Internal government e-mails show DOE scientists criticized the report and discussions committee members had about government climate policy.

Happy hump day everyone. I am working on a comprehensive post about the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting last week. I also have some family events the next couple of days — so that full post on the meeting might take a day or two. In the meantime, I wanted to post a short follow-up on an important federal climate science story that I talked about last year.

Back in September, I posted about the disbanding of the Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Working Group (CWG) due to potential violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a law that sets requirements for federal agencies who want to obtain policy input from non-federal employees. The CWG was a five-person panel of scientists selected by DOE Secretary Chris Wright to develop a controversial climate change report that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to use to repeal its endangerment finding that global warming is a threat to human health. More than 100 climate scientists then released their own coordinated report rebutting much of the DOE report.

On Friday, federal Judge William Young ruled that the DOE did in fact violate FACA with its creation of the CWG and how it was operated. As part of the proceedings surrounding this legal case, internal government e-mails sent by and about the CWG were released, and yesterday Politico published an article detailing what transpired at DOE within and surrounding the committee based on those e-mails. This included a number of negative reviews of the CWG report by DOE scientists that mirrored many of the concerns that would eventually be raised by the report issued by external scientists after the CWG report release.

The department’s own internal reviewers took issue with the document, which was written by five climate contrarians from outside DOE who were handpicked by Wright. The latest revelations could further undermine the credibility of the DOE report, which is at the center of efforts by the Trump administration to roll back federal climate regulations. A team of outside climate scientists has dismissed its findings as “misleading or fundamentally incorrect” — in part because the report touts the “supposed broad benefits of carbon dioxide,” a main driver of global warming. One DOE reviewer echoed that opinion and said it was “misleading” for the report to talk about how climate change could boost plant growth without mentioning its other drawbacks. Another comment described the report’s criticism of climate modeling as an “unjustified (and at worst a biased) judgement.” A third noted it is “misleading to state that the aggregate sea-level rise trend in U.S. tide gauges is not accelerating.”

Additional e-mails show that committee members discussed government climate policy and how their report could influence aspects of it, including the EPA’s endangerment finding. I encourage you to read the full Politico article for the details about the DOE e-mails and their contents.

Per reporting from Ars Technica, the administration’s position after Friday’s ruling by Young appears to be that since the CWG has been disbanded already that essentially the ruling is meaningless. However, if and when the EPA repeals the endangerment finding based on the CWG report, the repeal will almost certainly end up in court and the finding that the CWG was illegal and in violation of the FACA seems likely to play a key role in whatever legal proceedings result. Hence, it seems unlikely that this will be the last we hear about the DOE’s short lived Climate Working Group.