When Energy Secretary Chris Wright empowered five researchers to produce a government report critical of mainstream climate science last summer, it was a watershed moment for a once-fringe corner of the scientific community that was now suddenly elevated by President Donald Trump.
But the intervening months have been difficult for the group. Though the team succeeded in publishing a 141-page report that downplayed the threat of a warmer planet, their analysis has taken fire from nearly every corner. Internal Department of Energy scientists criticized it. Outside climate scientists skewered it. And the group itself was the subject of a lawsuit from public interest groups.
And on Thursday, when the Trump administration announced its decision to eliminate a bedrock of U.S. climate policy — the so-called endangerment finding — it didn’t employ the group’s arguments that the science underpinning current climate policy is wrong.
For all of the administration’s public mockery of climate change, which Trump calls a “hoax,” it appears EPA and White House are unwilling to risk a court battle over climate science and instead will make a regulatory argument. A final version of the rule, released late Thursday, confirmed EPA would not rely on the DOE report “for any aspect of this final action.”
