Because if you don’t know what’s happening, it can’t hurt you, right?
President Donald Trump’s administration has dismissed all contributors to the U.S. government’s signature study that informs federal and local governments on how to prepare for climate change impacts, according to an email sent to them on Monday.
The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress, leaves the future of the report in doubt since the multi-year, peer-reviewed analysis is due for publication in 2028.
“At this time, the scope of the NCA6 is being evaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990,” the email, seen by Reuters, said, referring to the legislation that kickstarted the assessments that was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
The climate assessment had been overseen by the Global Change Research Program, which the Trump administration dismissed earlier this month, and had coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists.
Under the Trump administration, publication of scientific reports is being frozen and some records risk being removed from public access. The White House has also moved to terminate a key contract with the firm responsible for producing the National Climate Assessment, casting doubt on the completion of the next scheduled report. Computer models and observational records Santer helped build are in the crosshairs.
“There’s real concern that the data may go away, that the satellites, measurements that have been collected for 40 plus years, may not continue,” (Climate scientist Ben) Santer told a room of more than 100 science students and environmental researchers at Stanford University last month. He was there to deliver a lecture hosted by Students for a Sustainable Stanford and sponsored by the university’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
It’s not just a loss of institutional memory, he said. It’s the dismantling of the tools that proved what is happening to the environment over the last few decades and the causes.
“The evidentiary chain,” he warned, “may break.”
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Like so many other Trump actions, this one usurps the power of Congress and will be challenged. But the fact we are having this fight at this moment is profoundly disturbing.