The US Department of Energy's report claims global warming is less economically damaging than previously thought, prompting backlash from scientists who argue it misrepresents climate science. Researchers aim to coordinate responses to counter the report's claims, knowing it may influence a legal battle that could reach the US Supreme Court. They criticize the report as an attempt to discredit established science and express urgency in rebutting its arguments. The DoE defends the report's authors as credible individuals with diverse viewpoints, but faces skepticism from the climate science community.
"This little report is basically designed to suppress science, not to enhance it or encourage it," says Joellen Russell, an oceanographer at the University of Arizona. "It's awful."
"I'm gobsmacked," says Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who spent three decades working at the DoE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "It's a revision of science and a revision of history. We have to respond."
"The alternative is to do nothing," says Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who is helping to coordinate one effort. "I just don't think I can do that."
The DoE declined to address criticisms of the science laid out in the report, but a spokesperson said that the document's five authors were recruited by the US energy secretary Chris Wright - a former oil and gas executive - and that they "represent diverse viewpoints and political backgrounds and are all well-respected and highly credentialled individuals".
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