Earth Matters: Will jettisoning authors kill sixth nat'l climate assessment or just kill the truth?

During Donald Trump’s first 100 days, he, Elon Musk and their minions like Russell Vought and RFK Jr. have given their thirsty machetes plenty of work slashing democratic and other norms, federal staffs and processes, budgets, and regulations. The chaos left by the whirlwind of executive orders and other actions — including plenty of cruel, illegal, incompetently implemented ones — has made Trump the most unpopular president ever at this time in their terms of office. That has produced a spontaneous resistance to their dystopian vision, in the streets and in the courts.

At townhalls and from the federal bench, the implementation of the Trump agenda, the Project 2025 agenda, the demolish-a-century-of-progressive-reform agenda has come under withering attack. From conservative, Federalist Society-endorsed judges to rank-and-file Americans, some of whom apparently didn’t realize when they voted for the Orange Menace that their oxen were going to be included among those being gored, there’s come angry opposition to much of what’s happening. Call it an ongoing coup, a hostile takeover, a counter-revolution, a would-be dictator’s wet-dream, what matters isn’t what we call it but that there is a resistance to The Agenda. And happily it’s not only coming from those of us who have resisted Trump and his ilk for decades.

There is, obviously, so very much to resist. And even if we win, which is far from assured, repairing the damage already done in those 100 days will take years, while restoring trust in self-governance and building a fresh progressive policy outcome will be a generational project. The litany of damage already done to past progressive gains is long, with the full cascade yet to come. But this didn’t just start with with Trump. He’s just the unlikely paladin of zealots who’ve been working on these agendas for a very long time. From health care to feeding kids, from worker protection to international cooperation, from academic freedom to equal justice, from economic fairness to reproductive rights, we’re in the political fight of our lives. 

As most readers here know, we’re in another fight, too, which is partially political, but wholly existential. That’s the fight to deal effectively with the climate crisis while there is still time (if that time hasn’t already passed, a matter of dispute). Given the unexpected rapidity with which some of the bad climate change impacts are arriving, we know that quick, comprehensive action is crucial. We know because thousands of scientists in relevant fields have told us so based on the data of thousands of studies over decades of research. And since 2000, the U.S. government has also told us so, as congressionally mandated. That year, the First National Climate Assessment appeared. Here’s the about paragraph: 

The National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change is a landmark in the major ongoing effort to understand what climate change means for the US. Climate science is developing rapidly and scientists are increasingly able to project some changes at the regional scale, identifying regional vulnerabilities, and assessing potential regional impacts. Science increasingly indicates that the Earth’s climate has changed in the past and continues to change, and that even greater climate change is very likely in the 21st century. This Assessment has begun a national process of research, analysis, and dialogue about the coming changes in climate, their impacts, and what Americans can do to adapt to an uncertain and continuously changing climate. This Assessment is built on a solid foundation of science conducted as part of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

Since then four more assessments have been issued, most recently in November 2023. Each of them has taken a look at the growing pile of data and concluded we are on a perilous climate trajectory with extraordinary impacts happening sooner than once thought. The next assessment was due in 2026 or 2027. But there was a problem. It’s that 25-year-old line about the assessments being “built on a solid foundation of science.” When you’re someone who thinks the climate crisis is an alarmist hoax, as several cabinet members and the Outlaw Prez himself believes, solid scientific foundations are hindrances to delivering your message and policies. 

Thus It was no surprise early last month when it became known that the administration was planning to cancel all USGCRP’s funding, sounding the death knell for the climate assessment, according to Politico. This was followed on Monday by the canning of all the authors of the 6th National Climate Assessment “without cause or a plan," said Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of those authors. "People around the nation rely on the NCA to understand how climate change is impacting their daily lives already and what to expect in the future,” she said. “While not policy prescriptive, the findings of previous reports underscore the importance of cutting heat-trapping emissions and investing in climate resilience to protect communities and the economy."

Again, it’s easy to see why Trump took these actions. None of the authors are science deniers, so they are not “aligned with the priorities” of a president who thinks — or at least says he thinks and implements policies as if he thinks — that the climate crisis is bunk. A guy who took a lot of campaign money from fossil fuel barons who for years paid shills to persuade people that the climate crisis is bunk. Those authors had to go because Trump doesn’t want any more introductions like this in the Fifth Assessment:

Future climate change impacts depend on choices made today
The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts. Without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the risks of accelerating sea level rise, intensifying extreme weather, and other harmful climate impacts will continue to grow. Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses compared to previous increments of warming, while the risk of catastrophic or unforeseen consequences also increases.

The Fifth Assessment also noted that “every region in the world is projected to face further increases in climate hazards” unless there is  “urgent, effective, and equitable progress away from our current rate of greenhouse gas emissions.” The Sixth would likely have used more urgent language still.

However, Trump and crew want either no assessment or one that is brimful of a sketchy input from deniers of solid science. Congressionally mandated doesn’t mean there’s punishment for missing a deadline, as all past assessments have done. This gives Trump leeway to ignore Congress for as long as he’s in office. Whether he ultimately chooses abandonment or a propagandistic joke of a document hardly matters when sabotage is the goal.

Russell Vought is the guy Trump has put in charge of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, a guy in sync with DOGE on deep staff cuts. Indeed, he wrote an entire chapter about expanding OMB’s reach in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. About climate he wrote: “The next President should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment prepared under the Biden Administration.” He also says any assessment should include more diverse opinions. We know what that means. As the Trump administration got ready to take over in January, Scott Waldman at Climatewire noted that the new administration ...

“could dial back the usual scientific rigor in favor of an approach that would both elevate the viewpoint of climate science denialists and jettison all contributions from the Biden administration.”

Scientists and climate policy experts say the proposed changes — which are being pushed by aides to President-elect Donald Trump — run the risk of undermining a foundational reference for government officials. And they say it could make it harder to craft future U.S. policies to address global warming.

Making it harder to craft future global warming policies is exactly the point. Kill assessments, kill sources of new data by killing research grants, erase any document that even mentions climate in passing. It’s surprising the previous assessments can still be found on a government website. 

Whether the administration chooses to thumb its nose at Congress by ditching the assessment altogether or puts someone in charge who leans heavily on nonsense about climate, the consequences won’t in themselves be particularly damaging. It’s just one more idiotic move. What hurts is the accumulation of a never-ending stream of cray cray attacks on anything hinting of action on climate as well as the kneecapping of sources of potentially discomfiting data that contradicts The Agenda. Canning the national assessment or murdering its reputation with a flim-flam version is just one small part of a very big package.

—Meteor Blades

WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO

RESOURCES & ACTION

• 100 Days of Trump 2.0: The Inflation Reduction Act: Drawing from the detailed account maintained at the IRA Tracker, this blog post offers some key updates regarding the status of the IRA’s implementation after 100 devastating days of the second Trump administration.
• Dark Sky Advocates. The organization boasts more than 193,000 supporters, members, and advocates in more than 70 countries, providing leadership, tools, and resources for individuals, policymakers, and industry, to reduce light pollution and promote responsible outdoor lighting that is beautiful, healthy, and functional.
• Which home energy upgrades will save you money? We did the math.

GREEN BRIEFS

Despite global opposition, Trump just fast-tracked deep-sea mining 

Donald Trump decided to short-circuit another international cooperative effort last week when he issued one of his impatient executive orders that ignores anybody else who might have an interest in the subject at hand. In it he commanded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Interior to develop within 60 days an accelerated process for approving, for the first time, industrial-scale seabed mining applications. The order stated In part:

“Our Nation must take immediate action to accelerate the responsible development of seabed mineral resources, quantify the Nation’s endowment of seabed minerals, reinvigorate American leadership in associated extraction and processing technologies, and ensure secure supply chains for our defense, infrastructure, and energy sectors.”

Mining companies have for some time wanted to get their robot hands on the turnip-sized, polymetallic nodules lying on the floor of parts of the deep blue sea. They most densely occur in the Clarion–Clipperton zone between Hawaii and Mexico. An enormously rich lode composed of precipitated iron oxyhydroxides and manganese oxides formed over millions of years, the nodules contain nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc, titanium and rare earth elements. These are key ingredients of cellphones, military hardware, advanced electronics, and the batteries so necessary for the electrification of everything. 

These valuable metallic clumps, far richer than deposits of the same minerals on land, exist in an abyssal world we know less about than we do the surface of the moon. Barely understood aquatic creatures and others yet to be discovered live in unique ecosystems, some of them possibly being where life itself got started. Depending on the method used, mining the nodules could disrupt these ecosystems, create plumes of sediment, and possibly contaminate fisheries that Pacific peoples depend on.

Even as scientists work on alternatives to the contentious matter of scraping the ocean floor, including recycling and substituting material, mining companies argue that impacts will be minor. One of them noted at a congressional hearing that its vacuum system won’t disturb the sediment, unlike dredging. Another said its equipment will pick up each nodule individually without touching the seabed. 

However, Ocean Conservancy Vice President Jeff Watters told Forbes magazine, “Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it. Areas of the U.S. seafloor where test mining took place over 50 years ago still haven’t fully recovered. The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.”

In 1994, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea came into force and implemented the International Seabed Authority, which now has 167 participating nations. The United States is not one of them. The ISA has issued more than 25 exploration contracts over the years but so far authorized no actual mining. Since 2014, ISA has been trying to come up with rules about seabed mining, but failed to meet its much postponed deadline again earlier this year. The lack of speed has frustrated several companies eager to begin mining. 

In a press release, the Center for Biological Diversity stated the executive order “directly contradicts efforts by the global community to adopt binding regulations that prioritize environmental protection.” Said Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at the center, “The deep ocean belongs to everyone, and protecting it is humanity’s global duty. The seafloor environment is not a platform for ‘America First’ extraction.”  

—Meteor Blades

Copernicus: Warmest March In Europe & Lowest Arctic Winter Sea Ice

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, established and run by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts with funding from the EU, publishes monthly climate bulletins reporting on observed changes in global surface air and sea temperatures, sea ice cover, and hydrological variables. Most of the reported findings are based on the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, which uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations throughout the world. Given the Muskean payroll bloodbath going on at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we’re lucky Europe overall is still run by people who think data about the climate crisis is essential for addressing it.

The data for March stuck with the trend. It was the second-warmest March in the global record, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 0.65°C (1.17°F)  above the 1991-2020 average and 1.60°C (2.88°F) above the pre-industrial level for March. It was just 0.08°C  (0.144°F) cooler than the record March of 2024. It was also the 20th of the past 21 months during which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5°C (2.7°F) above the pre-industrial level. 

Average sea surface temperatures were the second highest of any March, being 0.12°C (0.216°F) below the March 2024 record. Since what scientists called an alarming surge in 2023, sea surface temperatures have remained unusually high in many ocean regions.

Meanwhile, the retreat of Arctic sea ice continued. It reached its lowest monthly extent for March at 6% below the average of the 47-year satellite record. It was the fourth consecutive month in which sea ice extent set a record low for the time of year. Arctic sea ice reaches its maximum extent at the end of winter in March. This year, scientists saw the lowest annual maximum ever recorded for the month. At the end of Antarctic summer, sea ice hit its fourth lowest monthly extent for March, 24% below average. 

—Meteor Blades

RESEARCH & STUDIES

• Regulators are underestimating health impacts from air pollution. In a study posted ahead of print by Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers employed a new method that takes into consideration the ways some chemical exposures affect the entire body. They found increased risks to people’s brains, hearts, lungs, kidneys, and hormonal systems from air pollution in a community near Philadelphia. Traditional methods found no increased health risks based on the same level of pollution exposure in that community.
• Global Warming Could Cause Wetlands to Emit More Methane. Published in Science Advances, the study scrutinized anaerobic microbial activities in brackish coastal wetlands. There they found anaerobic microbes in areas without free oxygen, such as flooded wetlands, which can draw oxygen from sulfate molecules and consume up to 12% of methane in these areas.
• The world’s biggest companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage. Published in the journal Nature, the study concluded that every 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since 1990 has caused $502 billion in damage from heat alone. Researchers estimated that just 10 companies of the 111 they studied had caused $28 trillion in climated damage. They are Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation. For comparison, $28 trillion slightly less than U.S. gross domestic product in 2024.

HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)

The first giant 15 megawatt turbine is up at Germany’s largest offshore wind farm by Michelle Lewis at Electrek. Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea. He Dreiht — which means “it spins” in Low German — is using Vestas’s massive 15-megawatt turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day. When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts of clean power — enough capacity to power around 1.1 million homes when it’s at peak performance. It’s being built without any government subsidies.

U.S. agriculture isn’t nearing a trade war tariff crisis, it’s in a “full-blown crisis already,” farmers say by Lori Ann LaRocco at CNBC. The global backlash to the Trump tariffs is punishing U.S. agriculture, especially with a decline in Chinese buying of U.S. farm products, farmers said. A leading agriculture exports group said “massive” financial losses are already racking up at farms, with cancelled orders resulting in layoffs, as China stops buying products from pork to lumber. “No one can replace all the volume that China buys,” one farm operator reported.

Related: Trump deportations have dairy farmers on edge 

As regenerative agriculture gains momentum, report warns of “greenwashing” by Carey Gillam at The New Lede, a project of the Environmental Working Group. Billed as a type of food system that works in harmony with nature, “regenerative” agriculture is gaining popularity in US farm country, garnering praise in books and films and as one of the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Proponents of regenerative farming say the practice can mitigate harmful climate change, reduce water pollution, and make foods more nutritious as farmers focus on improving the health of soil, water, and ecosystems. A growing number of farms and ranches around the US are achieving certification to let consumers know their grains, beef, eggs and other products are regeneratively grown. Internationally, the regenerative agriculture market has been forecast to see double-digit growth between 2023 and 2030. But all that momentum comes with a dirty dark side, according to a new report that highlights  what is becoming an increasingly contentious debate over the merits of regenerative agriculture. The report issued Tuesday asserts that regenerative programs, which generally allow for the use of weedkillers and other chemicals, are being used to “greenwash” routine use of several dangerous pesticides on farm fields. Corporations that sell such pesticides are entwined with the movement, incentivizing farmers financially to adopt regenerative practices, the report notes.

Florida panthers and black bears need a literal path for survival by Thomas Hoctor and Reed Frederick Noss at The Conversation. Florida panthers were once distributed throughout most of the southeast U.S., but now their number is tiny — maybe 200 or so — and their known breeding range has greatly shrunk, now concentrated in southwest Florida. They do show up in north Florida and Georgia on occasion when young males travel north looking to escape social pressure from adult males. Biologists have found their tracks not far south of Okefenokee. One panther made it almost to Atlanta before it was shot by a hunter. Large mammals such as the Florida panther and black bear literally need room to roam in order to hunt, breed and thrive. Such journeys across the state of Florida are possible thanks to the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a statewide system of interconnected wildlife habitat that turns 15 this year. The Florida Wildlife Corridor built on conservation efforts that date back to the 1980s and 1990s, when researchers from the University of Florida, including the two of us and our mentor Larry Harris, created maps of existing and proposed conservation areas that interlinked across the state. Today, the Florida Wildlife Corridor spans 18 million acres – about half of the state. Ten million of these acres are protected from development.

Project cancellations threaten US clean energy manufacturing boom by Christa Marshall at E&E News. The U.S. clean energy manufacturing industry saw a record number of project cancellations in the first quarter of the year, as companies grappled with the “rising headwinds” of tariffs and potential tax credit rollbacks, according to a new report. At the same time, the Inflation Reduction Act helped spur $9.4 billion in new electric vehicle, battery and renewable manufacturing projects from January to March, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a project of research firm Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. The analysis underscores competing narratives shaping the energy sector: the IRA is sparking a build out of U.S. factories, but that growth is at risk of hitting a wall.

India and Pakistan already sweltering in ‘new normal’ heatwave conditions by Penelope MacRae at The Guardian. In Delhi, where spring usually offers a short spell of mild temperatures, thermometers have risen past 40C in April – “up to 5C above the seasonal average” – according to a report by ClimaMeter, a platform that tracks extreme weather events. “Human-driven climate change” is to blame for the “dangerous” kind of heat seen in recent weeks, it said. “These spring heatwaves are not anomalies. They’re signals. We need to move beyond awareness into action,” said Gianmarco Mengaldo, a climate expert at the National University of Singapore and co-author of the report.

WEEKLY BLUESKY POST

ECOPINION

Can US courts save the Earth? by Jessica McKenzie at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. With Democratic minorities in the House and Senate, and virtually no resistance from Republicans in Congress, Trump’s agenda has rolled out with only the judicial branch as a “last bulwark” against it. Some have countered that the bulwark is leaky or partly collapsed, and “courts alone can’t save us.” Even so, lawsuits against various parts and officials of the Trump administration continue to pile up. The question is whether the administration will prompt a constitutional crisis by ignoring or defying judicial decisions it dislikes. Whether the United States is already in a constitutional crisis, or merely rapidly approaching one, is a matter of vigorous debate. Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said this debate hinges on whether the Trump administration must defy the Supreme Court to launch a full-blown constitutional crisis, or if defying a lower court is enough.

Trump’s Disastrous First 100 Days for Food, Farming, and Fairness by Kate Anderson at Civil Eats. Over the past 100 days, President Trump and his collaborators have taken a sledgehammer to the federal government and the U.S. scientific enterprise. Their sweeping actions are not about reform or improvement—they are about dismantling the institutions, expertise, and public safeguards that uphold democracy, protect health and the environment, and ensure that America’s farmers, workers, and communities can thrive fairly and securely. The fiscal, social, and environmental costs of these actions will overwhelm any claim to efficiency. The cancellation and freezing of critical funding for climate resilience, equity programs, and research have sent shockwaves through the nation’s food and farm system. Combined with mass firings, these actions leave Americans more vulnerable to pollution, climate disasters, and corporate exploitation. To understand the scale and implications of these actions, recall where we stood before Trump returned to office. After more than a century of agricultural policy dominated by corporate consolidation and environmental degradation, there were signs of transformation. Advocates, scientists, and farmers were successfully pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support a fairer and more ecologically sound food system.

The International Finance Corporation’s Dubious Defense of Factory Farming by Peter Stevenson at Common Dreams. The International Finance Corporation website states that it is a myth that industrial animal production is bad for food security. The truth, however, is that factory farming diverts food away from people; it is dependent on feeding grain — corn, wheat, barley — to animals who convert these crops very inefficiently into meat and milk. For every 100 calories of human-edible cereals fed to animals, just 7-27 calories (depending on the species) enter the human food chain as meat. And for every 100 grams of protein in human-edible cereals fed to animals, only 13-37 grams of protein enter the human food chain as meat. The scale of this is massive. International Grains Council data show that 45% of global grain production is used as animal feed, while 76% of world soy production is used to feed animals. The inefficiency of doing this is recognized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which states that it is “essential to fight food insecurity and malnutrition … Reducing the use of much of the world's grain production to feed animals and producing more food for direct human consumption can significantly contribute to this objective.”

How citizen activists are scoring wins in the fight against forever chemicals by Mariah Blake at The New York Times. Forever chemicals have been increasingly recognized as one of the most significant environmental threats of our time. They persist in the environment for millenniums. They spread rapidly through air and water, polluting ecosystems and human bodies everywhere, and there they stay, with the potential to damage cells and alter our DNA. The best studied of these chemicals have been linked to obesity, infertility, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, immune suppression and life-threatening pregnancy complications, among other maladies. But unlike another daunting environmental threat, climate change, forever chemicals have spawned a forceful bipartisan response, driven by a network of unlikely activists. Across the country, thousands of ordinary Americans whose lives have been upended by PFAS — firefighters, farmers, factory workers, veterans and suburban moms — are fighting to turn off the tap on these chemicals. Their efforts, which often differ from those of conventional environmental groups, have helped ignite a chain reaction that has led to numerous congressional hearings and hundreds of bipartisan bills in Washington and statehouses, as well as federal regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency has set near-zero caps on several PFAS in drinking water.

Spiral of silence: climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realize it? by Damian Carrington at The Guardian. The research started with a simple goal, says Prof Teodora Boneva, at the University of Bonn, Germany, who with colleagues undertook the experiments: “We wanted to make a difference to the world. So we asked ourselves, as social scientists and economists: what kind of research can we do?” Their biggest result was a huge, globe-spanning survey that revealed the remarkable fact that people across the world are united in wanting action to fight the climate crisis but remain a silent majority, because they wrongly think only a minority share their views. [...]  The team found 89% of people across the world wanted their national governments to do more to fight global heating. More than two-thirds said they were willing to give 1% of their income to fight the climate crisis. Crucially, however, they thought only a minority of other people – 43% – would be willing to do the same. The survey involved 130,000 people in 125 countries, which account for 96% of the world’s carbon emissions, and was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Trump’s Cuts Are Making Natural Disasters Deadlier by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic.  Over the last two months, Arkanasas has been pummeled by “once-in-a-generation” flooding and dozens of tornadoes. The Trump administration has denied a request from Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders—who served as Trump’s press secretary from 2017 to 2019—to make a major disaster declaration, which would unlock federal response and recovery resources that would help individuals and local governments deal with the damage and rebuild. With red and blue states facing similar denials—the administration has rebuffed requests from Washington state and from North Carolina’s Democratic governor—the White House’s message to disaster-ravaged states has been clear: You’re on your own. The staff and budget reductions and sweeping changes that have defined the administration’s first 100 days will likely make future disasters even worse.

OTHER GREEN STUFF

Thermal imaging shows xAI lied about supercomputer pollution, group says • Agroforestry Projects Across US Now Stymied by Federal Cuts • China’s Solar and Wind Capacity Surpasses That of Mostly Coal-Based Thermal Energy for the First Time • Global Warming Could Cause Wetlands to Emit More Methane, Study Finds • Switzerland Pilots First Solar Power Plant on Active Railway Tracks • National Science Foundation accelerates purge of research grants • USGS Water Data Centers May Soon Close, Threatening States’ Water Management • Trump’s EPA Kills Grant to Climate Nonprofit Over Its Support for Palestine • The smell of toasted rock could spell victory for geothermal energy •  Agroforestry Projects Across US Now Stymied by Federal Cuts