The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, is facing growing criticism from scientists who say their “worst fears” were realized when Wright revealed that the Trump administration would “update” the US’s premier climate crisis reports.
Wright, a former oil and gas executive, told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins earlier this week that the administration was reviewing national climate assessment reports published by past governments.
Produced by scientists and peer-reviewed, there have been five national climate assessment (NCA) reports since 2000 and they are considered the gold standard report of global heating and its impacts on human health, agriculture, water supplies and air pollution.
“We’re reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those reports,” said Wright, who is one of the main supporters of the administration’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda to boost fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of the climate crisis.
Wright was speaking days after his agency, the Department of Energy, produced a report claiming concern over the climate crisis was overblown. That energy department report was slammed by scientists for being a “farce” full of misinformation.
Speaking to CNN this week about the national climate assessment reports, Wright claimed they “weren’t fair in broad-based assessments of climate change”. He added: “When you get into departments and look at stuff that’s there and you find stuff that’s objectionable, you want to fix it,” he said.
In recent weeks the Trump administration deleted the website that hosted the periodic, legally mandated, national climate assessments (the most recent report is hosted on the Guardian website and can be read in full here).
Asked about Wright’s comments on the national climate assessment reports, respected climate scientist Michael Mann said in an emailed comment to the Guardian: “This is exactly what Joseph Stalin did.”
In a statement on Thursday, Dr Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and one of the authors of the sixth NCA report due in 2028 that the administration dismissed earlier this year, said she was dismayed by Wright’s comments.
“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.
“People across the country are already reeling from climate-fueled worsening heatwaves, 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.”
The NCA reports are published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and a Department of Energy spokesperson told CNN that Wright was “not suggesting he personally would be altering past reports”.
In May, the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union said they would join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact after the NCA contributors for the 2028 publication were dismissed.
The energy department’s climate report last week was published on the same day the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to undo the 2009 “endangerment finding”, which allows the agency to limit planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources.
This raised concerns that the Trump administration was attempting to scrap almost all pollution regulations in steps likely to trigger battles in the courts in the coming years.
