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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said this week that the Trump administration plans to review and potentially change the country’s climate science report.
When it appeared on CNN’s “The Source” on Tuesday, Wright told CNN host Kaitlan Collins that the national climate ratings had been removed from the government’s website “because we’re reviewing them.”
“We’ll come up with updated reports on them and comments about them,” Wright said.
National climate assessments are mandatory by Congress and have been released five times since 2000. Federal reports, produced by hundreds of volunteer scientists, are subject to extensive peer reviews and provide detailed explanations on how climate change has impacted regions in the United States to date and provide the latest scientific forecasts.
Wright denounced previous reports of political bias, saying it was “not a fair assessment of the data.”
“When you get into the department, look at what’s there and find something that’s not good about, you want to fix it,” he said.
His statement comes after the Trump administration in April rejected more than 400 experts who have already begun work on the sixth National Climate Assessment, which is scheduled to be published in late 2027 or early 2028.
The move marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to underestimate climate science. In recent months, the president and the Department of Energy have defended the production of fossil fuels and have significantly reduced funding and incentives for renewable energy projects. This week, the Energy Department posted an image of coal on X with the words, “She’s an icon, she’s a legend, she’s that moment.”
Meanwhile, the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed loose regulations for pollution sectors such as power plants and vehicles. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin declared in March that the administration is “driven daggers at the heart of climate change religion.”
In the arrival of CNN, Wright said previous climate change assessments, including a 2018 report created during Trump’s first period, were not “a reasonable expression of broad climate science.”
“They have been politically driven to hype the real problem, but they are issues that are not anywhere in the world’s biggest challenge,” he said of climate change. “No one trusted economist or scientist believes it is, except for a few activists and vigilant.”
Environmental experts were concerned about Wright’s comments.
“Secretary Wright confirmed our worst fears. The administration plans to not only bury scientific evidence, but also to downplay the worsening climate crisis and its responsibility to tackle it.”
“This is another incredible example of the Trump administration’s continued and highly politicized efforts to obfuscate scientific truths and promote the agenda of dangerous, deadly, and deadly breeding fuels,” Cletos said.
Last week, the Energy Agency announced its own climate report, “commissioned by Wright,” which raises questions about the severity of climate change.
“Both models and experience suggest that. [carbon dioxide]- Induced warming may be less economically harmful than commonly believed, and excessively aggressive mitigation policies may prove more harmful than beneficial,” the report states.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist for agricultural and natural resources at the University of California, says in a post in X that the previous national climate assessment was written by hundreds of scientists who led domain experts in their field.
“This would mark an extraordinary, unprecedented, and surprising levels of interference in what has historically been a fair and systematic process,” Swain said of the possibility of altering previous reports.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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