1/1/21
The National Climate Assessment, America’s premier contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia join forces to compile the best insights available on climate change. The results, released just twice a decade or so, shape years of government decisions. Now, as the clock runs down on President Trump’s time in office, the climate assessment has gained a new distinction: It is one of the few major U.S. climate initiatives that his administration tried, yet largely failed, to undermine. The efforts started back in 2018, when officials pushed out a top official and leaned on scientists to soften their conclusions — the scientists refused — and then later tried to bury the report, which didn’t work either. “Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who during the Obama administration led the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the assessment. “It could have been a lot worse.” What makes the failure to impede the climate assessment remarkable is that Mr. Trump has made it a top priority to undercut efforts to address climate change. And on most fronts, he succeeded,
reversing scores of environmental rules, relaxing
restrictions on air pollution and
opening new land to oil and gas drilling. The national assessment enjoys unique prominence, pulling together the work of scientists across the federal government. The law requires a new one every four years.
For Mr. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, the assessment posed 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 his administration’s very own agencies. The first evidence of this tension came in the summer of 2018, as federal scientists were finishing the fourth National Climate Assessment. Stuart Levenbach, a political appointee who was then chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the assessment, pushed the scientists preparing the document to tone down the findings in their report summary. The career staff refused to make those changes. The administration then released the document on the day after Thanksgiving, in an apparent attempt to minimize attention. That approach backfired: Many news organizations interpreted the timing as evidence of the report’s importance, giving it prominent coverage. President Trump, asked about the assessment’s findings that global warming could devastate the economy, responded, “
I don’t believe it.” John Holdren who helped oversee the climate assessment process said he believed the Biden administration would be able to get it back on track and push aside anyone trying to undermine it. “Holdover climate wafflers from the Trump period, in any of the relevant agencies, will be removed,” Dr. Holdren said. “Or if that’s not possible, told to butt out.”
