The Trump administration has invited a small group of climate contrarians to help write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, the nation’s preeminent report on global warming, says one of the researchers involved.
The move would advance efforts by the White House to inject widely disputed ideas about climate change into the federal government’s official appraisal of global warming. And it would almost certainly provoke a response from the hundreds of mainstream climate scientists who have worked for years on the National Climate Assessment.
Judith Curry, a former climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of the climate contrarians in line for the new assignment. Earlier this year, Curry joined with four like-minded researchers to produce a separate report for Energy Secretary Chris Wright that downplayed the threat of global warming and called into question the basic tenets of climate science.
Now Curry says that same team — known as the Climate Working Group — has been asked to write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, or NCA, a congressionally mandated report that comes out every few years and outlines the many ways that global warming is expected to impact the United States and its people.
“The Climate Working Group has been contacted about the NCA,” said Curry, who added that she was open to the idea. “Personally, I would work with whoever’s in charge to get a reasonable outline and get reasonable authors.”
Curry said she expected all five members of the Climate Working Group to work on the National Climate Assessment.
Three of the other authors did not respond to requests for comment from POLITICO’s E&E News. The fourth, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick, said late Sunday that he had not yet been contacted about working on the assessment but declined to comment as to whether he would participate in the next version.
Curry also said that the Trump administration was looking to revive the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the initiative in charge of producing the National Climate Assessment. Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismantled the program and dismissed hundreds of scientists who were already at work on the sixth version of the National Climate Assessment.
Curry said the new effort is starting to take shape. She said the Trump administration already has interviewed candidates for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and she expected the administration would name a new program chief as soon as next month.
“I think in January, we should have a director of the USGCRP in place,” she said.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. Nor did the Energy Department nor the Office of Management and Budget.
But there’s at least one other sign the Trump administration is looking to write a new version of the National Climate Assessment.
Ryan Maue, who served as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump administration, said last week on the social media site X that he was working on the new climate report.
He described it as a “volunteer effort” and said it would be “mostly completed before end of 2025.”
Maue did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. But he wrote on X that he was enlisting artificial intelligence to help with the latest National Climate Assessment. He cited the Gemini 3 Pro program as well as Grok, an AI chatbot developed by xAI, the artificial intelligence company led by tech tycoon Elon Musk.
Grok in the past has downplayed the danger of global warming when compared with other AI programs.
The Trump administration’s push to revive the National Climate Assessment and resurrect the U.S. Global Change Research Program adds a new twist to the complicated history of the long-running research effort.
The program was created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Its most visible product is the National Climate Assessment, which comes out roughly every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure projects.
Five installments of the National Climate Assessment have been published since 2000. The reports explore more than just climate change — they also examine land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems and the atmosphere.
But earlier this year, the Trump administration fired the federal employees who work for the research program — and it was effectively shuttered. The administration also deleted interactive webpages for the first five versions of the National Climate Assessment and then buried the documents on government websites.
The moves prompted a sharp outcry from the scientific community in part because the National Climate Assessment has earned a reputation for top-notch research. The document includes hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to inform its conclusions, and it relies on the work of hundreds of scientists to write its contents and review its findings.
In contrast, the Energy Department report written by Curry and her colleagues involved a much smaller group of researchers.
Her four co-authors were: McKitrick; Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP who also served as an undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Obama administration; as well as John Christy and Roy Spencer, atmospheric scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
One climate scientist said the size of that group was indicative of how far the team members’ views fall outside the scientific consensus.
“Serious experts agree and action (on climate change) is needed as soon as possible,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has served as a lead author on multiple versions of the National Climate Assessment.
If the Trump administration wants “people who are not going to tell them those truths,” she added, “those are the only people they have.”
The Energy Department report written by Curry and the rest of the Climate Working Group has been roundly criticized by climate scientists for its reliance on cherry-picked data and its omission of research that disproved its claims.
Scientists whose work was cited in the report said their research was distorted and manipulated. Dozens of scientists produced a 450-page report challenging its claims, and the National Academies offered its own rebuttal of the report as well.
Hayhoe said it’s critical the United States and its leaders get a clear-eyed view of climate change and its impacts.
“This is a matter of safety, security, well being, resilience and preparation for a better future for everyone,” she said. “Regardless of where they live and regardless of how they vote.”
