Environmental groups and independent scientists are criticizing a report assembled by a small team of well-known climate skeptics selected by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The Trump administration has reduced funding for climate research, dismissed federal scientists who worked on the National Climate Assessment, and removed past editions of the report from government websites. Now, critics say, it is taking the next step: rewriting the science itself, according to a lawsuit filed this week by environmental groups.
As the Environmental Protection Agency moves to revoke the Endangerment Finding, the 2009 scientific determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, the Department of Energy published a new review of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on U.S. climate that aims to support the EPA’s efforts.
The report was developed this spring by the 2025 Climate Working Group, which is composed of five independent climate scientists selected by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
But environmental groups and independent scientists have criticized the report and how it was written, claiming it was assembled in secret by the five scientists who are recognized by the larger scientific community as climate skeptics.
«The secret report was produced by a set of known climate contrarians who were commissioned to write this report that’s full of inaccuracies», said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director of climate and energy programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists. «It’s clearly geared towards trying to give the EPA a way to evade its legal responsibility to address the health harms of heat trapping emissions and climate change.»A «secret report»
The DOE report, entitled «A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate», was commissioned in March when Wright assembled the group to undertake a massive review of scientific findings in a very short period of time, with no public announcement of this effort.
The five authors delivered their final draft by May 28. In the report’s preface, the authors wrote, «The short timeline and the technical nature of the material meant that we could not comprehensively review all topics.
