More than 85 climate scientists declared the Department of Energy’s new climate report unfit for policymaking in a comprehensive review released Tuesday. The DOE’s report cherry-picked evidence, lacked peer-reviewed studies to support its questioning of the detrimental effects of climate change in the US and is “fundamentally incorrect,” the authors concluded.
Scientists have accurately modeled and predicted the volume and impact of excess CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere since the 1970s, when Exxon workers first began measuring the impacts of their product on the planet’s atmosphere. Since then, climate science has matured into a crucial tool to help humans gauge how a warming planet may affect everything from weather and crops to the economy and mental health.
“This report makes a mockery of science. It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes, and confirmation bias,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, in a statement accompanying the review.
“This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community.”
A DOE spokesperson said in an email that the report was prepared as part of the Trump administration’s effort to engage “in a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy. This report was reviewed internally by DOE scientific researchers and policy experts from the Office of Science and National Labs. The report is open to wider peer review from the scientific community and general public via the public comment period.”
U.S. government scientists have for decades contributed to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, considered by many to be the Earth’s preeminent collection of climate science. The process and timeline the DOE followed in creating the new report before releasing it in July is unknown, and there do not appear to have been any public meetings associated with its drafting process. The document was internally peer reviewed “amongst DOE’s scientific research community,” the agency said in a statement accompanying the report’s release.