The National Climate Assessment, America’s largest contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia are joining forces to compile the best insights on climate change. The results, released only twice a decade, shape years of government decisions.
While the clock is ticking on President Trump’s term, the climate assessment has received a new distinction: it is one of the few major US climate initiatives that his government has tried to undermine, but has largely failed.
How the Trump White House attempted to place its report on the report, and why these efforts stumbled, shows the resilience of federal climate science despite the government’s haphazard attempts to curb it. This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen current and former government officials and others familiar with the process.
In November, the government removed the person responsible for the next issue of the report and replaced it with someone who underestimated climate science, although at this stage it seemed too little. But efforts began in 2018 when officials ousted a top official and relied on scientists to soften their conclusions – the scientists refused – and later tried to bury the report, which also did not work.
“Thank God they did not know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who led the U.S. Global Change Research Program during the Obama administration. “It could have been a lot worse.”
What makes the failure to obstruct the climate assessment remarkable is that Mr. Trump has made it a top priority to undermine efforts to address climate change. And on most fronts, he succeeds in reversing environmental regulations, easing air pollution restrictions and opening up new land for oil and gas drilling.
The national evaluation enjoys unique prestige and sums up the work of scientists in the federal government. The law requires a new law every four years.
For mr. Trump, who called climate change a hoax, said the assessment was a particular challenge. Trying to politicize or dismiss climate science is one thing when the warnings come from Democrats or academics. But this report comes from its own agencies.
The first evidence of this tension came in the summer of 2018 when federal scientists completed the fourth national climate assessment. The report warns that climate change will jeopardize public safety and economic growth. And it is said that reducing emissions “could significantly reduce climate-related risks,” in contrast to the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse such cuts.
Stuart Levenbach, a political appointment at the time chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the evaluation, urged scientists to prepare the document to show the findings in their report summary, according to people at the discussions were involved.
Dr. Levenbach, who is now a senior adviser to the National Economic Council of the White House, said in a statement that he simply wanted the summary to be clearer about the assumptions he relied on for future releases.
The career staff refused to make these changes. This refusal cost a price: Virginia Burkett, a climate scientist from the U.S. Geological Survey who chaired the Global Change Research Program, was forced out of her role. The language in the report remained untouched.
The White House referred questions about Dr. Burkett to the Geological Survey. A spokesman there did not respond to a request for comment.
The administration then released the document the day after Thanksgiving, in an apparent attempt to limit attention. A White House spokesman, who did not want to be identified by name, said in an email: “The day after Thanksgiving is a federal workday, and it’s not uncommon for federal affairs to be done on days around the federal holidays. does not become. “)
The approach backfired: many news organizations interpreted the timing as proof of the importance of the report and gave it coverage throughout.
After the report was not changed or buried, Mr. Trump and his senior officials are trying to dismiss it.
Asked about the findings of the assessment that global warming could destroy the economy, President Trump replied, “I do not believe it.” His then-press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the assessment was “not based on facts.” Ryan Zinke, who was secretary of the interior at the time, said his findings highlighted the “worst case scenarios”.
After the climate assessment was issued, the White House Office of Science and Technology, which oversees the Global Change Research Program, decided, according to stakeholders, that it would be best not to talk about it at all.
The office has halted all activities that could establish the assessment. Additional reports, intended as periodic updates, are no longer released. Plans for the writers to meet local officials in places threatened by climate change and talk about their findings have been scrapped.
The White House spokesman called the descriptions of the White House’s’ false. She declined a request to make senior officials involved in the assessment available for an interview.
Encouraging staff not to talk about their work has managed to get it off the radar of Mr. at least for a while. Trump and his senior officials. It helped that energy lobbyists were focused on the actions of other parts of government, whose regulations directly affected their businesses.
But the decision to avoid attention has a costly price, say officials, which reduces public awareness of the report’s findings and slows down work on the next one.
Another decision in the White House would also help keep the climate assessment out of the news: the head of the science office, Kelvin Droegemeier, has delayed the release of the next installment from 2022 to 2023, according to people familiar with his decision.
The Global Change Research Program website now says that the “expected delivery” for the next report is 2023. The White House spokesman said the final timeline had not been set.
But the delay had a silver lining, says Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who edited two chapters for the previous assessment. Each report is based on scientific research on which it is based – and under the Trump administration, new climate research has slowed down, said Dr. Keenan said.
The postponement of the release of the next review “gives us the opportunity to catch our breath and get some production next year” from federal scientists, he said.
This year, the White House once again turned its attention to climate assessment.
An important step in creating each new version is appealing to authors who form the tone of the report. The notice, which usually also provides an outline of what topics will be discussed, has been delayed by the Trump administration for months, according to several people familiar with the decision. And when it was finally released in October, the language changed: political appointments removed information on the specific topics to be addressed.
Federal scientists are concerned that the change provides a plan to cut off the scope of the review – so that the administration can comply with the letter of the law, while avoiding topics that may conflict with what the White House wanted to hear.
The White House spokesman said “organizing information into specific chapters remains a work in progress.”
The concerns escalated in November when the White House removed the head of the Global Change Research Program, Michael Kuperberg, a climate scientist from the Department of Energy. Dr. Kuperberg was replaced by David Legates, a Trump appointee at NOAA, who previously worked closely with groups denying climate change.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
A second political official of the NOAA, Ryan Maue, who criticized climate scientists for what he calls unnecessarily harsh predictions, has been moved to a role in the White House that has given him authority over the climate program.
The appointments caused concern among scientists, who were concerned that it was an attempt by the government to learn from the failure to change the previous assessment by installing loyalists who could form the next issue.
The White House did not want dr. Legates of dr. Maue does not make available for an interview.
But several people familiar with the process say it may not be too late for a kind of Hail Mary to pass by the Trump administration – for example, to be in a hurry to choose authors who can underestimate or try the science of climate change. to present science as uncertain. This would force the Biden government to circumvent or remove the authors, potentially fueling a political struggle.
But the more likely outcome, according to current and former officials, is that the recent appointments are another example of how the Trump administration’s agenda has been hampered by its own shortcomings – the failure to understand how the programs it wanted to suppress, work, or to move late to make a difference.
The government should have put its stamp on climate assessment earlier, Judith Curry, a former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said she was in contact with Dr. Maue and other officials. .
“It just did not bubble up on the priority list,” said Dr. Curry said. “I honestly do not know why they started doing it at 11 o’clock.”
John Holdren, who as President Obama’s scientific adviser has helped oversee the climate assessment process, said he believes the Biden government will be able to get it back on track and set aside anyone who tries to undermine it.
“Climate waffles from the Trump era, in any of the agencies involved, will be removed,” said Dr. Holdren said. “Or if that is not possible, we are told to push out.”