The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would no doubt have understood and even appreciated the latest attack by the Trump administration on climate researchers and their work.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is to be dismantled after more than 50 years at the forefront of global research on climate science and monitoring.
This is the latest step in the administration’s climate Lysenkoism and its relentless purge of climate researchers who refuse to be co-opted into its quest for American energy dominance though fossil fuels.
Stalin’s embrace of the work of Trofim Denisovitch Lysenko, who wrongly believed that wheat could inherit characteristics acquired by previous generations, underpinned policies that failed to prevent crop failures and millions of deaths from famine during the 1930s.
Scientists who opposed Lysenkoism were denounced, fired, imprisoned and even executed. While Trump has not gone as far as Stalin, his administration’s persecution of climate researchers could ultimately lead to many millions of deaths from increases in extreme weather and sea level rise in the United States and across the world.
Six years ago, we warned in an op-ed for the Guardian of the dangers of climate Lysenkoism during Trump’s first presidential term. Little did we know that there would be a second term and an even more extreme war against scientific reality.
The closure of NCAR was announced on X, the Trump administration’s preferred propaganda platform, by Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget.
He laughably described NCAR as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”, but it is transparently part of the Trump administration’s promotion of wilful ignorance about climate change.
We both have direct experience of the deep expertise and careful methodology of the many generations of scientists who have worked at NCAR, a stark contrast with the blatant mischaracterisation offered by Vought.
He is the architect of climate Lysenkoism during Trump’s second term, and Vought laid out his plans to eliminate all governmental knowledge and understanding of climate change in his Project 2025 manifesto during the presidential campaign.
Vought was also behind the Trump budget proposal earlier this year that proposed to end funding for most government laboratories and institutions that carry out any work related to climate change.
Fortunately, Congress rejected most of the funding cuts in the administration’s budget, but Vought will no doubt try again next year as part of the administration’s promotion of climate Lysenkoism.
While it is difficult to understand the workings of Donald Trump’s mind, his administration’s pretence that climate change does not exist is in line with his ambition to make the United States and the rest of the world more dependent on American oil, gas and coal.
Trump’s presidential campaign received at least $75m from oil and gas interests, according to media reports, and he promised to repay their investments through his administration’s support for more exploration and production.
The administration’s war on climate researchers helps to shield oil and gas executives from criticism of the damage that their industry is causing.
We are both seeing first-hand the impact of this at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, where scientists usually gather to discuss the latest advancements in climate research.
This year, there are far fewer climate scientists taking part, with many federally funded researchers having lost their jobs or had their budgets slashed.
However, there are signs that the administration’s attempt to promote a bogus version of climate science is not advancing quite as smoothly as they’d hoped.
In July, the Department of Energy published a ludicrous report that attempted to present a revisionist account of established climate science.
The report, called A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate, was commissioned by Chris Wright, the former head of oil and gas company Liberty Energy, whom Donald Trump selected to be energy secretary and chief propagandist.
The report was written by five scientists who were obviously selected to produce a version of climate science that was aligned with the administration’s political agenda.
It was clearly intended to support an attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency, launched on the same day, to overturn the supreme court’s so-called endangerment finding, which requires the government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
However, a group of more than 85 climate scientists comprehensively debunked Wright’s report in September, exposing numerous fundamental errors and falsehoods. They showed that the Department of Energy report was a blatant example of policy-based evidence-making.
In addition, the highly respected and authoritative National Academy of Sciences published its own assessment in September that concluded “the evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused GHGs [greenhouse gases] is beyond scientific dispute”.
It is now widely expected that the comprehensive demolition of Wright’s report means the Environmental Protection Agency will drop references to the science when it publishes in the new year its updated case for overturning the endangerment finding.
Sadly, this setback is unlikely to stop the Trump administration’s assault on researchers, and its Soviet-style campaign to prevent Americans and the rest of the world from knowing the truth about climate change.
The Trump administration continues to act as if the story of the ransacking of the library of Alexandria is a playbook instead of a cautionary tale.
Professor Michael Mann is the presidential distinguished professor and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author with Peter Hotez of Science Under Siege; Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science
