past affiliations with other organizations do not define any of our perspectives on climate science,” said Curry, a climatologist and professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She added, “The policy preferences of these organizations are not relevant in any way to our perspectives on the science.”
Other than Koonin, who worked as chief scientist for BP, the authors’ actual research has not been directly funded by the fossil fuel industry. But some of them have been paid by industry groups and conservative think tanks to opine on how their findings raise questions about mainstream science.
Spencer, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has held roles at the Heritage Foundation and the Heartland Institute. Both groups promote climate misinformation and have pushed to eliminate fossil fuel regulations. They have received funding from foundations linked to Exxon Mobil and Shell, and the Koch brothers network.
Koonin is a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, whose scholars have downplayed climate science and argued against regulations.
McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is also listed as a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank in Canada that is critical of climate policy. Fraser has received funding from the Koch brothers network, Exxon and foundations that oppose regulations.
‘Scientifically invalid’
The DOE report amplifies supposed conflicts among climate scientists — even when there isn’t any.
For example, it’s not true that there is “substantial debate” within climate science over whether the sun could be a primary driver of global warming.
But the DOE report makes that claim nevertheless. The idea has been pushed for years by Willie Soon, a researcher favored by industry groups and promoted by Republican lawmakers.
SEE SOLAR ACTIVITY NODE
There’s no dispute among scientists that the sun affects the Earth’s climate. But the idea that it’s responsible for the warming observed over the last 50 years is “considered scientifically invalid,” said Theodosios Chatzistergos, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany.
Curry said the DOE authors were planning to “modify some of the text” because the group did not have time to review all the references on the topic.
“The impact of solar variations on the climate is uncertain and subject to substantial debate, something that is not evident in the IPCC assessment reports.”
DOE Report
Influence of Total Solar Irradiance on the Earth’s Climate
Biktash (2019)
On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth
Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010)
What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near-surface temperature changes?
Jones et al. (2012)
Could a future “Grand Solar Minimum” like the Maunder Minimum stop global warming?
Meehl et al. (2013)
Impact of a potential 21st century “grand solar minimum” on surface temperatures and stratospheric ozone
Meehl et al. (2013)
Twenty-First-Century Climate Change Hot Spots in the Light of a Weakening Sun
Spiegl & Langematz (2020)
Possible impacts of a future grand solar minimum on climate: Stratospheric and global circulation changes
Maycock et al. (2015)
Earth's energy imbalance and implications
Hansen et al. (2012)
Solar influences on climate
Gray et al. (2010)
Solar Irradiance Variability and Climate
Solanki et al. (2013)
The report cites a Soon paper to suggest that it’s the sun, not the burning of fossil fuels, that has contributed to global temperature rise.
But that’s just one paper from one researcher. Study after study by climate scientists have debunked that claim over the years.
Research by Soon is cited three times in the report and features prominently as evidence that the sun could be a driver of climate change.
Soon has no formal training as a climatologist — he has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering — but has repeatedly appeared before Congress as a Republican witness to attack climate science, made frequent appearances in conservative media, and traveled to state capitals with the message that great uncertainty exists about humanity’s role in global warming.
In 2015, the environmental group Greenpeace obtained documents revealing that Soon was secretly paid more than $1.2 million by fossil fuel groups, including Exxon, Southern Co., the American Petroleum Institute and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.
Soon’s research is now funded by the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Science, an LLC he founded that does not disclose its donors.
A political plan
The DOE report was released on the same day in July that the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding the so-called endangerment finding, which gives the agency its legal authority to reduce climate pollution from sources like power plants and cars.
EPA pointed to the DOE report as evidence that climate risks have been overblown. When EPA asserted that hurricanes, floods and wildfires have not gotten worse, it cited the DOE report. When it argued that climate models erroneously predicted warming trends, drought and melting ice, it cited the DOE report. And when it claimed it’s overly difficult to attribute rising temperatures to human activity, it cited the DOE report.
It was a clear example of how the Trump administration will use the findings of a few researchers to cast doubt on the vast scientific consensus that rising temperatures pose a danger to humans — a determination that has led many governments around the world to impose measures for confronting the peril.
Curry said it was the authors’ hope that the report would be published on its own, but DOE and EPA instead “elected to publish this at the same time as the filing on the Endangerment issue.”
Altogether, EPA pointed to the report 16 times in its bid to roll back climate regulations — a move that drew criticism from a federal judge in Massachusetts. The judge allowed the citations to stand but rebuked DOE for describing the report as a scientific exercise, when he said it was overtly political.
"No reasonable jury could find that these words, arranged as they are, do not constitute advice or recommendations for a renewed approach to climate policy,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Young, a nominee of former President Ronald Reagan.
Credits
Reporting: Chelsea Harvey, Benjamin Storrow and Scott Waldman
---
CURRY BLOG ~
← Addressing misconceptions about Climate Sensitivity research: a Response to recent Criticisms
The Matthew Effect, Mono-cultures, and the Natural Selection of Bad Science →
DOE Climate Assessment Report: Feedback
Posted on September 2, 2025 by curryja | 423 Comments
by Judith Curry
A month has passed since the DOE climate assessment report was published. It’s time to reflect on what we might learn from the responses to this Report. Of particular relevance is the report that was issued earlier today, led by Andrew Dessler.
Public comments
The public comment portal for the DOE Report was open for 30 days, and closes on Sept 2 (today). So far there are >2300 comments submitted, with several hundred currently visible on the Federal Register site. The comments are being scrubbed for obscenities, etc. I tried reading through the comments, the portal is awkward (each comment has to be clicked on separately, unlike this blog post). Most of the comments that I’ve looked at are non-substantive cheerleading, attacks or general posturing. It will take time to go through all of these to separate an expected small amount of wheat from the large amount of chaff.
Carbon Brief
One of the early criticisms was that the DOE Report “mis-cited” a paper by Zeke Hausfather by reproducing a diagram from one of his papers, while failing to mention some of the broader points made in his paper (sorry Zeke, that’s not how it works).
This led to Carbon Brief emailing all of the authors cited in the report (plus ~100 other scientists) asking whether the Report uses their work to make misleading or false statements. They received 100 comments from 56 scientists (one scientist contributed about 1/3 of the comments on less than 2 pages of text). The published comments [link] were formatted in a useful way, sorted by chapter/page number and in a single file that is searchable. Several of the comments were useful (including references we hadn’t considered), and worth considering in a revised report. There were many comments on global greening and solar variations. Nearly all the comments were labeled as “misleading”; the factual errors mostly related to misspelling of an author’s name or other mis-citation of a reference.
While I am not in favor of having the media mediate this, and Carbon Brief is arguably far from objective, I appreciate the effort that CB made on compiling this and the effort that individual scientists made to respond.
AMS statement
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has issued a statement Five foundational flaws in the Department of Energy’s 2025 climate report. This statement has been adopted by the Executive Committee of the AMS Council, I assume this was also written by this Committee. Here is the membership of the Executive Committee [link]. If you cannot recognize any of these names as climate scientists, you would be correct. The statement starts with:
“Here we identify five foundational flaws in the Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) 2025 Climate Synthesis reports. Each of these flaws, alone, places the report at odds with scientific principles and practices. “
Here are the five “flaws”:
- Lack of breadth across scientific fields
- Lack of depth within scientific fields and specific topics
- The DoE Report is based on an unrepresentative group of subject matter experts
- TheDoE Report selectively emphasizes a small set of unrepresentative findings, particularly those that might appear beneficial on superficial examination.
- The DoE Report extrapolates from a limited subset of findings to reach conclusions that do not follow from comprehensive consideration of the scientific evidence.
These “flaws” and allegations of lack of representativeness are political considerations, not scientific principles or practices. Ironically, the following statements are made in alleged support of their points, when in fact these statements emphasize the need for something like the DOE Report:
“To be credible, scientific assessments must include authors who reflect the full range of defensible views among the subject matter experts within every specific area of science that is included in the assessment.”
“Unusual perspectives and disagreement are important within the scientific process because they can generate alternative plausible explanations; identify needs for additional inquiry; or challenge the thinking of the larger community of subject matter experts.”
The Statement concludes with the following:
“Five conclusions are robust when accounting comprehensively for the scientific evidence. They have been consistently reaffirmed by independent subject matter experts and independent scientific institutions worldwide. Decades of intensive research on climate change demonstrate that:
- Climate is changing, and the rate and magnitude of change are unusual in human experience.
- People are the primary cause of modern climate change, mostly through burning fossil fuels.
- Climate change is harmful to humanity, and the threats to people and all life are increasing.
- A wide range of response options is available that can reduce the dangers of climate change.
- Those who study the scientific evidence overwhelmingly agree.”
Oops, they better go back and read the DOE Report.
:{Besides being a pathetic statement and inappropriate for a professional society, the AMS Executive Committee has done a huge disservice to its membership with this Statement, apart from lack of representativeness of the membership. Back when I first joined the AMS circa 1990, ‘atmospheric science policy’ was about working to preserve NOAA’s budget and the larger research funding for atmospheric sciences – an issue of concern for AMS members as well as the broader public.
These days, ‘atmospheric science policy’ is about climate activism and consensus enforcement. The AMS seems to be declaring war on the Trump administration – does the AMS really want to see NOAA’s budget and the atmospheric research budget get cut (more than is already on the table)? Maybe the AMS should try working withthe Trump administration, not against it. And this is not to mention the fact that the AMS publishes some of the premier journals in atmospheric and climate science; hard not to expect editorial bias when the Society leadership is making such statements.}:
Dessler and Kopp et al. .
While we’ve seen a lot of whining and posturing from climate scientists and professional societies, there has been very little in the way of actual serious and constructive criticism of the DOE Report from the scientific community (with the exception of Carbon Brief; maybe there is something useful buried in the public comments).
Enter the Dessler and Kopp et al. report, with the et al. including contributions from 85 scientists
This is a comprehensive 439 page report that is directly targeted at rebutting the DOE Report, that was prepared in 30 days (sort of weakens the argument that the DOE report was written too quickly, ha ha). The Dessler et al. report also suffers from the same “flaws” identified by the AMS Statement (ha ha).
Before getting into specifics of the Dessler Report, a big bravo and kudos to Dessler et al., who are actually behaving like scientists with their rebuttal to the DOE report. This is exactlythe kind of response and dialogue that we hoped the DOE Report would stimulate. (update: in his media interviews, Dessler is sounding pretty unhinged, at this point he risks undoing the “good” from this report).
I have skimmed the entire report (I’m a very fast reader), and paid closer attention to some of the sections related to text that I wrote. The report is organized in terms of the chapters and sections of the DOE Report, essentially providing a review of the DOE Report and suggested changes. The report is lightly edited and loosely coordinated, this is mainly a compilation (with some organization) of contributions from individual scientists. The quality of the report is very heterogeneous across the different sections. Some contributions are quite good. Others are oblique and don’t directly address what was written in the DOE Report. Other comments merely reiterate the “party line,” ignoring our criticisms of the same “party line.”
Bottom line: interesting report, laudable effort. We will be going through this report in much more detail. But in my initial assessment, the Dessler et al. report didn’t land any strong punches on the DOE Report, and I wouldn’t change any of the conclusions in the DOE Report in response. The combination of the DOE and Dessler report highlight areas of disagreement among climate scientists, and illustrates how weighting of different classes of evidence, addressing different topics, and different logical frameworks for linking evidence can lead to different conclusions. The existence of this kind of disagreement is essential information for policy makers, which hitherto has been hidden under the banner of “consensus” enforcement.
Status of the CWG
Owing to a lawsuit that has been filed against the DOE by the Environmental Defense and Union of Concerned Scientists, activities of the Climate Working Group are currently on hold. Personally, I’m collecting the substantive comments for future use.
JC reflections
In the climate science debate, there are two different mindsets:
- Insisting that you are right (consensus enforcement, and all that)
- Trying to get it right (the scientific process, and all that)
The Climate Working Group as a whole, and the individual scientists (if I can speak for them here), are staunchly in the ‘trying to get it right’ mindset, which is unfortunately the minority mindset.
By bringing forth a less alarming minority perspective that is trying to get it right in a politically favorable environment, the combined efforts of the CWG and the Dessler et al. response present the promise of a genuinely open debate on climate change issue, with more honest and useful assessments that can better guide both climate science and policy.
Specific comments on the Dessler, Kopp et al. report
This section will continue to be expanded upon and edited over the next few days
Global greening (section 2.1). This section elicited a large number of comments from the DOE internal review and Carbon Brief as well as the Dessler et al. report. This is EXCELLENT, since the important topic of global greening has received very little attention in climate assessment reports. The Dessler Report text on section 2.1 is 27 pages long. It claims that some of the DOE statements are misleading or that they imply something that they don’t. While there is much interesting text in this section of the Dessler report and maybe the DOE Report should add some more references, it is clear that none of the statements made in the DOE Report are incorrect, and that the main conclusion “Elevated concentrations of CO2 directly enhance plant growth, globally contributing to “greening” the planet and increasing agricultural productivity” is supported.
Sea level rise (chapter 7). The Dessler, Kopp et al. report objects to the statement “U.S. tide gauge measurements in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate.” The Dessler report spends 20 pages trying to convince that sea level rise is accelerating, and that this is evident in the tide gauge measurements. Fortuitously, there is a new paper hot off the press: Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes. Key conclusion: “Statistical tests were run on all selected datasets, taking acceleration of sea level rise as a hypothesis. In both datasets, approximately 95% of the suitable locations show no statistically significant acceleration of the rate of sea level rise.” So yes, some additions to DOE chapter 7 on sea level rise acceleration are warranted, but not in the direction of the Dessler et al. report. The claim the data on VLM in Table 7.1 is unsupported; they neglected to read the metadata.
Model predictions of corn belt temperatures (section 5.8) A defense of climate models is presented by claiming that they do a good job of simulating global average temperatures. They explain why climate models have difficulty simulating regional temperatures, and point out the need for a large ensemble. They imply we “cherry picked” a region where the models do worst. Well yes, this is an economically important region where the models perform poorly.
Solar variability (section 8.3.1). There were substantial comments on solar variability submitted to the Carbon Brief, and essentially the same comments were submitted to Dessler et al. (20 pages of text). I carefully went through the Carbon Brief comments, and drafted an edited version of the solar section that deletes several sentences and adds some additional references. I also checked in with members of the ACRIM science team, they continue to support high solar variability. Hence, the high-level conclusion in the DOE Report “Moreover, solar activity’s contribution to the late 20th century warming might be underestimated” is justified.
Hurricanes (section 6.2).Dessler et al. devote 12 pages to the issue of hurricanes. Shortly after the DOE Report was published, I engaged with tropical meteorology experts on the Tropical ListServ to discuss section 6.2 (some of these authored the response here). Some were concerned that theory and models were ignored, and possible future risks weren’t mentioned. In response, I drafted a new subsection entitled “Factors contributing to US economic losses”, which addresses the following issues: rates of intensification, track speed, horizontal size, storm surge, rainfall and tornadoes. The combination of high amplitude natural variability plus short and inhomogeneous data sets imply low confidence in the detection and attribution of any trends. Models and theory are interesting for speculating about future possibilities (something that is not addressed in the DOE Report), but as for interpreting the past, show me the data.
Tornadoes (section 6.5). This section is an example of a useful contribution. These same points, related to more tornadoes earlier in the season and moving further east, were made on the Tropical ListServ, and I had already drafted a new paragraph to account for this.
Urbanization (section 3.3). This section claims to refute our concerns about inadequate treatment of the urban heat island effect by using the Berkeley Earth data set to compare land/ocean temperatures and the ERA5 level 500 m above the surface, and population density map. Very weak tea.
Declining planetary albedo (section 8.4). This is an example where they completely miss the point, focusing on the record temperatures of 2023, 2024 and then arguing that equilibrium climate sensitivity should be 4.5C.
Climate sensitivity (chapter 4). 24 pages of stuff that isn’t useful. This was not written by the climate sensitivity A-team. They claim we have a misleading focus on ECS; we should have focused on TCRE and ZEC. They make much ado about the “pattern effect.” They manage to misrepresent the AR6 and Sherwood et al.
Surface temperature extremes (section 6.3) There is an astonishing result presented by Dessler et al: the Berkeley Earth dataset finds twice as many heat wave days in the Eastern US in the last 20 years as in the 1930s. I’m not sure that I have seen anything published on Berkeley Earth daily temperatures, this should be investigated, something looks very off. They also make the following statement underpinning this section that defies any kind of logic I can understand: “they make the statistically dubious leap that, because the 1930’s extreme temperatures are comparable to today’s temperatures, then climate change cannot be contributing to more extreme heat today.”
Emissions scenarios (section 2.1) Much word salad, but they seem to be defending the implausible extreme 8.5 emissions scenarios.
Billion dollar weather disasters (section 10.2) Much word salad, but they seem to be defending the now discredited NOAA Billion Dollar Disasters dataset
Tropospheric warming (Section 5.3) The best they can do is “it is premature to conclude that models are substantially deficient given the large uncertainties in observational estimates of atmospheric temperature trends”
Vertical temperature profile mismatch (Section 5.4). They essentially support the DOE Report that describes this mismatch, further emphasizing “The relative contributions of observational uncertainty, internal variability, errors in the prescribed model forcing, and model biases to the model-observation discrepancies are likewise unresolved.”
Pielke Jr’s analysis
Good substack article from Roger Pielke Jr. Excerpts:
Dessler, who calls the DOE report “bullshit,” pulls no punches in asserting that there is absolutely nothing that is scientifically accurate in the DOE CWG report:
To be clear, the DOE report raises no “interesting questions” overlooked by the scientific community, highlights no ignored research gaps, and brings no fresh perspective. Instead, it’s a rats’ nest of bad arguments.
To the extent that there are legitimate scientific arguments in there, those have already been rejected by the scientific community. But scientific arguments are rare in the DOE report; rather, it’s mainly selective misquoting of the scientific literature (cherry picking), omission of contrary results from the scientific literature, and simple errors due to a lack of understanding of the science.
This framing has been adopted by the media, as you can see in the headlines below characterizing the critique upon its release this morning.
I took a look at the DK25 report in my areas of expertise, as I did with the DOE CWG, and I found numerous statements that were simply false — among them that World Weather Attribution was not created with litigation in mind, that NOAA”s “billion dollar disasters” (RIP) tabulation was scientifically valid, that SRES had 6 not 40 scenarios, and that RCP8.5 has not been the most commonly used scenario in research and assessment. DK25 ignored all of our research that was accurately cited by DOE CWG.
DK25 also includes a bizarre claim regarding the detection of changes in extreme weather events:²
“the absence of statistically significant trends in the historical records does not mean that changes are not occurring”³
Actually, that is exactly what the absence of detection means — don’t take it from me, take it from the IPCC, which defines a*change*in climate as follows:
A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
This line of argument seems not to be against the DOE CWG report — which relies heavily on the IPCC — but against the IPCC’s framework for detection and attribution, which is already under siege for not producing strong indications of change in most measures of weather extremes.
Extreme event attribution, RCP8.5, and “billion dollar disasters” are not the hills I’d choose to die on, but apparently the authors of DK25 were so intent in asserting that every claim of DOE CWG is false, that they could not admit the many places where DOE CWG got things right.
My view is that there are stronger and weaker claims in both DOE CWG and DK25. In my areas of expertise — notably scenarios and extreme weather — the DOE CWG is pretty strong (but could be better) and DK25 is pretty weak. In other areas, the balance will surely be different. But the Manichean nature of climate debates is that no territory can be given to the enemy.
Dessler makes very clear that he believes that this exercise is all about politics:
If you don’t follow climate policy closely, you may not know that the Trump administration is launching an effort to overturn one of the most fundamental pillars of American climate policy: the scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare (the so-called “Endangerment Finding”). If successful, this move could unravel virtually every U.S. climate regulation on the books, from car emissions standards to power plant rules.
To support this effort, the Department of Energy hand-selected five climate contrarians who dispute mainstream science to write a report, which ended up saying exactly what you would expect it to say: climate science is too uncertain to justify policies to limit warming. . .
The history of cigarettes shows that such tactics can delay policy action for decades, but they cannot indefinitely postpone scientific reality from emerging. The only real question is how much damage the delay causes.
The assumption here is that if you find some degree of merit in the DOE CWG then climate policy is doomed and if you instead side with DK25, then carbon dioxide regulation is on its way. Viewed from this perspective, scientific assessments are ”tactics” to be mobilized to support political action or delay.
Such a perspective turns scientific assessment into partisan politics. Scientific integrity inevitably suffers.
---
GGL 1 26
[### Department of Energy Issues Report Evaluating Impact ...
Department of Energy (.gov)
https://www.energy.gov › articles › department-energy-is...](https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-issues-report-evaluating-impact-greenhouse-gasses-us-climate-invites)
Jul 30, 2025 — Curry is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, ...Read more
Missing: ZELDIN | Show results with: ZELDIN
[### Who Wrote the Trump Administration's Flawed Climate Report ... The Equation - Union of Concerned Scientists
https://blog.ucs.org › kathy-mulvey › who-wrote-the-tru...](https://blog.ucs.org/kathy-mulvey/who-wrote-the-trump-administrations-flawed-climate-report-meet-the-architects-of-disinformation/)
Sep 30, 2025 — ... Climate Working Group convened in secret by US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright and US EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.Read more
[### It's the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians ...
E&E News by POLITICO
https://www.eenews.net › Articles](https://www.eenews.net/articles/its-the-gold-standard-of-us-climate-research-contrarians-could-write-the-next-one/)
Dec 22, 2025 — Curry also said that the Trump administration was looking to revive the U.S. Global Change Research Program ... How Chris Wright recruited ...Read more
Missing: ZELDIN | Show results with: ZELDIN
[### It's the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians ... POLITICO Pro
https://subscriber.politicopro.com › eenews › 2025/12/22](https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/12/22/its-the-gold-standard-of-us-climate-research-contrarians-could-write-the-next-one-00701430)
Dec 22, 2025 — Earlier this year, Curry joined with four like-minded researchers to produce a separate report for Energy Secretary Chris Wright that ...Read more
Missing: Program ZELDIN
[### Pseudo-Science and Bad Law: The Trump Administration's ...
Vermont Journal of Environmental Law
https://vjel.vermontlaw.edu › news › 2025/09 › pseudo...](https://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/news/2025/09/pseudo-science-and-bad-law/)
Sep 6, 2025 — In announcing the proposal, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated the Trump administration's intent to drive “a dagger through the heart of ...Read more
[### Trump EPA proposes revoking pollution limits based in part ...
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › trump-epa-endangerment-finding](https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/29/climate/trump-epa-endangerment-finding)
Jul 29, 2025 — Zeldin on Tuesday spoke proudly of his agency's move to repeal the endangerment finding as the “largest deregulatory action in the history of ...Read more
Missing: Program | Show results with: Program
[### Environmental Groups Sue Over D.O.E. Report ...
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › lawsuit-climate-change-report](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/climate/lawsuit-climate-change-report.html)
Aug 15, 2025 — The lawsuit seeks to block the Trump administration from repealing the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.
Missing: Research | Show results with: Research
[### A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions ...
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › A_Critical_Review_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions_on_the_U.S._Climate)
A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate is a draft report by the U.S. Department of Energy released in July 2025 that ...Read more
[### How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate ...
Politico
https://www.politico.com › interactives › chris-wright-d...](https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/chris-wright-doe-climate-change-report/)
Sep 27, 2025 — A review of climate science commissioned by Wright argues that “climate change is a challenge — not a catastrophe.” The Trump administration is ...Read more
Missing: ZELDIN | Show results with: ZELDIN
[### U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)
Congress.gov
https://www.congress.gov › crs-product](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48478)
Jul 2, 2025 — USGCRP is an interagency program established by Congress through the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (GCRA; PL 101-606) to coordinate and integrate federal ...Read more
Missing: CURRY WRIGHT ZELDIN
---