The Department of Energy has published a new report on climate science, which comes to very different conclusions than previous reports, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the US National Climate Assessments. Those previous reports were written by a large number of scientists and are representative of the larger community of climate scientists, while the new report was written by only five authors, who are extreme outliers in the larger community of climate scientists.

There are thousands of climate scientists and having worked in this area for more than 25 years I know many of them and I’m also familiar with the literature. As with any group of people there are differences of opinions and views among climate scientists. However, most are concerned about the ongoing effects of human-caused global warming and think it is a good idea to transition away from fossil fuels. But there are also scientists with views that are not broadly share by most others. For example, there are some who think that climate change will have catastrophic impacts in the near future and that fossil fuel use must be stopped immediately. On the other hand there are some who don’t think climate change will have much of an impact and that nothing should be done about it. The authors choosen for the new DOE report are from the latter group. In other words, the authors have not been choosen to get a representative view of the field but to emphasize a certain extreme viewpoint.

Because climate science is a complex topic there are many lines of evidence to consider. Some evidence, for example the recent bleaching of coral reefs in the tropics, have scientists who study those corals alarmed about their fate. Coral bleaching is affected by warm temperatures, which leads to expulsion of the coral’s symbiotic algea. Since those algea feed the corals their expulsion is detrimental to the coral’s health and it can lead to its death if bleaching events happen repeatedly. Corals are also negatively affected by ocean acidification, which compromises their ability to build their protective outer skeletons, which make up reefs. Future projections of corals reefs are dire. The most recent IPCC report suggests that most tropical coral reefs will disappear even if global warming is limited to 1.5 or 2 degrees C. However, the DOE report does not mention those projections or the observed bleaching events. Reading the DOE report one gets the impression that coral reefs are just fine. They write that “ancestors of modern coral first appeared about 245 million years ago. CO2 levels for more than 200 million years afterward were many times higher than they are today”, implying that corals are much more resillient than what coral scientists and the IPCC think, and concluding that “Much of the public discussion of the effects of ocean “acidification” on marine biota has been one-sided and exaggerated.”

Then there is evidence that indicates recovery of corals in some years. The DOE report cites a report by the Australian Institute of Marince Science (AIMS) from 2022 documenting coral recovery at the Great Barrier Reef, but it does not mention the dangers of ongoing warming for the future of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) even though those are clearly stated in the same AIMS report: “The GBR remains exposed to predicted consequences of climate change, including more frequent and intense marine heat waves” and “the increasing frequency and extent of mass bleaching events in recent years poses a significant risk to the state of reefs in the GBR”. Moreover, the AIMS website documents the current bleaching event as the worst on record, in stark contrast to the rosy picture painted by the DOE report.

Another example is hurricanes. Climate scientists have documented that the frequency of hurricanes does not increase and is not expected to increase with global warming. The reason is that there are opposing effects of warmer surface water, which make hurricanes more powerful, and changes in wind shear in the atmosphere, that reduce the chances of hurricane formation. This is what the DOE report highlights in its executive summary: “claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts are not supported by U.S. historical data”. However, we also know that the frequency of the most powerful hurricanes is projected to increase, and that the impacts of hurricanes will become worse due to human-caused climate change due to increased precipitation and higher sea level, which increases flooding. This evidence is not mentioned in the executive summary.

There are many more examples of this kind of “cherry picking” in the report as documented in more detail here and the general problems with the report are discussed here.

In summary, the DOE report highlights only selected evidence that supports the view of the authors and the current administration that climate change is not a big deal or even a “hoax”, while ignoring evidence that does not align with their view.