Bummer: New Trump Climate Office Has Climate Realist At The Head

The people who refuse to practice what they preach are Upset

The administration has a new climate change office. It’s headed by a climate critic.

The Trump administration has reconstituted a governmentwide program that tracks how climate change is transforming the country, after having gutted it last year as part of a purge of programs that didn’t line up with its worldview.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program is now headed by Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist, according to his public postings on social media and confirmed by a second person familiar with the program, granted anonymity over fears of reprisal.

Wielicki, who calls himself a “professor in exile” and who frequently critiques climate science on social media, will be in charge of the program’s primary product, the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive report released every four years that shows how American infrastructure, lives and the economy are affected by climate change.

Reached by phone, Wielicki, who has been soliciting ideas on X for what he should include in the next version of the assessment, said he’d like to speak about his work but only if the White House allows. The White House did not make him available for an interview, but sent a statement.

“For too long, the USGCRP has been used as a vehicle for political agendas instead of sound science,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to restoring the USGCRP and ensuring it fulfills its legal mandate.”

The cultists Demanded that the NCA be completed. They sued. And now they got their wish, but, not in the way they thought.

Judith Curry, one of the scientists selected by Wright to author the DOE report, said the last version of the assessment “was all but useless” because it relied too heavily on extreme emissions scenarios. She said the forthcoming report would avoid that and expected that it would be an expansion of the work started by the DOE report.

Curry said she would “provide high-level advice” to help craft the next version of the assessment.

This will not be the “we’re all doomed unless we give up our money and freedom to government” type reports.