A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate

Report

The report's authors were chosen by Chris Wright in his role as the United States Secretary of Energy. Over the past several decades, the authors have actively promoted contrary views that cast doubt on evidence for a strong greenhouse effect, thereby minimizing the dangers of rising greenhouse gas emissions. The report argues that efforts to mitigate climate change are likely more harmful to society now than the future hazards they aim to reduce. It also claims, contrary to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that warming response to emissions will likely be modest and perhaps even beneficial, saying that there had been little trend in environmental disasters, negligible economic impacts and benefits to plant growth due to higher levels of CO₂.

However, a 434-page rebuttal published by 85 climate scientists said that human-caused climate change is causing more heat waves, heavy rainfall events, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires, and that the DOE CWG report understates health risks associated with climate change, wrongly states that models overestimate warming, and downplays relationship between warming and wildfires. The rebuttal also criticized the DOE CWG report for having taken only four months to write with no external peer review, with about 11% of the report's citations being written by its own five authors. They negatively compared it to the 2023 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report which was authored by 230 scientists over the course of several years, with a self-citation rate of only about 2%, and only published after "multiple rounds of internal and external review."

DOE secretary Chris Wright said that the report's authors were not directed what to include in the report, and that its goal was to "restore confidence in science, in data, in rationalism". He was critical of past administrations for what he described as an "Orwellian squelching of science". DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich echoed Wright's sentiments, adding that the president's goal was to have "a more thoughtful and science-based conversation".

Reception by scientists

The report was broadly condemned by the scientific community.

An international group of 85 scientists led by climate scientists Andrew Dessler and Robert Kopp submitted a 434-page rebuttal to the Federal Register entitled Climate Experts' Review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report, criticizing the DOE report for lacking peer review, cherry-picking evidence, misinterpreting citations, and having a predetermined outcome. The rebuttal was critical of the DOE's selection of authors, saying that they often wrote outside their own expertise, represented a narrow contrarian view not shared by the majority of experts in the field, and that its obvious goal was a means toward a political end.

A Carbon Brief fact-check documented over 100 false or misleading statements in the report, soliciting the opinions of a "wide range of climate scientists". Responses to individual claims made in the report were mainly written by scientists within their area of expertise, often by the author of the work the report had cited. The Associated Press emailed nearly all of the lead authors of the research cited in the DOE report, and an additional 139 other experts in climate, health and economics for their views. Of the 64 who responded, 53 gave the DOE report negative reviews, 7 gave positive responses and 4 gave no clear position.

Selective use of data

According to scientists interviewed by the Associated Press, the most common critique of the report is that it used cherry-picked data. The 1930s Dust Bowl was used as an example of an extreme heat event that occurred despite low CO₂ concentrations relative to the present, while ignoring that global temperatures were overall cooler than modern times.

A paper by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather was used to claim that climate models overestimate warming, whereas the actual conclusion was that models were "remarkably accurate." Another section of the report arguing that climate models have a warm bias pointed to a region in the U.S. Corn Belt that represents less than 1% of the planet's total surface area.

Economist Francois Bareille, author of a French-focused study about climate-related crop losses, said his conclusions didn't apply to the U.S. because of differences in climate and agricultural practices. The report elsewhere claims CO₂ is a "net benefit" to U.S. agriculture without citing research that projects a net negative effect on crop production due to altered rainfall patterns and more extreme weather including droughts and floods, and reduction of insect pollinators.

The report used five U.S. tidal gauges to show relatively little sea level rise as a response to warming, ignoring the totality of data to the contrary.

Veracity of claims

The report claimed that the recent decline in ocean pH, or ocean acidification is "within the range of natural variability on millennial time scales", whereas the actual conclusion of the cited paper is that the decline is due to human CO₂ emissions. The report misused the same study to imply that because corals evolved 245 million years ago when CO₂ was many times higher than the present, they should be able to adapt to comparably low pH levels. However, the paper's author, Krissansen-Totton, said the rapid change in pH is not comparable to the gradual changes which took place millions of years ago.

Rebuttal co-author Kim Cobb said the report falsely claimed that rising open temperatures were within the range of natural variability, saying that "robust lines of evidence" indicate present conditions are causing "unprecedented" marine heat waves that are destroying coral reefs.

The report claimed that the "urban heat island effect" was biasing the global surface temperature record, whereas IPCC assessments show a "minimal to negligible" contribution to trends. According to ABC News, consensus scientists have explained that temperature records are adjusted to compensate for non-climatic biases such as heat island effects, and that the results of those adjustments compare favorably to trends using only rural weather stations and satellite observations.

Jennifer Marlon, director of data science at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication criticized the report's presentation of data, saying that the "graphs use classic misinformation and disinformation techniques. It is almost a user's guide on how to lie with figures."

The report claimed that "Arctic sea ice extent has declined by about 5% since 1980," but linked to a website for Antarctic sea ice data. While the 5% decline is an accurate figure for Antarctica, Arctic sea ice extent has actually declined by 40% over the same time period.

Lawsuit alleging violation of Federal Advisory Committee Act

A lawsuit filed in August 2025 by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Environmental Defense Fund against the DOE and EPA as a whole, and individual defendants Wright, Zeldin and the members of the Climate Working Group. The suit alleges that the manner in which the report was compiled behind closed doors was in violation of the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act which requires federal advisory committees to maintain balanced memberships, and operate in a public and transparent fashion. A written statement by the UCS described the report as "anti-science", and a "flawed product put forward as an official U.S. government document."

The DOE decided to disband the group rather than face the lawsuit, but Curry said they would continue outside the government, and planned to answer comments made on the report. The plaintiffs asked the judge for a "preliminary injunction and a stay, or, in the alternative, for summary judgment" against the DOE.

On 30 January 2026, a federal judge ruled that the DOE (but not the EPA) violated the law, as it had "failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires".