The Trump administration has appointed a critic of mainstream climate science to oversee the federal government\u2019s flagship report on how climate change affects the United States.<\/p>\n
Matthew M. Wielicki is a former geochemist at the University of Alabama with no formal training in climate science. On social media and podcasts, he frequently argues that the mainstream scientific view on climate change is too dire and overlooks the positive effects of a warming planet.<\/p>\n
Now Dr. Wielicki is leading the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which compiles the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping report required by Congress that details the effects of rising temperatures in every region of the country. Policymakers, communities and industries use it to plan for the future.<\/p>\n
The report is typically published every few years. But last spring, the administration dismissed hundreds of scientists<\/a> and experts who had been working on the next update.<\/p>\n The last climate assessment<\/a>, published in 2023, found that human-caused global warming was supercharging wildfires in the West<\/a>, droughts in the Great Plains and heat waves from coast to coast.<\/p>\n President Trump has called climate change a \u201choax,\u201d and his administration has dismantled climate initiatives across the federal government. Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has called for overhauling the Global Change Research Program, saying its findings have been used to justify environmental lawsuits that constrained government actions.<\/p>\n Politico first reported<\/a> on Dr. Wielicki\u2019s appointment. Reached by phone on Friday, Dr. Wielicki said he could not speak to reporters without permission from the White House, which declined to make him available.<\/p>\n In an unsigned statement that referred to the program by its abbreviation, the White House said, \u201cFor too long, the U.S.G.C.R.P. has been used as a vehicle for political agendas instead of sound science. We look forward to restoring the U.S.G.C.R.P. and ensuring it fulfills its legal mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n Early in his career, Dr. Wielicki helped write several papers about craters that formed when the Earth collided with meteorites or other bodies, as well as the geological history of the Himalayas<\/a>. He has not published peer-reviewed studies on climate science, a separate field.<\/p>\n In 2023, Dr. Wielicki resigned from his untenured position as an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Alabama. He wrote on social media<\/a> at the time that earth scientists had embraced a \u201cfalse \u2018climate emergency\u2019 narrative\u201d and that academia had been overrun with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.<\/p>\n Since then, Dr. Wielicki has frequently described himself as a \u201cprofessor-in-exile.\u201d He often criticized climate scientists on his former podcast, \u201cWeekly With Wielicki,\u201d and in videos produced by the conservative educational platform PragerU.<\/p>\n \u201cClimate is a very convenient way for governments and institutions to get involved in nearly every aspect of a citizen\u2019s life,\u201d he declared in a PragerU video in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n On a 2024 podcast episode<\/a>, Dr. Wielicki argued that climate scientists had exaggerated the negative effects of warming, including the impact of sea level rise on coastal areas.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we start to weigh the first 1.1 degrees of warming over the last 170 or so years, I argue that if you take an objective look at this, the negative side has really fallen apart,\u201d he said. \u201cThe negative effects are very minor. The sea level change we deal with relatively easily. We haven\u2019t had to move coastal cities. We don\u2019t see mass migrations. We don\u2019t see island nations underwater.\u201d<\/p>\n The planet has already warmed roughly 1.4 degrees Celsius<\/a> (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, on average. Global sea levels have risen about 8 to 9 inches since the 19th century, with some parts of the U.S. coast seeing even higher rates, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some regions of the Southeast and Gulf Coast have seen a five to tenfold increase in coastal flooding at high tide as a result, the agency has said. Globally, rising seas could inundate large swaths of low-lying island nations this century under even moderate warming, according to the most recent report<\/a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international assessment compiled by hundreds of scientists around the world. Some smaller coastal villages<\/a> have already relocated<\/a> to higher ground.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that accelerating sea level rise is already having impacts all around the world, including along the U.S. East Coast,\u201d said Rachel Cleetus, the senior policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need good science to help us get ready for these impacts that are coming our way instead of putting our heads in the sand and denying it\u2019s happening, and as a result, putting more people\u2019s lives and safety at risk,\u201d said Dr. Cleetus, who was among the scientists the Trump administration dismissed from working on the next climate assessment.<\/p>\n At times, Dr. Wielicki has sparred on social media with climate scientists and meteorologists who have discussed global warming in their forecasts. Last year, for instance, he criticized Chris Gloninger, a television weatherman who had resigned from a station<\/a> in Iowa after receiving a death threat from a viewer who was angry about his climate coverage.<\/p>\n Chris Gloninger, the television meteorologist.Credit…Cassandra Klos for The New York Times<\/p>\n \u201cThis guy has literally made his entire social media presence about getting a couple of angry emails from a 60-year-old,\u201d Dr. Wielicki wrote of Mr. Gloninger, adding, \u201cHow embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview, Mr. Gloninger said that Dr. Wielicki \u201chas a track record of mocking, harassing and belittling scientists in the field, and I\u2019m just one of his victims.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to questions about criticism of Dr. Wielicki or plans for the next National Climate Assessment. In a post on X<\/a> on Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote that Dr. Wielicki \u201cis an honest scientist who follows the data wherever it leads.\u201d<\/p>\n Meade Krosby, a principal scientist at the University of Washington\u2019s Climate Impacts Group and a former contributor to the assessment who was also dismissed by the Trump administration, said she worried that the next version of the report would include false or misleading information.<\/p>\n \u201cCommunities are experiencing unprecedented heat and wildfires and floods and other climate risks that are being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, and they really need credible tools and resources right now to help them respond, not a collection of climate denial talking points,\u201d Dr. Krosby said.<\/p>\n But Myron Ebell, a prominent critic of mainstream climate science, said he was optimistic that the next assessment would take a contrarian viewpoint.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going be based more on data and scientific research and less on junk models,\u201d said Mr. Ebell, the chairman of the American Lands Council, a group that pushes for securing local control of federal land in the West.<\/p>\n The U.S. Global Change Research Program was established by Congress in 1990 and coordinates environmental research among 15 federal agencies.<\/p>\n During Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, his administration published the fourth climate assessment on the day after Thanksgiving in 2018, in an apparent attempt to minimize attention. But The New York Times and other media outlets still highlighted its conclusion that global warming posed an imminent threat<\/a> to the economy, environment and public health. The Biden administration released the fifth climate assessment in 2023.<\/p>\n