Last Friday the Trump Administration published the latest in a series of reports mandated by Congress called the National Climate Assessment. Like most anything concerning climate change, the report was primarily political in intent. The report emphasized all the allegedly adverse effects that climate change would supposedly result in and did not examine whether the cost of reducing warming would exceed the benefits of doing so. It was prepared by 13 Federal agencies and was set in motion during the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration claims that it never reviewed the report before it was published and that it represented the views of its bureaucratic authors from 13 different departments and recruited from the outside world. The report has been unusually strongly criticized by climate skeptics as highly inaccurate with false conclusions. This is highly unusual since major reports are normally reviewed with great care before being published for political and other viewpoints. President Trump has since said that he did not believe the report.
There is some indication that the report was not exactly an honest description of what the bureaucracy thought since the staff that prepared it included some climate activists and featured some research that was funded by noted activists like Tom Steyer. This suggests that a significant part of the problem was inattention by the Trump Administration. For this the Trump Administration itself bears the responsibility.
The Administration now has a problem since some Democrats say they will use the report to oppose a number of the Trump Administration’s attempts to weaken a number of the Obama climate regulations that they have proposed, including using the report to persuade courts to reinstate the original Obama Administration regulations. All this was quite foreseeable. So why did the Administration publish the report without reviewing it? Was it because it was not paying attention to what the bureaucracy was doing? This is hard to believe, but appears now to be the case. One obvious possibility is that they wanted to avoid the charge that they had “corrupted” the report writing process. But the costs are likely to be high. Another possibility is that Acting Administrator Wheeler did not want to endure questions about possible intervention at his confirmation hearing. But the evidence appears to suggest inattention by the Trump Administration was the major problem.
The more normal process is for an administration to make sure that major reports exactly correspond to its policy and technical views before publishing it. This is a far better approach in my view. Then there is no confusion as to whether the report really represents the Administration’s views and cannot be used against it. And it does not later have to disown it, as they have already started to do. It clearly would have been worth the extra effort in this case. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Trump Administration blew it.
What I would like to see is the Administration commission another report, or even better a series of reports, by some top scientists sceptical of CAGW and publish them.
I would like to see the administration convene a red versus blue debate, listen to it, and articulate a position as a result.
The two sides, alarmists versus skeptics, have written their views repeatedly and these are in the public domain.
More reports issued by a unionized bureaucracy of self interested Federal workers are not the answer.
The answer is that proposed by Steve koonin. A debate. The White House hears the debate and then decides and enunciates its policy views.
I’m kinda with RickG . The report is so over the top it’s its own straw man . It demonstrates the zealot corruption of those swamp bayous .
The Trump Administration needs to rapidly withdraw the report, reorganize the authors and revise a new report. They can apologize for the lack of heavy control of the report writing but were not aware of how deeply Dem/liberal plants were still in all those agencies. It’s a great chance to do a lot of house-cleaning.
While recognized by many for what it is, this report gives the media
and new democratic congress ammunition to undo what’s been achieved.
It will make reversing the endangerment finding that much harder.
If the public has to pay for these supposedly scientific reports,
they should meet the standard of real science. That’s what real scientists are demanding.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deceptive-new-report-on-climate-1509660882
The exaggerated claims, including that the earth is steadily getting hotter,
would then disappear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rohF6K2avtY
So long as the WH permits such reports to be infiltrated by special interests
and produced by those to likewise benefit, the Trump administration
will only dig itself in deeper.
The Admin was well aware of this. NCA4 was a massive project, well under way under Obama. The die was cast when the public comment draft was allowed. Even Pruitt signed off on it. The NYT had speculated that it might be blocked, but the uproar would have been horrific, feeding the claim that the Trump Admin is anti-science. It was decided by Whitehouse staff that the best approach was to ignore it. They killed Pruitt’s Red Team climate science debate prposal for the same reason. Trump saying he does not believe it has been an effective response.
But I too think this was a big mistake. This federal report will be used in Court and probably makes repealing the Endangerment Finding impossible. But it looks like they have no intention of trying to do that either. As you say, they are cowards.
At the bottom of things, the sad fact is that the vast majority of politicians, including Mr. Trump, don’t want to take the climate change lobby head-on. They would rather try to placate the believers or remain silent. Mr. Trump seems content to simply raise doubts. As long as more politicians stop being afraid of the believers, the warmists will continue to push their agenda.
The midterms are over. The President should strengthen the White House team by appointing some new blood. And it’s time to be more combative with the Left.
Wheeler and others were left in a tough place. They can’t reign in the climate hoax if the Administration does not formulate a climate policy of its own.
That said, the report is just regurgitation of the same old junk science. It’s not some important new report that breaks new ground. It’s more a stuck in a rut. So it’s in that sense, unimportant.
If the report is indeed bogus, refuting the report, and exposing the politics, is a much better strategy. Don’t rule Trump out so easily and readily.