Ashley Siefert Nunes
WASHINGTON—According to news reports, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright has publicly laid bare the administration’s plans to alter previous National Climate Assessment (NCA) reports.
The NCA is a quadrennial report mandated by Congress since 1990, and is developed by more than a dozen federal agencies and authored by hundreds of scientists across disciplines. To write the report, authors rely on scientific literature from thousands of additional experts. The NCA also has a transparent and rigorous peer review process with multiple rounds of review. This carefully drafted, extensive synthesis report assesses the latest climate science and a range of impacts that people, the economy, infrastructure and ecosystems are already experiencing and could expect to endure in the future as the climate warms further.
This latest development comes months after the Trump administration disbanded the author team for the sixth installment of the NCA (NCA6), removed past NCA reports from government websites, and eliminated the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) that oversees the NCA report process.
Below is a statement by Dr. Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and an NCA6 report author who was dismissed.
“Secretary Wright just confirmed our worst fears—that this administration plans to not just bury the scientific evidence but replace it with outright lies to downplay the worsening climate crisis and evade responsibility for addressing it. The process for developing the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment reports is rigorous, with federal agencies and hundreds of scientists constructing this solid scientific foundation that decision makers, businesses and the public rely on to stay safe in a world made more perilous each day by climate change.
“This is one more alarming example of the Trump administration’s ongoing and highly politicized effort to obfuscate scientific truth to further its dangerous and deadly pro-fossil fuel agenda. Secretary Wright has made no secret of his full-throated support of that agenda. Just last week, he peddled a sham ‘climate report’ commissioned by the Department of Energy and drafted by known climate contrarians as a basis to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding.
“People across the country are already reeling from climate-fueled worsening heat waves, floods, wildfires and storms. Lying about that reality doesn’t change it; it just leaves people in harm’s way. We urge Congress to intervene to safeguard the integrity of the NCA reports so they remain vital, lifesaving tools in the fight against climate change.”
For more information, please see a new UCS report titled “Science and Democracy Under Siege: Documenting Six Months of the Trump Administration’s Destructive Actions.”