I only read this post today. I naturally went over to realclimate.org to see if they had mentioned the DOE Climate Working Group report. They have a post
"From 2025 to 2050, the world would emit >900 gigatons of carbon dioxide, assuming constant 2025 emissions, and ~700 gigatons assuming emissions are cut in half by 2050.3 That means that the 2021 EPA regulations would reduce global emissions by ~0.3% (assuming constant emissions) or ~0.4% (assuming emissions are halved). I posted these numbers on X, expecting some pushback, I received none. I welcome alternative views in the comments."
Simple fact, these are the experts I trust for their track record for at least 20 years. Simply look at the blue states and the corrupt, government financed NGOs that took this to the Supreme Court. Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and SPLC just for starters! Look at the ruling "tailpipe emmissions". CO2 is plant food, without which we would not exist. The "endangerment finding" is pure propaganda dreamed up by James Hansen, John Holdren, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt among hundreds of well paid "scientists" who held onto positions of power at NOAA and NASA for decades. It will eventually destroy this nation, the Chinese are surging through coal fired plants and nuclear +30% of global CO2 emissions. And ignoring 70-80% of greenhouse warming with H2O - if "they" did this they'd be laughed at long ago.
The IPCC was formed by a global warming millionaire about +30 years ago, and is now under control of a complete nutter who controls the "Summary for Policy Makers".
There is some great science in the papers among many questionable papers but I lost faith in this organization a long time ago.
Just the opinion of a 40 year Chemical Engineer who has consulted around the world, specializing in mining and metals extraction. I am disappointed in your support of any part of the endangerment finding.
Thanks for doing this review. I am plowing through the document now. While I realize that it will be impossible to deal with all of the comments, I would suggest that if you could also include a consideration of the critiques of key public commentaries (Zeke Hausfather published one yesterday, I believe), that would be hugely helpful. Perhaps what I am looking for is a sort of referee (an "honest broker"!) to mediate the arguments of the two side.
After James Hansen "stagecrafter" Senator Tim Wirth's, "We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy" to EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard's 2013, “Let’s say that scientists several decades from now said, 'We were wrong, it’s not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of the things you have to do to combat climate change?” why relax your grip on the "Archimedes lever to move the world", the ultimate power of "do as we say or you, your children and the planet will die" which has only become more important as the means to an end?
UN Environment Program founder, parent of the IPCC, oil millionaire and influencer extraordinaire Maurice Strong musing, "So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" No surprise a Marxist has no trust in the masses to follow the "correct path", so "Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions."
So Eisenhower's Farewell fear of "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.. ever present and ... gravely to be regarded." as "...the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery" and "public policy... became..the captive of a scientific-technological elite." was realized. Perhaps some people actually meant what they said?
I'm not sure why there are references to the endangerment finding in this article, I did not understand the DOE CWG to be linked (directly) to the Trump administration retraction of the endangerment finding.
I continue to appreciate Dr. Pielke's providing much-needed nuance to the climate conversation (though I'm using that term loosely it would seem). I'm quite concerned that so many well-meaning lay people are getting bad information, from people that they trust, and boy oh boy it sure feels like shouting into the void when I try to share alternatives to the current party line. I'm the least likely person to trust stuff from the current admin but in this case the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. I firmly believe that those bashing the CWG paper know their stuff, but I also believe that the authors do, and as Dr. Pielke has pointed out time and again, we CAN have a rational discussion about this stuff, but we have to want to do that. We need more voices like his. Thanks for the good work, and for making my subscription fee way more than worth it.
A not so simple question: when one considers cumulative emission scenarios, does that take into account residency time of CO2 in the atmosphere? After all, the literature seems quite undecided regarding how long a molecule of CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise) actually resides in the atmosphere. Also, since the Keeling curve shows little change in the amount of atmospheric CO2 breathing each year, this could only be the case if the ability of the environment to cycle CO2 is not saturated, but only mechanistically limited. This for me brings into question how much of the increase in CO2 we are observing is truly due to anthropogenic CO2 rather than natural sources, considering that anthropogenic CO2 is only about 5% of the total amount of natural planetary emissions (both physical and biological). It seems that the science is still very much unsettled, and we cannot take any of the emission / temperature scenarios home yet.
If a scientist accuses another of misconduct, what organization does he address? Who does he make the claim to? Who investigates the complaint? Who administers the reprimand or punishment or declares innocence? If a scientist makes a claim of misconduct, he had better back it up by producing more than just hot air. Misconduct should include plagiarism and falsification. It probably doesn't include disagreement.
My exposure to the matter of science fraud goes back to Climategate, and indeed there were accusations of misconduct. They were never investigated, only covered up. This cued me in to the power structure operating behind the scientists engaged in fraud. The little men that were doing the cherry picking, fake peer review, character assassination and outright science fraud at East Anglia were insignificant, and yet powerful people came out from behind the curtain to exonerate them. This was a "tell", as they say in poker, that some other game was afoot. We could only have an officious group of poseurs like IPCC fronting for fake science and all of the supposed "news" reporters barking about their work if it was understood that science fraud was the name of the game, that real science had been hijacked, and that anyone wanting a career and livelihood would be wise to go along. The money spigots gush cash for any false claim, and honest scientists like the five in question here do so from the perch of retirement or obscurity and ridicule.
The response to this report is very damning of climate science and demonstrates how political it has become. This rage can be explained by the financial and career need to hide the fact that climate science is a crude field dominated by theories that make incorrect assumptions such as the moist adiabat for the tropics. Further climate models have been a waste of hundreds of billions over the years but kept hundreds employed. In fact, just like CFD, more generation of numerical models and running them is pointless. What is really needed is better data and new theoretical insights. The former is not glamorous and the latter is risky for a career because the remaining problems are hard enough that years of effort might turn up little of importance.
The real problem as in many fields of science is that funding agencies both governmental and private have little scientific background and almost no understanding of complex systems and how very limited our ability to simulate them is. In my view, the best first step is exactly what Trump is doing, viz., a big defunding and a takeover of the agencies by skeptical people who are first rate scientists but have been outside the mainstream world. This report is authored by 5 such people. Others are Makary, Battacharia, Kuhldorf, and Ioannidis. These people have felt the full force of the witch hunting that has characterized science during the pandemic and long before in some fields like climate science.
Some of the responses have been laughable because of the scientific ignorance of those making the response.
RP - Would keep the Endangerment Finding in place as a matter of law, if not of science. Given the Supreme Court reversal of Chevron, I would prefer Congress get involved rather than letting them take the long-standing easy way out, leaving the "law" up to the EPA. If under the Air Pollution Control Act, the EPA Administrator can issue an Endangerment Finding, I see nothing wrong with a subsequent EPA Administrator retracting such a finding. If regulation is taking too long to eliminate Green House Gases, you suggest there are more efficient ways to "price carbon". OK, what are they? And who is leading this effort in Congress, in Davos, or in the UN?
RP - Footnote 1, "According to the IPCC AR6: Radiative forcing is: “The change in the net, downward minus upward, radiative flux (expressed in W m–2) due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the concentration of volcanic aerosols or in the output of the Sun." We have had focus on CO2 emissions for years now with little global effect. Perhaps the Kamchatka or Hunga Tonga volcanos will shed some light on this effect. There are also some serious scientists (Happer and Koutsoyiannis for example) beyond Curry et al of the DOE Climate Working Group who see ocean and atmospheric temperature increases leading CO2 increases chronologically, suggesting temperature has a causal effect on CO2 concentration, not vice versa. Should that be the case due to volcanos or the sun, I don't see what we puny humans are going to do about global warming. And should global regulation result in eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, my understanding is green will no longer be a common color and we may all starve for lack of nourishment. Let us be pragmatic and adapt to nature, not think we can control it. This is not an argument for ignoring pollution (air, water, or solid waste) where we can control it.
I also don't understand how the DOE CWG report and the endangerment finding are related (people talk about both at the same time). For me the endangerment finding is in the hands of lawyers parsing words that Congress wrote, and doesn't have much to do with what's going on in physical reality.
I only read this post today. I naturally went over to realclimate.org to see if they had mentioned the DOE Climate Working Group report. They have a post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/08/critiques-of-the-critical-review/
that refers to a Carbon Brief article:
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/doe-factcheck/index.html
where they show the report has more than 100 false or misleading claims. For this lay person, it is difficult to decide what to make of it.
"From 2025 to 2050, the world would emit >900 gigatons of carbon dioxide, assuming constant 2025 emissions, and ~700 gigatons assuming emissions are cut in half by 2050.3 That means that the 2021 EPA regulations would reduce global emissions by ~0.3% (assuming constant emissions) or ~0.4% (assuming emissions are halved). I posted these numbers on X, expecting some pushback, I received none. I welcome alternative views in the comments."
My goodness.
Any pushback since?
Simple fact, these are the experts I trust for their track record for at least 20 years. Simply look at the blue states and the corrupt, government financed NGOs that took this to the Supreme Court. Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and SPLC just for starters! Look at the ruling "tailpipe emmissions". CO2 is plant food, without which we would not exist. The "endangerment finding" is pure propaganda dreamed up by James Hansen, John Holdren, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt among hundreds of well paid "scientists" who held onto positions of power at NOAA and NASA for decades. It will eventually destroy this nation, the Chinese are surging through coal fired plants and nuclear +30% of global CO2 emissions. And ignoring 70-80% of greenhouse warming with H2O - if "they" did this they'd be laughed at long ago.
The IPCC was formed by a global warming millionaire about +30 years ago, and is now under control of a complete nutter who controls the "Summary for Policy Makers".
There is some great science in the papers among many questionable papers but I lost faith in this organization a long time ago.
Just the opinion of a 40 year Chemical Engineer who has consulted around the world, specializing in mining and metals extraction. I am disappointed in your support of any part of the endangerment finding.
Thanks for doing this review. I am plowing through the document now. While I realize that it will be impossible to deal with all of the comments, I would suggest that if you could also include a consideration of the critiques of key public commentaries (Zeke Hausfather published one yesterday, I believe), that would be hugely helpful. Perhaps what I am looking for is a sort of referee (an "honest broker"!) to mediate the arguments of the two side.
Great article. I look forward to a day when following the science will be more informative than following the money.
Brave and impeccable reporting.
After James Hansen "stagecrafter" Senator Tim Wirth's, "We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy" to EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard's 2013, “Let’s say that scientists several decades from now said, 'We were wrong, it’s not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of the things you have to do to combat climate change?” why relax your grip on the "Archimedes lever to move the world", the ultimate power of "do as we say or you, your children and the planet will die" which has only become more important as the means to an end?
UN Environment Program founder, parent of the IPCC, oil millionaire and influencer extraordinaire Maurice Strong musing, "So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" No surprise a Marxist has no trust in the masses to follow the "correct path", so "Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions."
So Eisenhower's Farewell fear of "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.. ever present and ... gravely to be regarded." as "...the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery" and "public policy... became..the captive of a scientific-technological elite." was realized. Perhaps some people actually meant what they said?
I'm not sure why there are references to the endangerment finding in this article, I did not understand the DOE CWG to be linked (directly) to the Trump administration retraction of the endangerment finding.
Yes, the CWG report is cited in the EPA proposal to rescind the EF
I continue to appreciate Dr. Pielke's providing much-needed nuance to the climate conversation (though I'm using that term loosely it would seem). I'm quite concerned that so many well-meaning lay people are getting bad information, from people that they trust, and boy oh boy it sure feels like shouting into the void when I try to share alternatives to the current party line. I'm the least likely person to trust stuff from the current admin but in this case the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. I firmly believe that those bashing the CWG paper know their stuff, but I also believe that the authors do, and as Dr. Pielke has pointed out time and again, we CAN have a rational discussion about this stuff, but we have to want to do that. We need more voices like his. Thanks for the good work, and for making my subscription fee way more than worth it.
Great article
A not so simple question: when one considers cumulative emission scenarios, does that take into account residency time of CO2 in the atmosphere? After all, the literature seems quite undecided regarding how long a molecule of CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise) actually resides in the atmosphere. Also, since the Keeling curve shows little change in the amount of atmospheric CO2 breathing each year, this could only be the case if the ability of the environment to cycle CO2 is not saturated, but only mechanistically limited. This for me brings into question how much of the increase in CO2 we are observing is truly due to anthropogenic CO2 rather than natural sources, considering that anthropogenic CO2 is only about 5% of the total amount of natural planetary emissions (both physical and biological). It seems that the science is still very much unsettled, and we cannot take any of the emission / temperature scenarios home yet.
To submit comments on the DOE CWG report, head to this link:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/01/2025-14519/notice-of-availability-a-critical-review-of-impacts-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-on-the-us-climate
Comments will be a part of the public record
If a scientist accuses another of misconduct, what organization does he address? Who does he make the claim to? Who investigates the complaint? Who administers the reprimand or punishment or declares innocence? If a scientist makes a claim of misconduct, he had better back it up by producing more than just hot air. Misconduct should include plagiarism and falsification. It probably doesn't include disagreement.
My exposure to the matter of science fraud goes back to Climategate, and indeed there were accusations of misconduct. They were never investigated, only covered up. This cued me in to the power structure operating behind the scientists engaged in fraud. The little men that were doing the cherry picking, fake peer review, character assassination and outright science fraud at East Anglia were insignificant, and yet powerful people came out from behind the curtain to exonerate them. This was a "tell", as they say in poker, that some other game was afoot. We could only have an officious group of poseurs like IPCC fronting for fake science and all of the supposed "news" reporters barking about their work if it was understood that science fraud was the name of the game, that real science had been hijacked, and that anyone wanting a career and livelihood would be wise to go along. The money spigots gush cash for any false claim, and honest scientists like the five in question here do so from the perch of retirement or obscurity and ridicule.
The response to this report is very damning of climate science and demonstrates how political it has become. This rage can be explained by the financial and career need to hide the fact that climate science is a crude field dominated by theories that make incorrect assumptions such as the moist adiabat for the tropics. Further climate models have been a waste of hundreds of billions over the years but kept hundreds employed. In fact, just like CFD, more generation of numerical models and running them is pointless. What is really needed is better data and new theoretical insights. The former is not glamorous and the latter is risky for a career because the remaining problems are hard enough that years of effort might turn up little of importance.
The real problem as in many fields of science is that funding agencies both governmental and private have little scientific background and almost no understanding of complex systems and how very limited our ability to simulate them is. In my view, the best first step is exactly what Trump is doing, viz., a big defunding and a takeover of the agencies by skeptical people who are first rate scientists but have been outside the mainstream world. This report is authored by 5 such people. Others are Makary, Battacharia, Kuhldorf, and Ioannidis. These people have felt the full force of the witch hunting that has characterized science during the pandemic and long before in some fields like climate science.
Some of the responses have been laughable because of the scientific ignorance of those making the response.
RP - Would keep the Endangerment Finding in place as a matter of law, if not of science. Given the Supreme Court reversal of Chevron, I would prefer Congress get involved rather than letting them take the long-standing easy way out, leaving the "law" up to the EPA. If under the Air Pollution Control Act, the EPA Administrator can issue an Endangerment Finding, I see nothing wrong with a subsequent EPA Administrator retracting such a finding. If regulation is taking too long to eliminate Green House Gases, you suggest there are more efficient ways to "price carbon". OK, what are they? And who is leading this effort in Congress, in Davos, or in the UN?
RP - Footnote 1, "According to the IPCC AR6: Radiative forcing is: “The change in the net, downward minus upward, radiative flux (expressed in W m–2) due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the concentration of volcanic aerosols or in the output of the Sun." We have had focus on CO2 emissions for years now with little global effect. Perhaps the Kamchatka or Hunga Tonga volcanos will shed some light on this effect. There are also some serious scientists (Happer and Koutsoyiannis for example) beyond Curry et al of the DOE Climate Working Group who see ocean and atmospheric temperature increases leading CO2 increases chronologically, suggesting temperature has a causal effect on CO2 concentration, not vice versa. Should that be the case due to volcanos or the sun, I don't see what we puny humans are going to do about global warming. And should global regulation result in eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, my understanding is green will no longer be a common color and we may all starve for lack of nourishment. Let us be pragmatic and adapt to nature, not think we can control it. This is not an argument for ignoring pollution (air, water, or solid waste) where we can control it.
I also don't understand how the DOE CWG report and the endangerment finding are related (people talk about both at the same time). For me the endangerment finding is in the hands of lawyers parsing words that Congress wrote, and doesn't have much to do with what's going on in physical reality.
The connection is much weaker than most are suggesting.