Latest news with #climateassessment
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Trump officials axed an online portal for its key climate report. Read it in full here
The future of the US government's premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades. Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life. But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed. A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. The 2023 assessment, which is more than 1,800 pages long, warns that the 'effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States'. It adds that '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.' Read in full the fifth national climate assessment here (it can take a few seconds for the document to load) Nasa said it is in the process of uploading the voluminous reports on to its servers, although the administration did not respond to questions over how, or in what form, future climate assessments will be conducted after the shuttering of the research effort. 'The USCGRP website is no longer active,' a Nasa spokesperson said, in reference to the US Global Change Research Program, a federally funded program to coordinate climate research. 'All preexisting reports will be hosted on the Nasa website, ensuring continuity of reporting.' Researchers who have worked, for free, to produce the reports expressed concern about the future direction of the assessments under Trump, who has called the climate crisis 'a giant scam' and 'bullshit' in the past. As president, Trump has removed mentions of climate from federal websites, scrapped research work on environmental issues, and cut staff and funding for weather forecasting and climate agencies, and has just signed a major Republican spending bill that stymies clean energy while providing greater support for the fossil fuels that are causing dangerous global heating. 'This was a labor of love from scientists to the people; these assessments were written for the public and policymakers to make decisions to keep people safe and ensure the food and water and infrastructure we need,' said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy and Texas Tech University. 'I felt very sad to see the website was taken down, because so many people rely on this information. I'm also worried that what will come next might meet the letter of the law without its spirit. It could be something full of misinformation, it could ask a large language AI model why Americans shouldn't worry about climate change. We just don't know.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The synthesis of information in the national climate assessments is only rivaled in its authoritative and comprehensive nature by the UN's own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, Hayhoe said, and its loss may compound the impact of removing other sources of climate information and the forecasting of worsening extreme weather events, such as the deadly flood that hit Texas last week. 'It's alarmed me to see this gradual attrition of ability as climate change is happening faster than any time in human history,' said Hayhoe, who has been an author or lead author on assessments stretching back to the George W Bush administration. 'We are getting supersized extreme weather and that means we need more information, not less – we need more expertise, more data collection. Unfortunately we are seeing resources being pulled back just as our vulnerability increases.' Environmental groups have vowed to launch legal action to fully resurrect the climate assessments while Trump's political opponents have also attacked the removal. 'Burying the legally mandated climate assessment won't change the fact that climate change is already destroying lives and livelihoods, but Trump's war against the truth will impede state and local governments' ability to prepare for and protect families from climate change-fueled disasters,' said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Trump officials axed an online portal for its key climate report. Read it in full here
The future of the US government's premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades. Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life. But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed. A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. The 2023 assessment, which is more than 1,800 pages long, warns that the 'effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States'. It adds that '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.' Read in full the fifth national climate assessment here (it can take a few seconds for the document to load) Nasa said it is in the process of uploading the voluminous reports on to its servers, although the administration did not respond to questions over how, or in what form, future climate assessments will be conducted after the shuttering of the research effort. 'The USCGRP website is no longer active,' a Nasa spokesperson said, in reference to the US Global Change Research Program, a federally funded program to coordinate climate research. 'All preexisting reports will be hosted on the Nasa website, ensuring continuity of reporting.' Researchers who have worked, for free, to produce the reports expressed concern about the future direction of the assessments under Trump, who has called the climate crisis 'a giant scam' and 'bullshit' in the past. As president, Trump has removed mentions of climate from federal websites, scrapped research work on environmental issues, and cut staff and funding for weather forecasting and climate agencies, and has just signed a major Republican spending bill that stymies clean energy while providing greater support for the fossil fuels that are causing dangerous global heating. 'This was a labor of love from scientists to the people; these assessments were written for the public and policymakers to make decisions to keep people safe and ensure the food and water and infrastructure we need,' said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy and Texas Tech University. 'I felt very sad to see the website was taken down, because so many people rely on this information. I'm also worried that what will come next might meet the letter of the law without its spirit. It could be something full of misinformation, it could ask a large language AI model why Americans shouldn't worry about climate change. We just don't know.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The synthesis of information in the national climate assessments is only rivaled in its authoritative and comprehensive nature by the UN's own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, Hayhoe said, and its loss may compound the impact of removing other sources of climate information and the forecasting of worsening extreme weather events, such as the deadly flood that hit Texas last week. 'It's alarmed me to see this gradual attrition of ability as climate change is happening faster than any time in human history,' said Hayhoe, who has been an author or lead author on assessments stretching back to the George W Bush administration. 'We are getting supersized extreme weather and that means we need more information, not less – we need more expertise, more data collection. Unfortunately we are seeing resources being pulled back just as our vulnerability increases.' Environmental groups have vowed to launch legal action to fully resurrect the climate assessments while Trump's political opponents have also attacked the removal. 'Burying the legally mandated climate assessment won't change the fact that climate change is already destroying lives and livelihoods, but Trump's war against the truth will impede state and local governments' ability to prepare for and protect families from climate change-fueled disasters,' said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator.
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Key climate change reports removed from US government websites
Legally mandated US national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their back yards from a warming world. Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the US Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within Nasa to comply with the law, but gave no further details. Searches for the assessments on Nasa websites did not turn them up. Nasa did not respond to requests for information. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries. 'It's critical for decision-makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States,' said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona climate scientist, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report. 'It's a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available,' Jacobs added. 'This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people's access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts.' Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was Barack Obama's science adviser and whose office directed the assessments, said that after the 2014 edition, he visited governors, mayors and other local officials who told him how useful the 841-page report had been. It helped them decide whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs, he said. 'This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who's trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,' said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report. Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in Noaa's library. Nasa's open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site. The most recent report, issued in 2023, includes an interactive atlas that zooms down to the county level. It found that climate change is affecting people's security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk. The 1990 Global Change Research Act requires a national climate assessment every four years and directs the president to establish an interagency United States Global Change Research Program. In the spring, the Trump administration told the volunteer authors of the next climate assessment that their services weren't needed and ended the contract with the private firm that helps coordinate the website and report. Additionally, Noaa's main website was recently forwarded to a different Noaa website. Social media and blogs at Noaa and Nasa about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated. 'It's part of a horrifying big picture,' Holdren said. 'It's just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure.' The national assessments are more useful than international climate reports put out by the UN every seven or so years because they are more localized and more detailed, Hayhoe and Jacobs said. The national reports are not only peer-reviewed by other scientists, but examined for accuracy by the National Academy of Sciences, federal agencies, the staff and the public. Hiding the reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said. It's also dangerous for the country, Hayhoe said, comparing it to steering a car on a curving road by only looking through the rearview mirror: 'And now, more than ever, we need to be looking ahead to do everything it takes to make it around that curve safely. It's like our windshield's being painted over.'
The Verge
01-07-2025
- Science
- The Verge
The Trump administration deleted a major climate resource.
The Trump administration deleted a major climate resource. It pulled down the federal website that houses national climate assessments, reports that show how climate change affects every region of the US and that have been published every four years or so since 2000. Researchers working on the next national assessment were dismissed in April.
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Key climate change reports removed from US government websites
Legally mandated US national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their back yards from a warming world. Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the US Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within Nasa to comply with the law, but gave no further details. Searches for the assessments on Nasa websites did not turn them up. Nasa did not respond to requests for information. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries. 'It's critical for decision makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States,' said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report. 'It's a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available,' Jacobs said. 'This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people's access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts.' Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama's science adviser and whose office directed the assessments, said after the 2014 edition he visited governors, mayors and other local officials who told him how useful the 841-page report was. It helped them decide whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs, he said. 'This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who's trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,' said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report. Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in Noaa's library. Nasa's open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site. The most recent report, issued in 2023, included an interactive atlas that zoomed down to the county level. It found that climate change is affecting people's security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk. The 1990 Global Change Research Act requires a national climate assessment every four years and directs the president to establish an interagency United States Global Change Research Program. In the spring, the Trump administration told the volunteer authors of the next climate assessment that their services weren't needed and ended the contract with the private firm that helps coordinate the website and report. Additionally, Noaa's main website was recently forwarded to a different Noaa website. Social media and blogs at Noaa and Nasa about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated. 'It's part of a horrifying big picture,' Holdren said. 'It's just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure.' The national assessments are more useful than international climate reports put out by the UN every seven or so years because they are more localized and more detailed, Hayhoe and Jacobs said. The national reports are not only peer reviewed by other scientists, but examined for accuracy by the National Academy of Sciences, federal agencies, the staff and the public. Hiding the reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said. And it's dangerous for the country, Hayhoe said, comparing it to steering a car on a curving road by only looking through the rearview mirror: 'And now, more than ever, we need to be looking ahead to do everything it takes to make it around that curve safely. It's like our windshield's being painted over.'
