Climate Scientists Look to Fight Back Against DOE’s ‘Antiscientific,’ ‘Deceptive’ Climate Report – Inside Climate News

Several top climate scientists are weighing how to respond to a new climate report issued by the Trump administration that they are calling “deceptive,” “cherry-picked,” and “antiscientific.”

The U.S. Department of Energy released a 150-page report Tuesday titled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” which argues that human-caused climate change “appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed,” and “aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial.” 

That flies in the face of most published scientific research on the topic, as gathered in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, the European Climate Risk Assessment, and the U.S. Government’s own Fifth National Climate Assessment, issued last year during the Biden administration. 

The DOE report states “the growing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere directly influences the earth system by promoting plant growth (global greening), thereby enhancing agricultural yields, and by neutralizing ocean alkalinity,” another way of saying ocean acidification. 

NOAA’s page on ocean acidification states that lowering the pH of seawater makes it more difficult for animals like clams, oysters, corals and plankton to build and maintain their shells. 

The report then argues that climate model projections are overstating the risks from sea level rise and extreme weather events, and that efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions would have little impact. 

“The risks and benefits of a climate changing under both natural and human influences must be weighed against the costs, efficacy, and collateral impacts of any ‘climate action,’” considering the nation’s need for reliable and affordable energy with minimal local pollution,” the report states in its conclusion. 

Michael Mann, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, told Inside Climate News that the Trump administration report was typical of the relatively small number of scientists who deny the seriousness of climate change. 

”All they’ve done is recycle shopworn, discredited climate denier arguments,” Mann said in an email. “They constructed a deeply misleading antiscientific narrative, built on deceptive arguments, misrepresented datasets, and distortion of actual scientific understanding. Then they dressed it up with dubious graphics composed of selective, cherry-picked data. 

“There is nothing scientific about this report whatsoever.”

The report does open a 30-day public comment period, in which the Department of Energy says it is “seeking input from the public, especially from interested individuals and entities, such as industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders.”

Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who criticized the report extensively on social media, told Inside Climate News it’s important for mainstream climate scientists to participate even if the Trump administration seems unlikely to listen. 

“Many people I’ve spoken to recognize the need for a coherent response,” Dessler said in an email. “I think it’s important because this will certainly be litigated, and anything that is put out there could be used in the litigation. 

“There is no coordinated structure right now [to respond], but I’m hoping one comes together. The stakes on this are very high.”

A spokesman for the Department of Energy said the department will “look forward to engaging with substantive comments,” after the comment period ends. 

“This report critically assesses many areas of ongoing scientific inquiry that are frequently assigned high levels of confidence—not by the scientists themselves but by the political bodies involved, such as the United Nations or previous Presidential administrations,” the spokesman said. “Unlike previous administrations, the Trump administration is committed to engaging in a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy.”

Ben Sanderson, research director at the CICERO Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, posted a thread critiquing the report. 

“Each chapter follows the same pattern,” Sanderson posted on Bluesky. “Establish a contrarian position, cherry pick evidence to support that position, then claim that this position is under-represented in climate literature and the IPCC in particular. Include a bunch of references, most of which don’t support the central argument.”

Sanderson highlighted examples, such as the report’s claims of “global greening” and increased crop yields, for which the authors ignored impacts such as heat stress, increased drought, and nutrient limitations, which the IPCC factored in to determine that more atmospheric CO2 would have a negative impact on food security. 

Sanderson said the researchers had pointed to a flat number of fire ignitions in the U.S., “omitting that burned area, severity and persistence have all exceeded records.”

“This is not a systematic or complete assessment of the report,” Sanderson posted. “But even a brief read is enough to understand what it’s doing—it’s selectively isolating particular studies and data to support the narrative that climate is less severe than assessed, whilst ignoring a much wider body of literature.”

A “Red Team” Assembles

The report relied on the Department of Energy’s new Climate Working Group consisting of five of the most prominent climate contrarians: John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer. 

“The authors of this report are widely recognized contrarians who don’t represent the mainstream scientific consensus,” Dessler posted on social media. “If almost any other group of scientists had been chosen, the report would have been dramatically different. 

“The only way to get this report was to pick these authors,” Dessler said. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy said in an email that the department “intentionally selected individuals with expertise in climate and atmospheric science, economics, physical science, and academic research.” 

“The five experts represent diverse viewpoints and political backgrounds and are all well-respected and highly credentialed individuals,” the spokesperson said. 

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former oil company executive, said in the report’s forward that he had not chosen the members because they would agree with him. 

“I didn’t select these authors because we always agree—far from it,” Wright said in the forward. “In fact, they may not always agree with each other. But I chose them for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate.”

What the points of disagreement may be are unclear, but there are many connections among the five. 

Christy and Spencer have been a research team publishing together for decades at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Curry and Christy both testified in front of Congress on multiple occasions to advocate for a “red team” approach to climate science, seeking funding for research to challenge the scientific consensus. Koonin wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal advocating for the same. Christy and McKitrick have published multiple papers together challenging the accuracy of climate models. 

Mann said that the report does not break new ground and merely gives a larger audience to fringe voices in the climate science community. 

“It’s the usual mix of untruths, half-truths, and discredited if seemingly plausible claims we’ve come to expect from professional climate deniers and those who platform them,” Mann said.

Climate Denial Is Now Trump’s Official Policy

The report is one in a series of actions by the Trump administration to undermine climate science, regulations and mitigation efforts. 

It was issued the same day the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to revoke the agency’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases, setting the stage for the federal government to cease regulating climate-warming emissions.

“With this decision, climate change denial is now the official policy of the U.S. government,” science historian and author Naomi Oreskes said in an email.

Dessler, from Texas A&M, said the report produced was more like a legal brief defending its client, carbon dioxide, than a scientific report, highlighting only the evidence that strengthens their case and ignoring the rest. 

“Scientists are obligated to engage with the full range of evidence, especially that which might contradict their hypothesis,” Dessler said on social media. “Ignoring contrary data is not just bad practice, in some cases it can rise to the level of scientific misconduct.”

Mann said the administration’s actions will harm climate science moving forward. 

“Since actual scientific consensus behind human-caused climate change is both irrefutable and problematic to their fossil fuel agenda, the administration has chosen to simply reject the scientific consensus, defund the actual science, and literally stop the measurements from taking place,” he said.

“Not since Stalin and Soviet Lysenkoism have we seen such a brazen effort to misrepresent science in service of an ideological agenda.”