US Government Dismisses Everyone Working On The National Climate Assessment

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The failed president of the United States has taken another step toward making fossil fuels the official religion of America. If we had any doubt that oil, gas, and coal industries are in complete control of the US government, they were erased on April 28, 2025 when everyone working on the next National Climate Assessment due in 2028 got an email saying the scope of the report “is currently being re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed. “We are now releasing all current assessment participants from their roles, As plans develop for the assessment, there may be future opportunities to contribute or engage. Thank you for your service.”

“This is as close as it gets to a termination of the assessment,” Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who specializes in climate adaptation and was a co-author on the last climate assessment, told the New York Times. “If you get rid of all the people involved, nothing’s moving forward.”

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is an initiative within the US federal government focused on climate change science, Wikipedia says. It was formed under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The overarching goal “is to enhance the ability of the U.S. to anticipate, mitigate, and adapt to changes in the global environment. The vision is to advance an inclusive, broad based, and sustained process for assessing and communicating scientific knowledge of the impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities associated with a changing global climate in support of decision-making across the U.S.”

The NCA informs the nation about already observed changes, the current status of the climate, and anticipated trends for the future; integrates scientific information from multiple sources and sectors to highlight key findings and significant gaps in our knowledge; establishes consistent methods for evaluating climate impacts in the US in the context of broader global change, and provides input to Federal science priorities and is used by US citizens, communities, and businesses as they create more sustainable and environmentally sound plans for the nation’s future.

Dismantling The National Climate Assessment Team

The Times reports that the current administration has already seriously disrupted the process by canceling a major contract with ICF International, a consulting firm that had been supplying most of the technical support and staffing for the Global Change Research Program that coordinates the work of hundreds of contributors. America’s failed president has frequently dismissed the risks of global warming and has made Russell Vought, the primary author of Project 2025, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to the most recent US election, Vought wrote that the next president should “reshape” the Global Change Research Program because its scientific reports on climate change are often used as the basis for environmental lawsuits that constrained federal government actions. He has called the government’s largest climate research unit, a division inside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a source of “climate alarmism.”

Of course, we thought restraining governmental actions was what the current administration was all about, but it turns out it is only interested in restraining actions that have a negative impact on the “Drill, Baby, Drill” ethos than protecting American citizens from the droughts, wildfires, flooding, rising oceans, and destructive storms associated with a warming environment. These fossil fuel people are like addicts who, as Robert Downey, Jr. once said, have placed a loaded gun in their mouth only to find they like the taste of the metal. It is fair to say the fossil fuel industry has become a cancer on America.

In February, climate scientists submitted a detailed outline of the next National Climate Assessment to the White House for an initial review, but that review has been on hold and the agency comment period has been postponed. In theory, the NCA is mandated by Congress, but most of the members o the majority in Congress today have abandoned all their scruples — and their pledges to voters — in order to curry favor with the Madman of Mar-A-Loco and his henchmen.

Writing A New Report Without Scientists

Some scientists fear the so-called administration may decide to write an entirely new report that downplays the risks of rising temperatures or contradicts established climate science. “There may well be a sixth National Climate Assessment,” Meade Krosby, a senior scientist at the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and a contributor to the assessment, told The Times. “The question is whether it is going to reflect credible science and be of real use to our communities as they prepare for climate change.”

Scientists previously involved in preparing climate assessments say the report is invaluable for understanding how climate change would affect daily life in the United States. “It takes that global issue and brings it closer to us,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said this month. “If I care about food or water or transportation or insurance or my health, this is what climate change means to me if I live in the Southwest or the Great Plains. That’s the value.” It should be noted that Hayhoe is also a Christian Evangelist, so her words should have special significance for other Evangelicals.

Many state and local policymakers, as well as private businesses, rely on the assessment to understand how climate change is affecting different regions of the United States and how they can try to adapt. While there have been no drastic changes in environmental science since the last NCA in 2023, Dr. Keenan of Tulane said there has been a steady progression of research on what communities can do to prepare for worsening wildfires, higher sea levels and other problems exacerbated by rising temperatures. Decision makers forced to refer to the last assessment would be relying on outdated information on what adaptation and mitigation measures really work, he and other scientists have said.

A Cornerstone

“We’d be losing the cornerstone report that is supposed to communicate to the public the risks we face with climate change and how we can move forward,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University, who was an author of the chapter pertaining to the southwestern part of the United States. “It’s pretty devastating.”

There is often an accidental relationship between popular culture and reality. Many CleanTechnica readers will recall the ending of the movie Raiders Of The Lost Ark, in which the main character, the undisputed world authority on the Ark of the Covenant, is told it is being studied by “top men.”

That is likely what will happen with the National Climate Assessment now that it has been taken over by avowed climate deniers who think of climate scientists as vermin. Ignorance is the hallmark of the current US government and that deliberate ignorance will have negative consequences for every American as well as many in the world community. This is yet another step on the path to making America loathed and irrelevant.