The Trump administration’s proposal Tuesday to revoke the so-called endangerment finding is rife with climate disinformation, scientists say.
The proposed rule — which would undo a key scientific finding that underpins federal climate regulations — relies heavily on legal arguments. But it also includes an “alternative” justification that attacks the scientific consensus on climate change, drawing from a Department of Energy report authored by scientists known for denying accepted climate science.
“This is a general theme in the report; they cherrypick data points that suit their narrative and exclude the vast majority of the scientific literature that does not,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the science nonprofit Berkeley Earth, said in an email.
The proposed rule cites — and misrepresents — some of his research, Hausfather said, adding, “This gives a terribly skewed view of the underlying climate science, and highlights a number of fringe studies that have been subsequently shown to be riddled with errors.”
Climate science has long been based on data and facts, as well as extensive peer-reviewed research. Thousands of studies conducted throughout the globe over decades have unequivocally shown that humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels is pushing the planet toward dangerous climate tipping points, such as significant sea-level rise, more deadly heat waves and increased extreme weather.
On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright characterized that scientific record as flawed.
“What we really want to do is bring climate science into the same realm we treated all science in the past, which is critical thinking, challenging, basing things on data and facts,” Wright said at a press conference at an Indiana trucking company. “And if your model doesn’t match the data, you can’t hide the data, you’ve got to fix your model. We want to end the cancel culture.”
The proposed rule suggests that scientists’ projections of global warming are flawed, that scientists have overstated the dangers of climate change and that rising temperatures even pose a net benefit to humankind. It’s all part of the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the endangerment finding, which determined that greenhouse gas emissions drive warming and endanger public health and welfare.
Here is a fact check of some claims made in the EPA proposal.
Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are “not the exclusive source” of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations and rising global temperatures.
The links between climate change and human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have been established beyond any mainstream scientific doubt. That’s thanks to a combination of real-world observations and sophisticated climate models.
Scientists have been collecting detailed temperature records at weather stations around the world for over a century. These observations indicate that the planet has been warming since the 19th century. By the 1980s, the warming trend had clearly statistically diverged from the previous global temperature average — in other words, the rising temperatures weren’t just a blip, but an obvious shift into a new climate regime.
Climate models have allowed scientists to attribute this warming trend directly to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. With these computerized simulations, researchers can test the influence of different factors on the Earth’s climate system — from natural variables like solar radiation and volcanic eruptions to manmade ones like fossil fuel emissions.
The models clearly demonstrate that natural variables can’t explain the recent increase in Earth’s temperatures, while greenhouse gas emissions closely track the warming trends. Studies have agreed on this point for decades.
“Recent data and analyses suggest, however, that despite increased public attention and concern, such extreme weather events have not demonstrably increased relative to historical highs.”
Numerous studies have demonstrated that weather extremes are becoming more frequent or more intense over time — including heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes and floods.
At the same time, climate models have become so sophisticated that they can demonstrate links between greenhouse gas emissions and individual weather events.
The most recent version of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment — which the Trump administration removed from the internet — found that “communities across the country are built for a climate that no longer exists” because of weather extremes. The observed climate effects happening now include “drought in the Western U.S. and heavier precipitation and increased flood risk across much of the U.S.,” according to the federal assessment, which draws upon the peer-reviewed research of hundreds of scientists.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization has concluded that weather and climate disasters caused $4.3 trillion in global economic losses over the last 50 years and killed at least two million people.
“The Endangerment Finding consistently cites climate models as showing or predicting warming trends, melting ice, anthropogenic droughts, shrinking snowpack, damage to aquatic systems of life, and increased ocean temperature and acidity. However, the data relied upon as inputs to these models may be based on inaccurate assumptions.”
Those who deny climate science have frequently attacked the performance of climate models, suggesting that they overestimate global warming and other climate impacts. But research shows that climate models have been highly accurate for decades.
A groundbreaking 2019 study examined all the global climate models used by scientists between 1970 and 2007, including the models used to support the first three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It found that most of them closely predicted the actual warming rates observed on Earth. That includes long-obsolete models built decades ago; today’s simulations are far more advanced and just as accurate.
The fossil fuel industry’s own computer models have also accurately predicted global warming. A study published in 2023 revealed that Exxon Mobil’s state-of-the-art climate models have correctly predicted global warming since at least the late 1970s.
“Our findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn’t just know ‘something’ about global warming decades ago — they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew,” the study’s authors concluded.
Critics of climate models have also often suggested that the underlying data used to feed the simulations — including on-the-ground measurements of Earth’s temperatures — are untrustworthy. Some have pointed out that urban areas are hotter than their natural surroundings — a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect — and that this phenomenon can skew the measurements collected by weather stations around the world.
But that’s not actually a problem. Scientists adjust their datasets to account for factors like the urban heat island effect. And weather stations around the world — on land and sea and in cities and wilderness — all demonstrate that global average temperatures are rising.
At the same time, on-the-ground weather stations aren’t the only ways scientists monitor global warming. Satellites have been observing the planet’s temperatures for decades, and instruments operated by countries around the world — from the U.S. to Europe to Japan — all agree that the Earth is heating up.
“Recent data and analysis show that even marginal increases in CO2 concentrations have substantial beneficial impacts on plant growth and agricultural productivity.”
This well-worn claim — asserting that increased carbon dioxide is “greening” the planet and causing crop yields to spike — is misleading, experts say.
“The statement that higher CO2 is good for plants is sort of facile and self-serving and doesn’t reflect the depth of the research done on this,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
It’s a selective fact that ignores or downplays the major role played by decades of agricultural innovation, including vast improvements in long-term weather predictions, high-yield crop varieties, hybrid seed developments, mechanization, irrigation methods and infrastructure, as well as herbicides and pesticides.
It also ignores numerous studies which suggest that rising temperatures, intensifying drought and increasing extreme weather events — all driven by climate change — are expected to damage crop yields in many regions of the world over the coming decades.
A study published just last month in the scientific journal Nature found that climate change is likely to drive down global food production by as much as 120 calories per person per day with every degree Celsius the world warms — even if farmers take steps to adapt.
The claim that climate change benefits agriculture overall “presumes that all you’re doing is changing carbon dioxide,” Dessler said. “Other things also change. Temperature goes up, soil moisture goes down, precipitation patterns change.”
“Contrary to the Endangerment Finding’s assumptions, data continue to suggest that mortality risk from cold temperatures remains by far the greater threat to public health in the United States,” the proposed rule reads. “Although the risk of heat waves featured prominently in the Endangerment Finding … the data since 2009 suggest that the balance of climate change as a whole appears to skew substantially more than previously recognized by the EPA in the direction of net benefits.”
This is a carefully selected data point, which is frequently invoked by climate policy opponents such as Wright. But it ignores an important counterpoint. While it’s true that the warming of the planet is cutting down on the number of cold-related deaths — largely in sub-Saharan Africa — it is rapidly increasing the number of extreme-heat related deaths.
In the U.S., extreme heat kills more Americans than any other natural disaster. In fact, most official estimates probably underestimate the number of people who die each year as a result of high temperatures.
Another degree or two of warming means the places where people in the U.S. die from temperature extremes will also shift and increase, Dessler said. The balance of science since 2009 certainly does not show more “net benefits,” he said.
Places like Phoenix — which has set repeated high temperature records in recent years — may not see a major spike in deaths because the built environment includes air conditioning and other protections, he said. But he added that places like Chicago, which is built for months of extreme cold, will see many more deaths from an increase in extreme heat waves since the city is unprepared for that climate.
The world is actually on track for less warming than the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios — and these studies have led the public to believe that climate change is more harmful than it actually is.
It’s true that many climate studies have explored a worst-case scenario that assumes world leaders will take no steps at all to address climate change in the coming decade. Such scenarios predict as much as 5 degrees Celsius, or 9 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming by the end of the century. It’s also true that this “business as usual” scenario is unlikely to actually occur.
But many more studies have focused on the consequences of small amounts of warming, like exceeding the Paris Agreement’s targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.
Hausfather, the Berkeley Earth climate scientist, has himself critiqued worst-case climate scenarios in a paper the Trump administration cited in its move to revoke the endangerment finding. But he has also published studies demonstrating the overall accuracy of climate models and the dangers of rising temperatures — research he notes the Trump administration “somehow neglected to mention.”
Numerous studies have shown that the impacts of climate change are already happening and affecting human health and well-being at warming far less than forecast in worst-case scenarios.
Sea levels are already rising. Extreme weather events are already worsening. Climate-related disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and floods already cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year, and they’re growing more intense over time.
Dessler emphasized that skepticism is normal in science, with researchers often debating and arguing the merits of plenty of findings. But the recently hired DOE researchers behind the proposed rule’s climate claims make general proclamations that certain bodies of research are not “believable,” he said.
“There’s a lot of stuff that happens in science that relies on the good faith of the people arguing,” he said. “And it breaks down in the face of these people that are professional contrarians.”
