Trump administration faces lawsuit over "secret report" on climate change

The Trump administration has reduced funding for climate research, dismissed federal scientists who worked on the National Climate Assessment, and removed past editions of the report from government websites. Now, critics say, it is taking the next step: rewriting the science itself, according to a lawsuit filed this week by environmental groups.

As the Environmental Protection Agency moves to revoke the Endangerment Finding, the 2009 scientific determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, the Department of Energy published a new review of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on U.S. climate that aims to support the EPA's efforts.

The report was developed this spring by the 2025 Climate Working Group, which is composed of five independent climate scientists selected by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

But environmental groups and independent scientists have criticized the report and how it was written, claiming it was assembled in secret by the five scientists who are recognized by the larger scientific community as climate skeptics.

"The secret report was produced by a set of known climate contrarians who were commissioned to write this report that's full of inaccuracies," said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director of climate and energy programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's clearly geared towards trying to give the EPA a way to evade its legal responsibility to address the health harms of heat trapping emissions and climate change."

The DOE report, entitled "A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate," was commissioned in March when Wright assembled the group to undertake a massive review of scientific findings in a very short period of time, with no public announcement of this effort.

The five authors delivered their final draft by May 28. In the report's preface, the authors wrote, "The short timeline and the technical nature of the material meant that we could not comprehensively review all topics."

Their report argues that carbon-driven warming may be less economically damaging than commonly believed, and that aggressive U.S. climate policies would have little measurable impact on the global climate. It attributes some warming to natural climate cycles or changes in the sun, instead of the burning of fossil fuels, and also claims sea level rise has not been accelerating, contrary to widely accepted scientific evidence. Finally, it highlights the potential benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels for plant growth.

"I would say that it presents an incomplete and misleading picture of how climate change is affecting the United States," said Phil Duffy, chief scientist at Spark Climate Solutions, who previously worked in the Biden and Obama administrations as a science policy expert.

Duffy and other scientists say the DOE report cherry-picks evidence, misrepresents peer-reviewed research, and ignores the overwhelming consensus that human activity is driving dangerous warming. Numerous climate-based groups and researchers have published their own fact-checks on the report, with one listing more than 100 false or misleading claims made by the authors.

CBS News reached out to the Department of Energy about the criticisms of the report. They responded by referring to Wright's statement in the preface, where he wrote that he chose the panel "for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate."

"This DOE report is in service of a political goal, it's not credible science," said Ben Santer, a climate researcher and board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Santer says his own published work was misrepresented in the DOE report and said the authors "fundamentally twist" the work of many researchers to reach conclusions that "will be used for a political purpose."

Critics in the scientific community have pointed out that the panel's five authors are known for their contrarian views on climate science, which are often at odds with the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change.

"The people that were handpicked by the Trump administration's energy secretary are this very small group of people who are known to disagree with that mountain of [scientific] evidence," said Vickie Patton, general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Some of them have connections to the fossil fuel industry."

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former oil and gas executive, has been vocal about his views on climate change, which align with the report's findings. In an op-ed earlier this year, he called climate change "a by-product of progress," and wrote, "I am willing to take the modest negative trade-off for this legacy of human advancement." He argues that while climate change is real, it is not the greatest threat, and that expanding access to affordable, reliable energy should remain the priority.

Wright has been transparent about how he views U.S. climate research, telling CNN's Kaitlan Collins that the administration is reviewing past federal climate reports, including the National Climate Assessment, and may provide "updates" later this year, leading many in the scientific community to fear the administration is aiming to edit or censor critical research.

"It's important that science be allowed to speak for itself and I do have concerns that that's not happening," Duffy told CBS News.

National Climate Assessments typically take years to write and are authored by hundreds of scientists.

Duffy says that Wright didn't oversee the previous reports and therefore has no authority to review or revise them. "He can't rewrite the National Climate Assessment any more than I can rewrite 'The Great Gatsby,'" Duffy says.

The Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the EPA and the Department of Energy, arguing that their actions violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires transparency and balanced membership for government advisory panels. The suit alleges that the Climate Working Group was created in secret, its work withheld from the public, and then its report was used extensively by the EPA, cited 22 times, to justify repealing the Endangerment Finding. The organizations are asking a judge to block the government's use of the report to comply with transparency laws.

When asked about the lawsuit, the EPA responded in an email saying, "As a matter of longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on current or pending litigation," and referred CBS News to the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy did not respond to any of our requests for comment.

• Climate Change
• United States Department of Energy
• Trump Administration