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A group of the US\u2019s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility.<\/p>\n
More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences have been overstated.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration report, released in July, contains \u201cpervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics\u201d, states the new analysis, which is written in the style of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis report makes a mockery of science,\u201d said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes and confirmation bias. This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another reviewing academic, Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, said he was \u201cshocked and appalled\u201d by the \u201ctotal disgrace\u201d of the Donald Trump report and was willing to join with other volunteer researchers from leading institutions to correct the record.<\/p>\n
The review will be submitted as part of a public comment period on the report, which closes on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, has said the report pushes back against the \u201c<\/em>cancel culture Orwellian squelching of science\u201d and that the five authors were not ordered what to write. Wright\u2019s department did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n However, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists have condemned the \u201cfarce\u201d of the exercise, pointing out it has been used to justify the administration\u2019s rollback of climate regulations, rather than act as legitimate scientific enquiry.<\/p>\n \u201cSetting aside several weeks of time to join dozens of other scientists in an effort to correct the cherry-picked data in a US government report wasn\u2019t on my bingo card this summer,\u201d said Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University. \u201cBut it is clearly what the situation required.\u201d<\/p>\n Reached for comment, DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich said: \u201cUnlike previous administrations, the Trump administration is committed to engaging in a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n The four main critiques contained in the climate scientists\u2019 review are:<\/p>\n The problems with the new DOE assessment began when the agency hand-picked five climate contrarians to author it, the analysis says.<\/p>\n They include John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who has said the climate crisis could be positive; Judith Curry, a climatologist who rails against climate \u201calarmism\u201d; Steven E Koonin, a physicist who has called climate science \u201cunsettled\u201d; Ross McKitrick, an economist who has said the climate crisis is not a \u201cbig issue\u201d; and Roy Spencer, a meteorologist and climate scientist who has said top scientists overblow the impact society has on the climate.<\/p>\n In the DOE report, Wright says the authors were chosen \u201cfor their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate\u201d. But each one is \u201cwell known for manufacturing uncertainty\u201d, the new review states.<\/p>\n By selecting these authors, the Trump administration appears to be violating a 1972 law requiring balanced perspectives within executive advisory committees, the new review says.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]his group appears to have been personally recruited by the Secretary of Energy to advance a particular viewpoint favored by DOE leadership,\u201d the analysis says.<\/p>\n Federal advisory committee members are subject to transparency laws aimed at promoting citizen input and accountability, the analysis notes, but the group\u2019s convenings happened in secret, and their work was withheld from the public.<\/p>\n Under Office of Management and Budget rules, such assessments are also meant to be subject to peer review. But no such review has yet occurred, the authors note.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it became clear that DOE wasn\u2019t going to organize such a review, the scientific community came together on its own, in less than a month, to provide it,\u201d said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who has said the DOE report misrepresented his research.<\/p>\n The working group\u2019s process also violated the stated aims of the Trump administration, they say. In a May executive order, the president said only peer-reviewed science that is conducted in a conflict-free and transparent manner should underpin policies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should be using scientifically vetted and properly reviewed assessments to make legal decisions \u2013 not unreviewed documents that present a distorted view of our scientific knowledge,\u201d said Abigail Swann, a professor of atmospheric sciences and ecology at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n Asked about these concerns, Dietderich said the DOE report was \u201creviewed internally by a group of DOE scientific researchers and policy experts from the Office of Science and National Labs\u201d and is now \u201copened to wider peer review from the scientific community and general public via the public comment period\u201d.<\/p>\n The Trump administration report selectively reviews scientific literature and plucks small sections to support its arguments, rather than present a full picture of the evidence, the scientists\u2019 review states.<\/p>\n For example, the Trump-appointed researchers point to the extreme heat of the 1930s Dust Bowl, while ignoring what was going on in the rest of the world and how this compares to global trends today. Other \u201ccherry-picked\u201d evidence is used to support claims about the role of the strength of the sun in raising Earth temperatures and the sensitivity of the climate to carbon emissions, the review finds.<\/p>\n Another section, in which the report looks at climate-driven extreme events, is badly mischaracterized, according to Dessler. \u201cI mean, they just don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re talking about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Five people were hand-selected by the secretary of energy for their viewpoint, and they produced a shoddy mess of cherry-picked data and unsupported assertionsPamela McElwee, Rutgers University<\/p>\n \u201cFive people were hand-selected by the secretary of energy for their viewpoints, and they produced a shoddy mess of cherry-picked data and unsupported assertions,\u201d said Pamela McElwee, associate professor of human ecology at Rutgers University.<\/p>\n While the DOE report was written in four months, traditional federal and international climate reports \u2013 such as the US national climate assessments and IPCC reports \u2013 are each authored by hundreds of experts, the new analysis says, \u201cwith multiple rounds of internal and external review\u201d.<\/p>\n Because the DOE report \u201ccovers areas in which the authors are not experts\u201d, their report is riddled with \u201cerrors in the report caused by a lack of familiarity with the science\u201d, the assessment says.<\/p>\n About 11% of the DOE report\u2019s citations were written by its own five authors \u2013 a share nearly five times higher than the average rate at which authors\u2019 own work was cited in a 2023 IPCC report that 230 experts wrote.<\/p>\n The Department of Energy report was released as part of a Trump administration push to repeal the \u201cendangerment finding\u201d \u2013 a landmark 2009 determination that greenhouse gases harm human health.<\/p>\n The elimination of this finding by the Environmental Protection Agency would effectively kneecap all US policies designed to cut planet-heating pollution from cars, trucks and power plants. The DOE report is intended to provide cover for this political goal rather than act as a credible work of science, the review found.<\/p>\n Dietderich said the president \u201cvalues the role of science\u201d and that the administration \u201chave not pre-judged how this report will impact EPA\u2019s proposed Endangerment Finding rulemaking or any policy or program at the Department of Energy\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet by sidelining credible climate scientists and actively promoting the report\u2019s conclusions in draft form, the Trump administration has shown that this work is merely a tool in service of a political goal, the reviewing scientists added.<\/p>\n \u201cWork contrary to the conclusions of the DOE report is dismissed or simply ignored, making it clear that the report is intended to support a specific policy decision and is not an unbiased synthesis of climate science,\u201d said Christopher Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A group of the US\u2019s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility. More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[794,186,866,320,11455,293,516,1674,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-18732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-contentious","11":"tag-experts","12":"tag-mockery","13":"tag-report","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-teams","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Authors<\/h2>\n
Peer review and transparency<\/h2>\n
Cherry-picked evidence<\/h2>\n
Predetermined outcome<\/h2>\n