Trump taps climate skeptic to run US government’s flagship climate report

The Trump administration has tapped a former geochemist who has railed against “climate alarmism” and calls himself an “Earth science professor-in-exile” to oversee the federal government’s flagship report about climate impacts on the US.

Matthew Wielicki, who lacks formal training in climate science, will now lead the nation’s Global Change Research Program, which federal officials have gutted during Trump’s second term.

In his new position, Wielicki will lead the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report detailing how Americans are affected by the climate crisis.

The appointment was first reported by Politico.

The assessments are required to be produced every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, but last year, the Trump administration shut down the online portal to access the five editions published since 2000.

Wielicki is a climate skeptic who frequently criticizes established climate science online, including in videos by rightwing YouTube channel PragerU.

“If every extreme weather event ends up being attributed to climate change in one way or another, is it really attribution science ... or just confirmation bias dressed up as science? A hypothesis that can explain everything risks explaining nothing,” he posted on social media on Thursday, responding to a scientific assessment showing Europe’s recent heatwave would have been impossible if not for the climate crisis.

In 2023, Wielicki said people who believe in climate science are “being sold snake oil”. And on his blog, Irrational Fear, he cast doubt on the conclusions of earlier National Climate Assessments, and argued that it is not carbon dioxide, but increasing solar radiation, that has caused atmospheric warming.

Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson said officials were “committed to using the best scientific information to inform public policy”.

“For too long, the [US Global Change Research Program] has been used as a vehicle for political agendas instead of sound science,” the person said. “We look forward to restoring the USGCRP and ensuring it fulfills its legal mandate.”

But Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientist at the science advocacy organization the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: “Our country cannot afford a compromised USGCRP or NCA that peddles politically motivated disinformation echoing fossil fuel industry talking points.”

“Reconstituting the USGCRP only to place the National Climate Assessment under the auspices of an utterly unqualified climate science denier would jeopardize the integrity of one of the nation’s most important climate science resources,” said Martinez.

Wielicki left his post as a geosciences professor at the University of Alabama three years ago, saying on social media that the profession was “no longer worthy of my efforts”.

“Contributing to this is the earth science communities silence on the false ‘climate emergency’ narrative,” he wrote. “Members of the community routinely discuss the mental health effects of climate catastrophism but dare not speak out ... lest they lose their positions and research funds.”

His appointment comes as part of a broader attack on climate research by the Trump administration. Since re-entering office last year, officials have shuttered data-collection offices and climate research programs. Last summer, the energy department also published a report written by five climate skeptics that denied climate science.

The president also obtained record donations on the campaign trail from the planet-warming fossil fuel industry.

Last year, two major US scientific societies – the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union – said they would produce peer-reviewed research to fill the gaps left after the Trump administration gutted the Global Change Research program. The announcement came days after officials dismissed all contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment.

“It’s incumbent on us to ensure our communities, our neighbors, our children are all protected and prepared for the mounting risks of climate change,” American Geophysical Union president Brandon Jones said at the time.