A new report from the Trump administration casts significant doubt on the risks of climate change, citing scientists’ studies from major research institutions around the world. At least ten of those scientists told NOTUS that the report misrepresents their findings and research.
“This is a serious misuse of my research,” said James Rae, a climate researcher at the University of St. Andrews, about the report’s interpretation of his work.
“As I hope you can see, it was taken out of context,” said Sukyoung Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Pennsylvania State University, about the report’s use of her research.
Another researcher said the report included “erroneous” fire data. The “chart and text are highly misleading and includes data that should not be plotted in a scientific report,” said Jennifer Marlon, climate science researcher at Yale University about the section of the review that included her research. “To do so is manipulative and goes against all standard scientific norms and practice.”
The Department of Energy report, authored by academics affiliated with conservative organizations like The Heritage Foundation, downplays the dangers of climate change and argues that fighting it may cause more harm than good, bucking the scientific consensus on global warming and its impacts.
NOTUS found at least three citations that name the wrong authors, a fourth with a broken link and another with a link that directs to the wrong study. One paragraph about sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay closely resembles a paragraph in a paper published in 2019 by one of the report’s authors without a citation to that previous report.
Standard scientific practice requires researchers to cite all sources of information and not quote any past work, even their own, without accurate citation.
“This is not how science is supposed to work. This is not the sort of process where scientists write the report that gets vetted and peer-reviewed and cited, and then eventually there is a government process, an interagency working group, and then that gets scrutinized, and there’s a formal peer review process,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University, calling the report “shoddy.” Wagner was a paid peer reviewer for a report published by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.
These mischaracterizations could have far-reaching implications should this report be finalized on the Federal Register. The administration’s review could eventually be used as the evidentiary basis for undoing the last 15 years of federal climate policy.
The Trump administration’s efforts to take apart every rule that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions are expected to face court challenges. Should it reach that point, the administration will likely need to show that it seriously considered the scientific evidence.
The Department of Energy did not directly respond to NOTUS’ inquiries about the errors and mischaracterizations in the report.
“This report was reviewed internally by a group of DOE scientific researchers and policy experts from the Office of Science and National Labs. DOE is now opening the report to wider peer review from the scientific community and general public via the public comment period,” a DOE spokesperson said in an emailed statement about the report’s review process.
“The Climate Working Group and the Energy Department look forward to engaging with substantive comments following the conclusion of the 30-day comment period. 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 spokesperson said.
Roy Spencer, one of the report’s authors, wrote in a blog post Tuesday that Energy Secretary Chris Wright picked him and the report’s other four authors — all of whom are well known in the climate research community for their skepticism toward the scientific consensus on climate change — to write the review.
Wright has repeatedly said (including in a recent essay for The Economist) that while he believes climate change is real, striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would cause more harm than it’s worth. “Climate change is a by-product of progress,” the headline of his Economist essay reads.
“Chris called me at home and asked me if I would participate, and he asked who I would recommend for other authors of the report,” Spencer wrote. “He also had on his list of potential contributors the others who now appear on the report with me.”
The authors worked on a contract basis for the DOE as special government employees.
The report was published alongside and cited within the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan — announced Tuesday — to rescind the 2009 federal government finding that climate change threatens public health and welfare.
“We had little time to accomplish what the Obama Administration spent years and millions of dollars to produce as the original Technical Support Document (TSD) for the 2009 Endangerment Finding,” Spencer wrote in the blog post.
The authors wrote the 150-page document over the course of about two months, in April and May.
Two of the report’s authors, Spencer and Ross McKitrick, were involved in a Heritage Foundation event earlier this year on reconsidering the endangerment finding. Another four authors quoted in papers published by The Heritage Foundation were also cited in the DOE report. The report’s five authors frequently cited their own past work as references.
But outside scientists whose work was also referenced in the report told NOTUS the Energy Department’s review was deeply frustrating.
“The parts I have read are deeply concerning,” said Benjamin Santer, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, about the paragraphs that discuss his work.
“Their citation does not correctly capture our findings,” said Bor-Ting Jong, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The DOE report inaccurately linked together future projections on rainfall intensity as an explanation for historical trends, according to Jong.
“Our work has no relevance” to the topic at hand, said Joshua Krissansen-Totton, a researcher at the University of Washington. Krissansen-Totton’s research focuses on marine life billions of years ago, and the DOE report’s authors connected his research on that time period to questions about the increasing acidification of the ocean today.
“I find the discussion of heat waves, drought and wildfires particularly lopsided, poorly referenced and leaning on cherry-picked results,” said Alexander Gershunov, a researcher at the University of California San Diego.
Gershunov told NOTUS that while the specific citation of their work was technically accurate, contextually the report was misleading about the conclusions that should be reached from the research.
“This whole thing is just incredibly disingenuous and not an accurate depiction of the field,” said Jesse Farmer, an environmental science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Farmer, whose work was not cited in the report, described at least six different points where the best research today conflicts with the analysis and conclusions of the Trump administration’s review.
He currently assigns published work from Heritage-associated climate skeptics to his undergraduate students as an exercise in finding problems and inconsistencies, and he said he would consider adding some of this DOE report to his curriculum.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”
In that order, Trump said that his administration was committed to ensuring that “Federal decisions are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available.”