Controversial climate report from Trump team galvanizes scientists into action

0:03Hi, Benjamin from The Nature Podcast here. This year, we've been covering the situation that science is facing in the US in the wake of President Donald Trump's election. As we've said previously, there's a lot going on in this space right now. But today, we're focusing on the publishing of a climate report that's proving divisive, to say the least, among many researchers. Senior reporter Jeff Tollefson has been writing about this for Nature, and he joins me now. Jeff, thanks for being here today. Good to be here, Ben. So, as I say, there was a report that was published recently by the US Department of Energy entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate.

0:46Now, before we get into the publishing of this report and the response from scientists, perhaps you can give us a bit of context as to why this report was prepared. The short story is that this is an administration under President Donald Trump that has repeatedly questioned the science behind climate change and any kind of activities or regulations that might be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their entire mantra is that we need to unleash American energy, and this is the solution moving forward. So this report is a science report from an administration that is actively trying to actually repeal its own authority to regulate greenhouse gases at the Environmental Protection Agency.

1:32So this is the science behind a move to curtail regulations on climate change. And with that in mind, then, the conclusions that are published in this report have generated a lot of pushback in the broader scientific community. Broadly, what are these conclusions? What has this report said? Yes. So, you know, mainstream climate scientists have spent decades working to understand the potential impacts of greenhouse gases on the climate, the impacts of a changing climate on people. This report basically seeks to undermine or question all of that research. In one place after another, whether it's sea level rise or impacts on corals or the impacts of rising carbon dioxide levels on ecosystems, it repeatedly says that there's not enough evidence to indicate that there's a real problem here, one that we need to address.

2:28The science is far less certain than it's been made out to be by mainstream researchers, and effectively, maybe there's nothing here, nothing to worry about. Keep in mind, as I say this, that it is a draft report and they are now accepting comments from the scientific community and they're trying to do so in an organized way. Well, while they're getting organized and they have been talking to you and they're quite forthright in their critiques, what have they been saying in particular and what have they been focusing on? One argument is that this is not a report that is designed to enhance science or to encourage science.

3:02You know, it's designed specifically to suppress science. One scientist says. We've got another researcher who says that his own research was cited directly in this report. And this is research that goes to kind of, in some ways, the heart of the problem. This is research that focuses on what we call fingerprinting, climate fingerprints. So if you want to understand what is driving the change in climate, there are ways that you can look at what the impact of greenhouse gases would be, as opposed to, you know, a potential increase in solar activity or natural climate variations. And scientists have looked at this for decades, and they see the fingerprints.

3:41And in this case, the researcher we spoke to says his research is cited, a particular paper, and they say that no fingerprints were found, when in fact, the whole point of the paper was that they did find a climate fingerprint that does pinpoint greenhouse gases as the source of the warming that's going on right now. So the allegations kind of vary. In some cases, people say it's misquoting literature. In other cases, it's just outright ignoring vast bodies of research and evidence in one place or another while focusing on one tiny question that may or may not be legitimate. And the Department of Energy, I'm sure, would dispute that.

4:20In fact, the US Energy Secretary, Christopher Wright, who commissioned this report, said in the foreword, quote, I've reviewed the report carefully, and I believe it faithfully represents the state of climate science today. Still, many readers may be surprised by its conclusions, which differ in important ways from the mainstream narrative. That's a sign of how far the public conversation has drifted from the science itself. End quote. What did the DOE say to you when you were reporting this story? They did not say much. They basically said, look at what Secretary Wright said. We have commissioned a report from some highly respected scientists, and now it's out for review.

4:58and let's see what comments come in and where things land. Apparently this report, they say, was reviewed internally at DOE. We don't know exactly what that means. We were told basically that the peer review portion of this report is happening right now. They put it out for public comment. But the people who wrote this report, there are five authors, and all of them are very well known as being people who have repeatedly rejected mainstream climate science. And the mainstream climate researchers, again, have spent a very long time addressing the criticisms from these people. And they basically say that there's no evidence to justify their technical arguments.

5:41And you say that researchers are coming together then to try and rebut some of these things put forward in this report. What efforts are being done? Well, it takes place on multiple levels. So the report itself is out for public review until September 2nd. So there is one effort that I know of that's underway, where some researchers are basically trying to parse out different portions of the report and respond to them in some kind of a systematic way. I mean, keep in mind that the IPCC takes seven years to do this, and the scientific community today has two weeks, you know, or three weeks at this point.

6:18So there's not a lot of time. I think the idea is that maybe they'll produce a series of kind of one-pagers basically budding the arguments that are in there. So is there the chance then that this report could be essentially rewritten with researchers' comments, critiques, ideas in mind, do we think? Absolutely. We reached out to the authors of the report, and they said that they are welcoming any and all comments, and that they will address all of those comments and change the report as needed on the basis of substantive comments. So we don't know what's going to come out on the other end. But yeah, it's certainly possible and even likely that portions of it are going to change.

6:57Researchers are suspicious because of the way that this report was set up and the leanings of the people who wrote it and also the political arguments that have been made by the people at the Department of Energy and this administration. But, yeah, we don't know what's going to come out of the other end. But as you've alluded to there, it does seem like it might be part of this larger narrative involving, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. For folk who aren't up to speed on that, lay out what's going on there and how these two things might intersect. The expectation, and we don't know for certain, but the expectation is that this report is going to serve as kind of the evidentiary basis as the administration tries to repeal its own regulatory authority.

7:39So what does that mean? Basically, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 issued a finding following a Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are in fact pollutants that can and may need to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The EPA issued a finding saying that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and welfare. And once that finding is out there, then the agency kind of has a responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases. And this was the basis for everything that the administration of Barack Obama did and then the administration of Joe Biden did. All of the climate regulations that have been passed to date by EPA are based on this finding.

8:21And now the EPA under Trump is planning to overturn a finding that was made more than a decade ago. So this is a legal argument, and they're making legal arguments in their proposal. But it's also a scientific argument, and we saw this the first time around. So they're going to try and rebut the science, and they're going to make some legal arguments as to why EPA doesn't have the authority or the justification for making this finding. And if they are able to overturn that, then that basically means that as long as that finding is overturned, the EPA will never be able to take action on greenhouse gases.

9:02So it's not just rolling back regulations. It's repealing the ability of the agency to do that going forward indefinitely until such time as the conditions change again. So it seems like then that there's the potential that this current document, if it remains in its current form, and let's say hypothetically it does, could be used as evidence to try and overturn these previous laws and rulings. Surely it will stand up against the wealth of existing evidence, saying in many cases the very opposite. So a legal scholar that we spoke to, and I think others would agree, basically said that the courts, they don't like to have science on trial.

9:42They don't like ruling about which experts are right. So they tend to try and side with the balance of evidence. if the courts side with the balance of evidence. Clearly, there's a mountain of evidence on one side that climate change is a problem and that greenhouse gases are to blame. And on the other side, there's this report that tries to say, oh, that's not true. So it's a very lopsided fight that they're heading into. But we don't know. And the expectation is that this may well wind up at the Supreme Court again. And we don't know how this court will rule. And so if the eventuality happens then where these things do get overturned, Is that kind of the end of the story?

10:23Are there more levers that people can pull? It's not the end of the story. And EPA regulations on greenhouse gases are not the only tool that this country has. We have a very good example of alternatives. The investments in climate that were made under former President Joe Biden with two laws, one focused on infrastructure and one dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, those pumped money into clean energy programs of various sorts. And we talked to a lot of experts at the time who said this was the most significant climate law to be passed in the US in history, and one of the most significant climate actions taken at a global level, if you just think about the scale of the investments and the scale of the emissions that they could reduce in the United States, which is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

11:15None of that would be banned moving forward, even if EPA gets its way. So just because you can't regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles and oil and gas facilities doesn't mean that you can't make climate investments in a whole array of other areas. And you mentioned that you've been speaking with legal experts about all this. Where are they falling on the argument as things stand? I don't think anybody wants to make any bets about what's going to happen right now. What I will say is our readers are concerned and as science is concerned, one thing I was told is that scientists are doing their job right now by responding to this document in a serious way, by explaining what the science says and what it doesn't, by laying out the evidence that's out there and addressing shortfalls in this report.

12:08All of that is good. But what he told me is that, you know, that's helpful and worthwhile, but it's not necessarily determinative. And finally, then, what's the sort of time frame on this then? What can we expect to happen in the next little while? We don't know. The comment period on the DOE report closes on the 2nd of September and the comment period on the EPA proposal closes roughly two weeks after that. And then both agencies will go and do their thing. It's always a little bit hard to predict how long federal agencies are going to take to do these types of things. But, you know, one might expect that in a matter of some months, probably not years, we will have some kind of a resolution and the EPA will move forward and the DOE will finalize its report.

12:56And then we're looking at lawsuits, almost certainly. Those could take years. Well, let's leave it there then. Jeff Tollison, thank you so much for joining me as always. Thank you, Ben.