Union of Concerned Scientists Global Warming

Accountability for past emissions should be a critical part in addressing climate change. But the first step in seeking accountability for the highest emitters, whether corporations or countries, is quantifying their contributions. While the pursuit of accountability should consider their role in creating and spreading disinformation and their deception around climate science and research, their contributions of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere are an important place to start. Here, I’ll describe the data currently available to quantify these emissions, what they tell us about the drivers of climate change, and how we can achieve accountability for its harms moving forward.  

Who are the Carbon Majors?  

The Carbon Majors are the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, and a group to which 67.5% of all fossil fuel and cement emissions can be traced. To put a finer point on the immense impact of just a few organizations, more than one-third of these industrial emissions can be traced to just 26 companies. The Carbon Majors database includes emissions traced to investor-owned companies like ExxonMobil, BP, and Peabody; state-owned entities like SaudiAramco and Gazprom; and a handful of nation-states with dedicated fossil fuel and cement production, presently or historically, like China, Former Soviet Union.  

Earlier today, my colleague Shaina Sadai released a peer-reviewed study that links emissions traced to the Carbon Majors to present-day and future sea level rise. This study adds yet another example of how emissions from these entities are driving climate impacts globally. Previous UCS studies have already linked their emissions to increases in global average temperature, ocean acidification, and area burned by wildfires. When considered with the growing evidence of companies’ deception and disinformation, these studies paint a damning picture of how these companies shaped our world and the inequities that they’ve reinforced globally.  

These data also show that although humans have been emitting heat-trapping emissions into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, 50% of emissions traced to the Carbon Majors have been released since just 2000.  When visualizing data, clarifying the units used is critical. When it comes to emissions, this means distinguishing between cumulative historical (all the heat-trapping emissions they’ve ever emitted over time) and annual (all emissions each year). Both aggregations tell important stories that can help us to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but not specifying how the data are expressed is not only imprecise but can be deliberately misleading.  The data in the figure below show annual emissions measured in gigatons of CO2 per year.  

Source: UCS/Carbon Majors Dataset

As I wrote in an earlier blog that detailed the nitty gritty and backstory of this data, lawsuits and legal submissions worldwide cite the Carbon Majors Dataset to draw attention to the outsized role of fossil fuel companies in driving the climate crisis, including:  

• Lliuya vs RWE, where a Peruvian farmer is suing one of Europe’s largest emitters of heat trapping gases for its role in increasing the risk of a glacial lake outburst flooding, which threatens him and the entire community of Huaraz. This case uses the Carbon Majors Dataset to quantify RWE’s contribution to global historic emissions.  

• Greenpeace Italia vs ENI, where affected communities are suing to force ENI, Italy’s largest energy company, to reduce emissions and limit global warming. This case uses the Carbon Majors Dataset and source attribution research to underscore the outsized role of ENI in driving climate change. 

• People of California vs Big Oil, where California is suing ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and others for misleading advertising, failure to warn and fraudulent business practices. This filing uses these data to demonstrate that the contribution of heat-trapping gases traced to their defendants is quantifiable.  

• Multnomah County vs Big Oil, where the largest county in Oregon, home to Portland, is suing ExxonMobil and others for damages and adaptation costs following 2021’s unprecedented and deadly heatwave. This filing uses the Carbon Majors Dataset to show that emissions attributable to each entity are calculable using the amount, type, and emissions factor associated with each product.   

• Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines, which was petitioned to investigate the impact of climate change on human rights and the role of the ‘Carbon Majors’ in driving climate change and obstructing action. 

• InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, where Colombia and Chile requested an advisory opinion to clarify the state’s human rights obligations in light of climate change. UCS’ joint intervention used these data to highlight the role of a handful of corporations play in driving climate change.  

What about emissions from countries?  

When it comes to emissions, fossil fuel companies are not the only entities that have disproportionately contributed to the atmosphere’s ever increasing concentration of heat-trapping emissions. Some countries, like the United States, Russia, China and Germany, have also contributed an outsized amount of emissions to the atmosphere, and as a result should bear a proportionate amount of responsibility for addressing climate change and its impacts.   

The data presented below are from the Global Carbon Project and separate from the Carbon Majors data discussed above. This figure displays annual emissions by country, highlighting the massive historical contribution of the United States (nearly 25% of total global emissions), where several large Carbon Majors are headquartered. But more discouraging are the barely visible contributions (shown in purple) of many nations that are now bearing the brunt of climate change impacts —countries like Tonga and Pakistan, among many, many others. Plotted together, these data tell a powerful story about historical contributions and contextualize discussions around future responsibilities.  

Source: Global Carbon Project  What do these data mean for climate accountability?  

Emissions attributed to both the Carbon Majors and individual countries paint a picture of historical contributions that’s difficult to unsee—and inspires a call for accountability.  

In the US, states, counties, and communities are seeking accountability through the courts. These lawsuits primarily focus on fossil fuel companies’ deception and disinformation campaigns that delayed climate action for years and continues to pollute our public discourse.  While industry, trade groups, and their political allies have fought to dismiss the suits, courts across the country, including the Supreme Court just last week, have continued to affirm the right to seek accountability through the courts.  

Internationally, high emitting countries continue to benefit from their historical emissions at the expense of many emerging economies that bear the brunt of climate impacts but have contributed the least amount of heat-trapping emissions. In multilateral agreements, powerful countries have resisted and slowed the adoption of mechanisms for accountability sought by more vulnerable nations.    

At COP27 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries around the world established a Loss and Damage Fund to aid developing countries who are most vulnerable to climate change but have contributed the least to the atmosphere. Countries initially pledged more than 700 million dollars to the fund. While this appears to be an entry point in the path toward accountability, this amount is far below the estimated need of 300 billion annually by 2035 – just 0.2% of what is needed  Further, in early March, the US announced its withdrawal from the Loss and Damage Fund.  

But these data don’t tell the full story, particularly regarding the environmental racism and injustice wrought by the fossil fuel and high-emitting countries. This is especially evident in Cancer Alley in southern Louisiana, where a high density of petrochemical plants and refineries with scarce regulation and willful neglect, have led to elevated rates of cancer and other health issues, a burden particularly borne by Black residents.  

The Trump Administration has already reneged on the US’ bare minimum commitments  to address issues of climate justice. We’ve seen fossil fuel industry leaders and climate deniers put in positions of authority. The US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement and stopped federal scientists from engaging with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body.  

These data—both for countries and major carbon producers—tell a clear story about the history of human climate pollution, and the responsibilities of large emitters to act as the impacts of climate change grow increasingly severe. The need to hold them accountable, and guarantee they take up that responsibility, must guide our work every day.  

In a new study released today, UCS attributes substantial temperature and sea level rise to emissions traced to the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers. And for the first time, we extend sea level projections into the future, quantifying how past heat-trapping emissions from the fossil fuel industry will impact the world for centuries to come. 

The world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers have known for decades that their products cause climate change, yet they spread disinformation to misinform the public and have profited as people around the world have suffered from ever-worsening climate impacts. Previous attribution research published by my Union of Concerned Scientists colleagues have allowed us to draw causal connections between sources of heat-trapping emissions and resulting impacts, like present day increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, air temperatures, sea levels, ocean acidification, and wildfire burned area. At the same time, social science research has shed light on what the industry knew and when they knew it.  

In our new study, we bring together those two lines of research to understand what would have happened if fossil fuels had been phased out following key developments throughout history. We found that heat-trapping emissions traced to major carbon polluters have contributed to nearly half of present day surface air temperature rise and nearly a third to the observed global mean sea level rise. And critically, we demonstrate how these emissions will cause harm for centuries to come.  

The past haunts the future 

Our new research quantifies how sea levels will rise for hundreds of years as a result of past emissions traced to products produced and sold by the Carbon Majors. By comparing scenarios, with and without industrial fossil fuel development and its associated emissions, we find that past emissions from the Carbon Majors are projected to lead to an additional 0.26-0.55 m (10-21 inches) of sea level rise by the year 2300. While the magnitude of future sea level rise will depend on how emissions evolve this century our results attributing additional future sea level rise to past emissions are largely unchanged, regardless of what future emissions trajectories the world follows.

If the Carbon Majors emissions had ceased after 1990, the long-term sea level rise just from past emissions traced to their products is projected to be an additional 0.17-0.35 m (6-14 inches), showing how just a few decades of emissions can have a big impact on the future. Every delay in phasing out fossil fuels will burden future generations who need to adapt to rising seas and recover from loss and damage due to sea level impacts. 

The world that could have been 

To represent versions of the world that could have been if different actions had been taken and the world had acted in a timely manner to address the harms of fossil fuels, we develop several different counterfactual scenarios. We use the newly updated Carbon Majors database which quantifies annual emissions associated with coal, oil, gas, and cement production by each of the 122 largest fossil fuel and cement producers from 1854-2022. We explore 3 counterfactual scenarios, where we remove the emissions from these companies starting in a particular year: 

• 1854 counterfactual: A world where industrial fossil fuel development never occurred. In this scenario we remove emissions from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers starting in the year 1854. This is the earliest time period we can reliably know how much fossil fuels were being produced by different companies. 

• 1950 counterfactual: A world where fossil fuels had been phased out when the industry knew that fossil fuels were harming the climate system. In this scenario we remove fossil fuel industry emissions after 1950 when research has shown that companies were internally aware of the harms of their products. 

• 1990 counterfactual: A world where the international community had acted swiftly to phase out fossil fuels at the start of international efforts to address climate change. In this scenario we remove industry emissions after 1990, when the international community was first forming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

In each set of simulations, we subtract emissions traced to the largest producers from the full emissions that actually occurred, and use a climate model, the MAGICC model, to determine what would have happened if the emissions from these companies never entered the atmosphere. MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change) is a publicly accessible model that been widely used, including in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to understand how future climate could respond to different heat-trapping emissions scenarios. 

Across all scenarios, we find that the world would have been cooler and the sea levels lower if fossil fuel emissions had been phased out earlier. We find that heat-trapping emissions traced to the Carbon Majors during 1854-2020 have contributed to as much as 57% to present day surface air temperature rise and as much as 37% to the observed global mean sea level rise. In the 1950 counterfactual scenario, modern temperatures (averaged from 1990-2020) would have been 0.41-0.66°C above the preindustrial (1850-1900) average and global sea levels would have risen by 0.12-0.17 m. This implies that these companies are responsible for as much as 57% of the present-day air temperature rise and as much as 36% of the present day sea level rise in this scenario. Impacts are similar in the 1854 and 1950 counterfactuals due to the relatively small amount of heat-trapping emissions released 1854-1950 relative to the enormous amount of emissions released after 1950. 

In the 1990 counterfactual, the Carbon Majors are responsible for as much as 26% of the present-day air temperature rise and as much as 17% of the present-day sea level rise. The 1990 scenario has full historical emissions from 1854-1990 and then emissions from the fossil fuel industry removed 1990-2020. The climate impacts from emissions in recent decades are not yet fully realized, meaning this scenario underestimates the industry’s responsibility.   

How does this study compare to what was found in previous UCS research? 

The findings of our new research corroborate those of previous UCS studies, affirming the strength of our methods and accuracy of models used. By using the newest available emissions data for the Carbon Majors, this study extends this type of attribution research to present day. The main advancement of this particular study is the look to the future, which the updated methodology allowed us to do. 

This research uses the same climate modeling approach used in the 6th IPCC report (2021) to project future temperatures under different emissions scenarios. Previous UCS research had used methods derived from the 5th IPCC report, released in 2014.  

One of the biggest differences between these two approaches is how they determine sea level rise. The previously used model was only backward looking, meaning it could describe sea level rise in the past. The new model accounts for different drivers of sea level change, including ice sheet models and glacier models, capturing dynamics that were not happening in the recent past and allowing us to project into the future. 

Using research to motivate action 

Our research shows that emissions traced to the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement manufacturers have caused global temperatures and sea levels to rise, and that sea levels will continue to rise for hundreds of years in response to heat-trapping emissions which have already occurred. The fossil fuel industry knew by the 1950s that their products were causing climate change and at any time in the intervening decades they could have changed their business model to phaseout fossil fuels, yet they chose to keep producing, and profiting from, these harmful products. These actions have led to worsening climate change which will impact people in the future for centuries to come. 

 
As the people around the world experience the devastating impacts of stronger storms, more destructive wildfires, sea level rise, and other detrimental changes they are calling for those who are responsible to be held accountable. Communities around the world are pursuing accountability through court cases based on the fact that the fossil fuel industry knowingly deceived the public while producing products that would increase risks of climate change. Research that can trace specific climate impacts to the heat-trapping emissions produced by these companies can help inform this litigation. Researchers can help play a role by designing research questions that inform global action. It is long past time the world to phaseout fossil fuels and to get accountability for the harms that have occurred—and will occur in the coming years. The time to take action is now. 

The IPCC compiles scientific insights on climate change, informing policymakers and the public about risks and possible actions. One of its core tools is the use of future scenarios. Climate models and climate impact studies use emission scenarios—estimates of potential future changes in heat-trapping emissions—to help us see how choices made about emissions today can shape tomorrow’s climate. If you live in a coastal zone and have looked at maps of future sea level rise or have read about how climate change could be slowed with policy changes to reduce emissions, you’ve likely seen these scenarios in action. In essence, combined with climate models, they provide a way to envision the consequences of different actions or inactions. 

Scenarios used in the IPCC are often mentioned in discussions about national climate targets, corporate sustainability plans, extreme weather events, slow onset events like sea level rise, and climate litigation. But what exactly are emission scenarios, how are they structured, and why are they essential for understanding climate change impacts and mitigation strategies? 

What Are Future Climate Scenarios? 

Scenarios are projections of future human-caused emissions and their effects on the Earth’s climate system. These scenarios are not predictions; they are “what-if” frameworks that allow us to test the likely outcomes of various choices and actions. By examining possible trajectories for global economic development, technology adoption, and policy actions, the driving forces behind emissions, these scenarios help us assess a range of potential climate futures. 

How Scenarios Have Evolved 

Over the years, the IPCC and the scientific community has refined how it develops these scenarios. Initially it used four different emission storylines from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) as a scientific basis, however, recognizing the need for a more flexible and policy-relevant framework, scientists developed the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) for the IPCC reports. Four RCP scenarios describe different levels of radiative forcing in the atmosphere by 2100. Radiative forcing is the change in energy balance in the Earth’s atmosphere due to heat trapping emissions. The use of radiative forcing to understand emissions trajectories was then paired with varied political pathways to generate Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).  

The IPCC currently uses five SSPs that represent different ways society could evolve, incorporating everything from energy use to policy decisions that shape the climate future we may experience. These pathways describe different global socioeconomic conditions (e.g., levels of cooperation or competition among countries, technology adoption, and inequality) in terms of radiative forcing. The five shared socioeconomic pathways are:  

• SSP1: Taking the green road– A world focused on sustainable development, global cooperation, and green technology adoption. This scenario would lead to the least amount of global warming. 

• SSP2: Middle of the road – A scenario where global trends continue along historical patterns, with moderate development and emissions reductions. 

• SSP3: A rocky road – A fragmented world with regional conflicts, slow economic growth, and high inequality, leading to continued high emissions. 

• SSP4: A divided world – A highly unequal world where some adopt clean technology while much of the population remains dependent on fossil fuels. 

• SSP5: Taking the highway – A scenario driven by economic growth and high fossil fuel use, leading to rapid warming. 

These scenarios are identified by their social pathway and the approximate level of radiative forcing resulting from the scenario by 2100.  

Figure 1: Future annual CO2 emissions in the five illustrative scenarios 

Source: Sixth Assessment Report of IPCC Working Group I, 2021 

By combining radiative forcing (the climate side, represented by the numbers at the end of each scenario name e.g. 1.9 and 8.5) with socioeconomic factors, SSP scenarios provide a richer description of how the world might develop and how that development would influence emissions.  

How Do IPCC Scenarios Inform Climate Research? 

IPCC scenarios serve as foundational tools in climate research, enabling scientists to explore how different concentrations of heat-trapping emissions influence global temperatures, sea level rise, extreme weather events, and broader environmental changes. These scenarios are used in climate models to simulate various outcomes based on emissions trajectories, helping researchers assess climate system responses to different forcings.  

One of the primary applications of IPCC scenarios is in global climate modeling. Climate scientists run general circulation models (GCMs) with these scenarios to simulate future climate states under these different emissions pathways. Studies show that high-emission scenarios like SSP5-8.5 lead to significant disruptions in atmospheric circulation patterns, affecting monsoons and mid-latitude storm tracks, compared to the low-emissions scenario SSP1-2.6. 

IPCC scenarios also help scientists evaluate changes in the intensity and frequency of events like hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. A recent review of tropical cyclone studies found that under high-emissions scenarios (SSP5-8.5), storms become more intense and produce heavier rainfall—even if their overall global frequency decreases. Lower-emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6) show more moderate increases, underscoring how different policy choices alter storm behavior. 

These scenarios can also reveal how forests, oceans, and other natural systems might absorb or release carbon in the future. Research published in Earth System Science Data examined how under high-emission scenarios (SSP5-8.5), the ability of forests and oceans to absorb CO₂ weakens. Meanwhile, an intermediate scenario (SSP2-4.5) shows these natural “carbon sinks” remaining more effective for longer.  

These are just a few examples of how researchers use these scenarios to help us understand possible climate futures.  

Why Understanding These Scenarios Matters 

These scenarios illustrate the range of potential climate outcomes based on different emissions trajectories, helping to assess the impact of various policy choices. A world limited to 1.5°C warming contrasts sharply with a high-emissions path. Without these scenarios, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the consequences of different emissions pathways or evaluate which strategies might work best to address climate change. These scenarios provide more than just hypothetical futures; they are tools for informed decision-making. They allow researchers, policymakers, and the public to grasp the potential consequences of inaction versus proactive climate strategies.  

As we navigate the challenges of climate change, these scenarios remind us that the future remains open—and that our collective actions today will determine the climate reality we pass on to future generations. 

The ongoing destruction of federal agencies by the Trump team is an illegal effort that not only deprives the American public of essential services, upends lives and destroys livelihoods of federal workers, but steals our legacy of investment in tax-payer-funded institutions and functions. Since our country doesn’t work safely or effectively without these institutions and functions, either the thieves will privatize them and make us pay forever for something we built and already own, or we’ll suffer in their absence. Unless we stop them.

Vital federal agencies face fates ranging from near-total destruction in the case of USAID,  to deeply diminished functioning in the case of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), even as we face an intense and lengthening wildfire season and approach another hurricane season, to dangerous muzzling in the case of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even as bird flu spreads. The moves are wasteful, harmful, egregious, ill- or uninformed—and in many cases, illegal. They are, as my colleague, Julie McNamara writes, pushing American innovation to the brink. And they are devastatingly costly, not just in wasted taxpayer dollars, but in human lives.

It’s our house and they are hacking it down

Federal agencies represent generational investment in a functional society. They are an asset of today’s generations to pass on in good form to the next. Are reforms important over time? Absolutely. This is not reform, though, it’s wreckage. But rather than verbally light my hair on fire for you, here’s a clumsy but apt metaphor for what the destruction means for everyday people.

You have a home.

It’s nothing fancy, but you’ve been building and investing in it for years and now it has all the necessities and basic comforts. You have to pay each month to keep the lights on, and sometimes you need to do repairs and upgrades, but you’re a careful homeowner on a budget and you make it work. Someday you’re going to pass it on to your kids.

These days, though,  your partner has different ideas.

One Monday you come home from work to find someone has torn your shed down. Your partner says, “it wasn’t doing anything useful”. You say, “but I was using it. Where am I supposed to keep my bike and my tools? Why was this necessary?” But they are taking a call.

On Tuesday, you come home and all your appliances have been hauled away. Your partner says, “they weren’t working efficiently”. You ask, “how are we supposed to keep our food cold? Or have clean clothes?” Your partner says a little short-term pain is worth the long-term gain; you’ve been signed up for an appliance subscription service. “But we owned those ones”, you say, “they worked just fine. How is this good for us?” But they have turned on a show.

On Wednesday, you come home and all your windows have been smashed. “They said they were drafty,” your partner relays as they board up the empty frames with plywood. “But how will we have any light? How will we get fresh air?” you ask. “I guess we’ll pay for more electricity and ventilation,” they say. You ask, “how is this good for us?” But they don’t hear you over the hammering.

On Thursday, you come home to find your solar panels and the roof beneath them are gone. “I don’t believe in them,” your partner says, as you frantically staple a blue tarp over the hole in your house. “Believe in what?!” you ask. “Solar electricity? Roofs? The sun? How is this good for us?!”

The next morning you wake up in a dark room to the drip of rainwater from your exposed attic. You put on dirty clothes and are fumbling your way downstairs when the jack-hammering starts. Outside, a crew is hacking away at your foundation. “Stop!” you yell. “This is my home! What are you doing?” The foreman checks his clipboard and says, “Well, it’s basically worthless now, so we’re going to clear it out”.

You turn to your partner, who is finally looking confused and afraid, and you ask again, “So tell me, how is this good for us?”

Our federal agencies are vital

Your partner in this story is people in America who are either initially supportive of these agency cuts or not paying close attention, but in either case, are due for real harm right along with everyone else. Those of us who can go about our lives with a sense of confidence and security do so in no small part due to the existence and effectiveness of our federal agencies. Check your weather app before you get dressed? Thanks, NOAA. Turn on your tap water with confidence that you can drink the coffee you make? Thanks, EPA. Review your kids’ college aid awards over breakfast? Thanks, Education Department. Opt to wear a mask to work because you heard the flu is surging? Thanks, CDC. Talk with your aging mom over lunch about a promising new dementia trial? Thanks NIH. Ask her how a cousin’s recovery from Hurricane Helene is going? Thanks, FEMA. Stop for some groceries on the way home because a big storm is coming? Thanks again, NOAA…

These agencies and their functions didn’t sprout from the head of some government mastermind. They came to be because we needed and demanded that these functions be filled. They were built over time because we funded them. And they exist today because we need and use them.

Destroying them is theft

Ripping them down like Elon Musk and DOGE, with President Trump’s urging, are doing is not governing in the public interest. It’s ruling by impulse and arrogance and out of the selfish, profit-minded interests of the billionaire class and big polluters. And for the public, it’s the governance equivalent of being carjacked by a gaslighter: violent, illegal, and what the hell—I’m using this car!—all while being told by the carjacker they aren’t taking anything they shouldn’t take…

And like a car-jacking, if and when we rescue these agencies from the chop shop, real damage will be done. To replace and rebuild what we had on January 20th will be incredibly costly and in the near-term, impossible: an unparalleled knowledge bank drained by the hemorrhaging of expert staff; skilled delivery of vital services stopped short by the firing of seasoned, dedicated public servants; decades-long data records vital to science permanently compromised by forced gaps in collection; infrastructure—from buildings to work stations—liquidated. These are all things paid for by us—not just for how they serve us today, but how they will serve us in our unfolding, uncertain future. And these are all things stolen from us.

For what?

The spectacle of the world’s richest man slashing federal programs, services and workers in the name of efficiency would be a bad joke, except for how much it hurts and costs. And for what? Obviously not for efficiency, possibly for ruinous tax breaks for the wealthy, certainly for the privatization of public goods and the colossal grift entailed.

So when we hear of more cuts, we should strongly support and defend the people losing their jobs, and we should feel anger for the blatant destruction and theft of our legacy of investment, say “how dare you,” and fight it all, tooth and nail.

There are also things that this administration is doing of a more blatantly authoritarian nature, like threatening to defund colleges that allow students to exercise their right to free speech, threatening deportation of people for their political views, and working hard to dismantle the free press. They want to rule, not govern, so they are coming for everything that makes a democratic society possible.

And so we need to fight them on every front, get every win we can, punch holes in their fascist power play and petro-masculine money grab. Protecting federal agencies like NOAA from being gutted and privatized is one of those fronts. But fighting on any front is important.

So, what can we do?

What we can do depends on the day and on the kind of risk our personal privilege enables us to take. Not everyone in this country can afford to take risks right now. But for those of us who have privilege, now is the time to use it, and the time to start stretching outside our comfort zone.

For the moment, we have to keep giving Congress hell…

• Over the spring/Easter Congressional recess (April 11th through the 27th), we can go to our members’ local town halls, if they are still holding them. And if they are not, we can demand that they hold them by writing letters to the editor, contacting the local media, building pressure on social media, or standing outside their office with a sign. Republicans have complete control of the federal government; they have no excuse to hide from their voters.
• Write a letters to the editor. Here’s UCS’s LTE guidance for writing an effective one. Feel free to use talking point from this or other UCS blogs!  
• Call members of Congress and tell them to defend against these attacks. Here’s a UCS resource for making calls.
• And write them specifically about protecting NOAA. Here’s another UCS resource.

And we can show up for federal agencies and staff…

• Support federal staff and scientists in our communities. Here’s a UCS resource for folks to have on hand.
• Keep our ear to the ground for opportunities to show up in person and demonstrate support for agencies and rejection of the ongoing harm.
• Help to amplify the stories of fired staff and the stressed staff who remain on social media and other channels.

I’ll be the first to say that this is not enough to turn the tides right now; it’s just about being and staying in the fight. At the same time, taking care of ourselves and each other and not burning out is essential. So let’s stay awake to evolving threats, unify in as big and bold a front as we can, and get ready for when it’s time to go bigger and be braver.

Climate models are the main tool scientists use to assess how much the Earth’s temperature will change given an increase in fossil fuel pollutants in the atmosphere. As a climate scientist, I’ve used them in all my research projects, including one predicting a change in Southwestern US precipitation patterns. But how exactly did climate models come to be?  

Behind climate models today lie decades of both scientific and computer technological advancement. These models weren’t created overnight—they are the cumulative work of the world’s brightest climate scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, chemists, and physicists since the 1940s.  

Believe it or not, climate models are actually part of the driving force for the advancement of computers! Did you know that the second purpose for the world’s first electronic computer was to make a weather forecast? Predicting the weather and climate is a complex problem that combines computer science and physics. It is a form of applied mathematics that unites so many different fields. 

This is the first blog in a three-part series. This first one focuses on the history of climate models; the second will discuss what a climate model is and what is it used for; and in the third blog I will explore how climate scientists integrate the rapidly-changing field of Machine Learning into climate science.  

Predicting the weather and climate is a physics problem 

Scientists hypothesized early on that we could predict the weather and longer-term climate using a set of equations that describe the motion and energy transfer of the atmosphere. Because there is often confusion about the difference between weather and climate, keep in mind that the climate is just the weather averaged over a long period of time. The atmosphere around us is an invisible fluid (at least to the human eye): we can apply math to that fluid to predict how it will look in the future. Check out this website for a representation of that fluid in motion. 

In 1904, Vilhelm Bjerknes, a founder of modern meteorological forecasting, wrote:  

“If it is true, as every scientist believes, that subsequent atmospheric states develop from the preceding ones according to physical law, then it is apparent that the necessary and sufficient conditions for the rational solution of forecasting problems are: 1) A sufficiently accurate knowledge of the state of the atmosphere at the initial time, 2) A sufficiently accurate knowledge of the laws according to which one state of the atmosphere develops from another.” 

In other words, if we know the right mathematical equations that predict how atmospheric motion and energy transfer work, and we also know how the atmosphere currently looks, then we should be able to predict what the atmosphere will do in the future! 

So why didn’t Vilhelm try to predict the weather in 1904 if he knew it could be done? Well, at the time there was unreliable and poor coverage of observations for how the atmosphere looked. Vilhelm also knew that there would be an immense number of calculations, too many to do by hand, that go into calculating the future of the state of the atmosphere. 

It wasn’t until the early 1920s that Lewis Fry Richardson, an English mathematician and physicist, succeeded in doing what had been, until then, thought of as impossible. Using a set of equations that describe atmospheric movement, he predicted the weather eight hours into the future. How long did it take him to carry out those calculations? Six weeks. So you can see it wasn’t possible to make any reliable weather prediction with only calculations done by hand. 

Computers changed the forecasting game 

So how can we predict the weather and climate so well today? Computers! In 1945, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was invented in the United States. ENIAC was the first electronic computer that could perform an impressive number of calculations in seconds (here, “impressive” is relative to the era, as ENIAC could make about 5,000 calculations per second, while today’s iPhone can make billions of calculations per second). Note that there were computers before ENIAC, but they didn’t rely on electricity and weren’t as complex. 

Originally, this electronic computer was used for nuclear fallout calculations, but believe it or not, the second use for ENIAC was to perform the calculations necessary to predict the weather. Why? Because weather prediction was the perfect overlap of applied mathematics and physics that required the quick calculations of a computer. 

In 1946, one year after the ENIAC was finished, John von Neumann, a Princeton mathematician who was a pioneer of early computers, organized a conference of meteorologists. According to Jule Charney, a leading 20th century meteorologist, “[to] von Neumann, meteorology was par excellence the applied branch of mathematics and physics that stood the most to gain from high-speed computation.” 

Von Neumann knew that with ENIAC we could start predicting both the short-term weather and the longer-term climate. In 1950, a successful weather prediction for North America was run on ENIAC, setting the stage for the future of weather and climate prediction.  

Two of the ENIAC programmers preparing the computer for Demonstration Day in February 1946. US Army Photo from the ARL Technical Library archives. Left: Betty Jennings, right: Frances Bilas.

Who were the six programmers that ran these calculations? Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum, all women mathematicians recruited by the military in 1942 as so-called “human computers”. I mention this briefly here because women’s contributions to the advancement of computer technology and weather forecasting is often overlooked. During Women’s History Month it is even more important to elevate and remind folks of their critical contributions. 

The first climate model 

The weather forecast run on ENIAC in 1950 was for only a short period of time (24 hours) and included only North America. To successfully model the climate, we would need a model to simulate decades of Earth time that covers at least one hemisphere of the Earth. 

The first general circulation model (GCM)—what climate scientists call climate models— was developed by Norman Phillips in 1956 using a more sophisticated computer than ENIAC that could handle more calculations. However, this GCM was primitive in nature. 

After Phillips successfully demonstrated the climate system could be modeled, four institutions in the United States—UCLA, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—independently developed the first atmosphere-only GCMs in the 1960s. Having four models developed slightly differently contributed to the robustness of the discipline early on in climate modeling. 

And thus, the age of climate modeling was born. These GCMs could predict the future state of the atmosphere and its circulation given any change to atmospheric composition (such as heat-trapping pollutants), which is the main application of GCMs to this day. 

Today’s climate models 

GCMs are much more sophisticated today than they were in the 1960s. They have higher resolutions (meaning they perform more calculations per area), they are informed by better physical approximations, and they can replicate the climate much better. With each decade since their conception, different earth system models that simulate phenomena such as carbon cycling, vegetation, and aerosols have been added, improving GCM complexity and accuracy. Present-day GCMs consider changes in not just the atmosphere, but also changes in the ocean, the land, and sea-ice (see figure below). 

Modern climate models incorporate multiple sub-components that simulate land, ocean, and sea-ice conditions to inform modeling of atmospheric conditions.

When scientists run a climate model, they are actually running four different models: one for the atmosphere, one for the ocean, one for the land, and one for sea-ice, simultaneously. These four models then communicate with each other through something called a “coupler” during the calculation stage.  

So, for example, if the ocean model says the temperature of the ocean surface changes by 3°C given a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, this information is then relayed to the atmospheric model, which can then respond and change the atmospheric circulation based on that temperature change.  

For more information on what a climate model is, how it works, and how climate scientists use them, check out my climate model explainer blog coming soon.

Climate models improve incrementally through decades of scientific work 

Climate models are some of the most reliable models in existence because they have been built upon, tested, and corrected for decades. And while there are some problems we’re still working on correcting, they can replicate the climate system overall with incredible skill and accuracy.  

Climate models are at the foundation of the scientific consensus around climate change. And at UCS, we use climate models to advance our understanding of the climate system in order to predict how communities are affected by a changing climate, and, importantly, to know who to hold accountable for the climate crisis.

This past week was a busy one for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

On Monday, a whopping 48 scientific societies, associations, and organizations—representing almost 100,000 scientists from diverse disciplines—sent a letter, organized by UCS, to members of Congress demanding they protect federally funded scientific research and federal scientists. Anyone who’s worked with any scientific organization on a collective effort knows it is quite the feat to get such incredible unity in the scientific community.

On Thursday, the Campaign Legal Center filed suit on behalf of UCS and other groups against Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for acting beyond their power to slash federal funding, dismantle federal agencies, and fire federal employees.

On Friday, UCS staff and members rallied with thousands of others at the Stand Up for Science 2025 events in cities and towns across the country. I spoke at the DC rally, and I was impressed to see the turnout and energy of the scientists and science supporters who trekked to the National Mall to tell the world in a unified voice that the administration’s attacks on science are unacceptable and the scientific community will not be silent.  

That night, I shared my rally message on MSBNC “Prime.” Here is the full segment on how the Trump administration’s all-out assaults on science and scientists are harming real people’s health and safety.

This has been a challenging month. Many in the scientific community—and in the general population—have been unclear about what to do in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive and unlawful disruptions to the federal government. The speed and scale at which the Trump Administration has taken a sledgehammer to federal science agencies and the dedicated experts within them has been alarming and disorienting. With limited levers of power across the government to stop these actions, and a complete disregard for policy, process, and law by Trump Administration officials, it is no surprise that people feel disillusioned and powerless.

But we mustn’t. The scientific community has never been one to walk away from a challenging problem. In fact, we pursue them. We undoubtedly face an uphill battle in our current environment, but there is a path forward. We must preserve as much as we can in the federal government, prevent new damages from happening, and rebuild from outside the government when necessary.

In my conversation with MSNBC host and White House veteran Symone Sanders Townsend, she noted that no savior is coming to save us, that we need to lead ourselves out of this, and it is the scientists who are now stepping into the streets.

I felt that on Friday as I spoke to a sea of science supporters overlooking the Reflecting Pool. It is us, as the scientific community, who now have the chance to lead, to be brave, and to do everything in our power to insist on an administration and a world that uses science for good.

I’m determined to face the wind and I hope you are, too.

Lee Zeldin was full of pablum in his January Senate confirmation hearing to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A former member of Congress from Long Island, New York, with scant regulatory experience, Zeldin promised to “defer to the research of the scientists” on whether climate change made oceans more acidic. In even more laudatory language, he said he would “defer to the talented scientists,” on whether Earth had hit thresholds for runaway climate change.

He said he “would welcome an opportunity to read through all the science and research” on pesticides and search for “common sense, pragmatic solutions” on environmental issues. Claiming there was “no dollar large or small that can influence the decisions that I make,” Zeldin went so far as to say, “It is my job to stay up at night, to lose sleep at night, to make sure that we are making our air and our water cleaner.”

It was all a lie. Last week, President Trump said Zeldin was considering firing 65% of EPA’s staff, which would amount to nearly 10,000 of the agency’s 15,000 workers. The White House later issued a clarification—as if it made any difference—that Zeldin was “committed” to slashing 65% of the agency’s budget. The EPA issued a statement saying President Trump and Secretary Zeldin “are in lock step.”  

Also last week, the news broke that Zeldin is urging the White House to strike down the 2009 EPA finding that global warming gases endanger public health and the environment. That finding, made under the Obama administration, girded federal efforts to reduce vehicle and industrial emissions. The finding, long a legal target for climate deniers, has so far held up, even in an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, but that has not stopped the administration from attacking it. Project 2025, the blueprint organized by the Heritage Foundation to guide this White House, calls for an “update” to the endangerment finding. Leading climate denier and former Trump transition adviser Steve Milloy told the Associated Press last week that without the finding, “everything EPA does on climate goes away.”

This is after Zeldin told senators in written answers for his confirmation that he planned to “learn from EPA career staff about the current state of the science on greenhouse gas emissions and follow all legal requirements.” Instead, Zeldin has scientists in a state of bewilderment. In one fell month, he has every employee looking over their shoulder, fearing the dismissal of their work or the tap of outright dismissal.

Zeldin’s latest “lock-step” actions cap an already-breathtaking first month in running the EPA.

He has launched an illegal effort to claw back $20 billion in EPA clean energy funding significantly targeted for disadvantaged communities. He placed nearly 170 workers in the office of Environmental Justice on administrative leave and oversaw the firing of about 400 probationary staff (although some have momentarily been brought back after public outcry).

Zeldin has begun a rollback of Biden administration energy efficiency and water conservation regulations for home appliances and fixtures, and is asking Congress to repeal waivers for California to phase out new, gasoline-only  vehicle sales and stricter emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks. Many other states in recent years have decided they would follow California’s standards, as they are allowed to under the Clean Air Act. Combined, these states add up to 40% of the automobile market in the United States.

There are surely many more attempts to come that will turn back the clock on environmental protection.

An EPA led by industry apologists 

Zeldin’s EPA includes a rogue’s gallery from President Trump’s first term.

Returning to the EPA in top spots for chemical regulation are Nancy Beck and Lynn Dekleva. Both formerly served on the American Chemistry Council, the top lobbying arm of chemical manufacturers, and Dekleva spent more than three decades at DuPont, one of the most notorious companies for burying the dangers of PFAS.  

In the first Trump administration, Beck was at the center of the suppression on science to resist the most stringent regulation or bans on carcinogenic chemicals such as trichloroethylene, PFAS, methylene chloride, and asbestos. She was also reported to have helped in burying the strongest possible health and safety guidelines to help communities reopen during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dekleva was accused during her first stint in President Trump’s EPA of pressuring employees to approve new chemicals and colluding with industry to weaken the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The nominee to be Zeldin’s assistant administrator, David Fotouhi, is another returnee who was at the center of the first Trump administration’s efforts to strip wetlands protections. When not inside the EPA, Fotouhi has a long record defending industries in legal battles over standards or contamination lawsuits about toxic chemicals, such as asbestos, PFAS, PCBs, and coal ash.

Holding high-level positions in the Office of Air and Radiation are Abigale Tardif and Alex Dominguez. Tardif lobbied for the oil and petrochemical industry and was a policy analyst for the Koch-funded network Americans for Prosperity. Dominguez lobbied for the American Petroleum Institute, which opposed the vehicle pollution standards of the Biden administration.

Aaron Szabo has been nominated to be assistant secretary for Air and Radiation. Szabo was a contributing consultant to the Project 2025 chapter on the EPA that recommends sharply curtailing the agency’s monitoring of global warming gases and other pollutants and eliminating the Office for Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

Other recent EPA appointees who also contributed to Project 2025 (which President Trump disavowed during the presidential campaign) are Scott Mason and Justin Schwab. Steven Cook, a former lobbyist for plastics, chemicals, and oil refining, and another veteran of the first Trump administration, is also returning.

Zeldin may be inexperienced at regulation, but none of the above are. Kyle Danish, a partner at Van Ness Feldman, a consulting firm for energy clients, told the New York Times, “This group is arriving with more expertise in deploying the machinery of the agency, including to unravel regulations from the prior administration. They all look like they graduated one level from what they did in the first Trump administration.”

Same playbook at other agencies

Other agencies responsible for addressing climate change pollution have also quickly deployed the machinery of environmental destruction.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a memorandum ordering a review of the fuel economy standards of the Biden administration, claiming without evidence that the standards would destroy “thousands” of jobs and “force the electrification” of the nation’s auto fleets. This is despite the agency’s own analysis showing the rules would save consumers $23 billion in fuel costs and result in annual health costs benefits of $13 billion from reduced air pollution.

Secretary Duffy also issued a memorandum canceling the Department of Transportation’s plans to address environmental justice in low-income populations and communities of color, climate change, and resilience polices for department assets and the department’s Equity Council. Again, no facts were offered as to why communities disproportionately beset with pollution and pollution-related diseases should be excluded from protection. He was just following President Trump’s Orwellian executive order that aims to wipe any consideration of race, gender, climate, equity, and disproportionate impacts from federal programs.

Over in the Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum issued a memorandum directing all his assistant secretaries to provide action plans that “suspend, revise, or rescind” more than two dozen regulations. The obvious goal is to plunder more public land and water for private profit for the fossil fuel and mining industries. Many of those regulations to be revised or killed involve endangered wildlife and plants, landscape and conservation health, the Migratory Bird Treaty, and accounting for the benefits to public health, property, and agriculture of reducing climate-related pollution.

In a recent interview on FOX News, Secretary Burgum said he was “completely embracing” the massive shrinking of the federal workforce by the Department of Government Efficiency, a cruel act that means he is just fine with DOGE’s 2,000 job cuts at Interior, including 1,000 in the chronically understaffed National Park Service, which has a $23.3 billion backlog for deferred maintenance. 

Climate mockery at Department of Energy

And then we have the reported layoff of between 1,200 and 2,000 workers at the Energy Department, now run by Chris Wright, a former CEO of one of the nation’s largest fracking companies. In President Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary Wright is the most blunt in dismissing the effects of the climate crisis. In 2023, he said the “the hype over wildfires is just hype to justify” climate policies. He said, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition.”

He has doubled down on his rhetoric during his first month in office. Wright told a conservative policy conference in February—without evidence —that net zero goals for carbon emissions by 2050 were “sinister” and “lunacy.” Wright also went on FOX Business in February to say that climate change is “nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today, not even close.”

Despite all the evidence already unfolding that climate change is a factor in the increasing number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the US, and despite a major 2023 study projecting that five million lives a year could be saved around the world by phasing out fossil fuels and their pollution, Wright said a warmer planet with more carbon dioxide is “better for growing plants.” Never mind the communities living in the crosshairs of contamination and climate catastrophe or conservationists who are concerned anew about endangered species.

Wright spent his first month in office postponing Biden-era energy efficiency standards for home appliances, claiming without evidence that they have “diminished the quality” of them. His office announced the canceling of $124 million in contracts, many of them connected to diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives. He said those contracts were “adding nothing of value to the American people.” When asked if he wanted fossil fuels to “come back big time,” Wright responded, “Absolutely.”

Behind the pablum of confirmation hearings was an iron fist

And over in the Commerce Department, the 6,700 scientists and 12,000 staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are reeling from the recent first wave of hundreds of layoffs. Many more job losses are threatened, with sources telling major media outlets that the Trump administration and new Secretary Howard Lutnick are considering a 50% cut in staff and a 30% cut in the agency’s budget.

It is irrelevant to the Trump administration that NOAA is a bedrock agency that protects the public with its real-time tracking of dangerous storms. It is at the center of long-term federal analysis on climate, the toll in property and life of global warming, the health of our oceans, and the state of our fisheries. Instead of being placed on a pedestal for this central role, NOAA is as much a bullseye for polluters and plunderers as the EPA. Project 2025 calls for the breaking up of NOAA because it “has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity.”

Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street financier, told senators in his January confirmation hearing that he had “no interest” in dismantling NOAA. The firings suggest the dismantling has begun.

When Lee Zeldin promised at his confirmation hearing that he would “defer” to talented scientists on climate change data, it was a mere six days after NOAA and many other weather agencies around the world confirmed that Earth had its hottest year yet in 2024. That was obviously lost on him. In just one month, the only demonstrated deference of Zeldin, Burgum, Wright, Duffy, and Lutnick is to President Trump’s mantra of “drill, baby, drill” and the deregulation of toxic industries.

Left in the wake are demonized and demoralized federal scientists.

In his address to Congress this week, President Trump boasted about ending “environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable.” Hopefully it will not be one hurricane, one contamination, or one disappearing species too many to realize we cannot afford to be without those scientists. We will be far less safe without them.

This past week, I attended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Hangzhou, China. Delegates from nearly 190 nations came together to discuss—and, in theory, make decisions about—next steps for the 7th assessment cycle. In previous posts, I’ve explained what the IPCC is, why this assessment cycle is crucial, and highlighted its role in climate action.  

As climate change advances, the IPCC’s goal—to provide policy-relevant science—becomes increasingly urgent. And yet, as I walked away last week, it was clear that urgency is not universally shared: we saw the weakening of scientific language, delayed deadlines, and a failure to reach consensus on some of the most fundamental and pressing areas of research. 

The Goals of the Hangzhou Plenary 

The agenda for this Plenary was packed with essential tasks shaping the next IPCC reports in this cycle. The main objectives included: 

• Approving and adopting outlines for the three major working group reports and an additional methodology report on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). 

• Approving report timelines to clearly state when working group reports will be completed.  

• Approving expert meetings and passing the budget. 

While the IPCC reports are a synthesis of scientific literatures written by scientists, it’s important to remember these Plenary meetings are not a scientific gathering. Rather, they’re negotiations where member countries review plans and make decisions about the structure and process of IPCC reports. 

Key Discussions and Outcomes 

As is often the case with IPCC Plenary meetings, discussions can feel slow. Many debates repeated points from earlier sessions, as delegations revisited unresolved issues. By the end of the session, some key decisions were made, although it took longer than anticipated—nearly every day of the week long meeting ran late and delegates worked more than 38 hours straight on the final day. 

1. Working Group Report Outlines Approved  

After much debate, outlines for each of the three work group reports were approved. Since these outlines were already drafted by experts nominated by the panel, agreeing to these outlines was the bare minimum. Each IPCC Working Group (WG) plays a distinct yet interconnected role in the 7th Assessment Report (AR7): 

• Working Group 1: Physical Science Basis – Examines the fundamental climate science, including observed and projected changes in temperature, precipitation, extreme events, and Earth system processes​. 

• Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability – Assesses the risks climate change poses to human and natural systems, the effectiveness of adaptation strategies, and emerging challenges such as climate-related displacement and health risks​. 

• Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change – Evaluates pathways for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable development strategies, and the role of finance, technology, and policy in achieving net-zero emissions​. 

During the Hangzhou plenary, governments had the opportunity to review and adjust the draft outlines developed at earlier expert meetings. These outlines serve as a roadmap for the scientists who will write the reports, shaping the scope of each assessment. Although they are indicative rather than prescriptive, delegates debated word choices—sometimes late into the night—before finally approving the chapter structures for all three Working Groups. 

2. The CDR Methodology Report Failed to Achieve Consensus  

One of the most contentious discussions revolved around the outline for the proposed IPCC methodology report on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The report, initially scoped in 2024 and planned for completion by 2027, aims to provide technical guidance on measuring, reporting, and verifying emissions removals from CDR technologies. However, disagreements over the inclusion of marine CDR prevented consensus, meaning the outline will be revisited at the next plenary​. 

This debate is not just technical—it is deeply tied to ethics, governance, and the role of the IPCC in assessing emerging technologies.  

Delegates questioned when (or if) the IPCC should develop methodologies for technologies with unclear risks. The IPCC’s core mandate is to assess existing science and provide neutral guidance, but defining methods for speculative technologies raises important ethical questions. Marine CDR lacks long-term observational data and has potential ecological risks. Some countries argued that including methods for ocean alkalinity enhancement and direct ocean carbon capture, two experimental marine CDR technologies, could prematurely legitimize these technologies before their environmental impacts are fully understood. 

3. Working Group Report Timelines Decision Delayed, Again.  
Although the outlines were approved, the timeline for producing each report was pushed back, again. Ultimately, delegates decided to postpone setting any hard deadlines. The key question remains whether timing will allow these reports to inform the next UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST), expected to take place in 2028. The GST is a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement, designed to periodically gauge collective progress and identify gaps in ambition. Delays in the IPCC’s work could mean that policymakers won’t have the most up-to-date science in time for the stocktake discussions. 

4. Expert Meetings and Budget  

The IPCC will move forward with expert workshops on engaging diverse knowledge, which will include work on both Indigenous knowledge and using AI systems, and methods of assessment. The Plenary deferred decision on the proposal for an expert meeting on high-impact events and earth systems tipping points. The budget was also ultimately approved, however, much is up in the air since the overall timeline for the reports remains unknown.  

Backsliding on Science, Stonewalling on Deadlines 

While the approval of the AR7 Working Group outlines represents a significant step forward, several concerning trends emerged during the Plenary discussions—raising questions about whether the IPCC process and the heavy-handed role of the country delegations could end up limiting the scope and clarity of scientific assessments. 

Scientific Language and the Removal of Key Concepts 

Throughout the plenary, some delegations pushed for edits that weakened or removed previously accepted scientific language. While Working Group I (Physical Science Basis) largely retained its core concepts, Working Groups II (Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and III (Mitigation) saw key terms and phrases—many central to prior IPCC reports—either watered down, or removed entirely. 

Some of the most notable omissions from the approved outlines include: 

• Lock-in and maladaptation, both fundamental concepts for adaptation and resilience planning, were removed from the outline. 

• Fossil fuels, which are central to mitigation discussions but were largely avoided, reflecting ongoing political tensions. 

• Cost of inaction, subsidies, and trade, all key factors shaping climate policy decisions, were watered down or removed.  

• Policy evaluation, including ex-post assessments of mitigation and adaptation strategies, raising concerns about the ability to reflect on past successes and failures. 

• Removal of all legal references, including climate litigation and deletion of explicit language on corporate accountability and attribution in WG-II. 

The scientists writing AR7 still have the flexibility to incorporate these topics based on available research, but the removal of these terms from the official outlines signals a worrying trend—one that could make it harder to communicate critical findings in a clear and policy-relevant way. 

The Push Against Plain-Language Summaries to Promote Accessibility 

A proposal from Working Group I experts to include plain-language summaries in each chapter—aimed at making climate science more accessible—was rejected. While many delegates strongly advocated for clear, direct language, others expressed concerns that these summaries might be perceived as too policy prescriptive, ultimately preventing their inclusion. 

This decision underscores a broader challenge: as the climate crisis worsens, clear and effective communication of scientific findings is more critical than ever. The rejection of plain-language summaries risks making IPCC reports less accessible to decision-makers, journalists, and the public—undermining their impact at a time when clarity is essential. 

The Problem of Extended Negotiations and Equity in Decision-Making 

Another major issue is the repeated extension of negotiations, which once again ran late into the night and well past the scheduled close of the plenary. This disproportionately disadvantaged smaller delegations—many from climate-vulnerable nations—who often lack the financial resources to extend their stay and had to leave before the final decisions were made. 

This recurring problem within the IPCC raises concerns about whose voices are heard at the most critical moments. While the Plenary operates by consensus, the reality is that practical constraints, including funding and logistical challenges, mean some nations are effectively excluded from last-minute negotiations. This is particularly troubling given that these same nations are often the most affected by climate change and have the most at stake. 

What’s Next for the IPCC? 

Despite slow progress and ongoing challenges, the IPCC continues to move forward. With outlines now finalized for all three Working Groups, the next critical step is the call for authors—a process where countries and observer organizations, including UCS, can nominate experts to contribute to AR7. 

Experts selected as Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, and Review Editors will be responsible for assessing the latest science, drafting report chapters, and responding to expert and government reviews. Given the scale and importance of this assessment, it is essential that scientists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines stay engaged in the process. The absence of the US from this Plenary raises concerns about official US government engagement in AR7. However, US-based scientists can still participate if nominated through other channels, such as observer organization like the Union of Concerned Scientists.  

The IPCC remains a cornerstone of global climate science, shaping the foundation for climate policy and action worldwide. With AR7 now in motion, the real work begins. Scientists must remain engaged, ensuring the reports reflect the best available evidence, not just what is politically convenient.  Despite the debate that dragged on in the Plenary, the strength of the IPCC lies in its scientific rigor, collective expertise, and global collaboration. . 

After a relentless deluge of Trump administration attacks, overwhelmingly at the hands of Elon Musk, the nation’s exceptional, thriving innovation machine is teetering on the brink. 

The ramifications are calamitous.  

Since World War II, the US has committed itself to robustly supporting the scientific enterprise, that great endless frontier, in recognition of the wellspring of public benefits that such research can ultimately bring forth. At the heart of that commitment is the central tenet that science should be a public good, for public good. The US research enterprise reflects that, with the nation supporting a vast ecosystem within which a staggering array of public and private actors—and their many and varied areas of interest—can flourish.  

Musk is now knowingly, deliberately, gleefully taking an ax to the whole of it.  

With the full and unyielding support of President Trump and his administration’s leadership, Musk is directing the indiscriminate firing of federal workers, casting off hard-earned, impossible-to-replace expertise. 

He is hamstringing agencies and their capacity to execute research internally and launch significantly more research externally. 

He is slashing universities’ and research institutions’ capacity to pursue bold new ideas, as well as onboard and train the next generation of innovators. 

He is arbitrarily and catastrophically reneging on government contracts and agreements, leaving pioneering new investments in the lurch while undermining faith in future government-supported endeavors. 

He is isolating the nation’s researchers by attacking vital channels of international coordination and collaboration that have long improved our own country’s work.  

And instead, courtesy the world’s richest man whose riches rest upon the very system he now abhors: science behind a paywall; knowledge for a fee.  

Firing federal researchers, hamstringing federal agencies  

Federal researchers are positioned at agencies throughout the government, at institutions as wide-ranging as the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  

From tracking food safety outbreaks, to studying pollution controls, to analyzing crop yields; from triaging pending pandemics, to identifying infrastructure vulnerabilities to cyberattacks, to flying through hurricane eyewalls. Civil servants, in civil service, pushing for insights that ultimately help to unravel how things work, how things break, and how we, as a society, can push ever forward.  

But now, Musk is directing the slashing of the federal workforce, without concern for the role, the expertise, the loss, the cost.  

Take, for example, the mass firing of federal workers on probationary status. Conservative estimates suggest that this has impacted approximately 20,000 workers thus far, though lack of transparent reporting, as well subsequent re-hirings, have muddied accurate accounting. The Trump administration has further signaled its apparent intent of ultimately slashing nearly all of the hundreds of thousands of employees on probationary status—albeit now under new cover. 

This move is illegal on its face, and is being advanced in a manner that is entirely devoid of authority. 

Moreover, it is fully untethered from any coherent strategy. Notably, “probationary” does not equal “junior” or even “new,” as promotions and position shifts can result in a return to probationary status. Indeed, such firings are only being advanced because probationary employees have fewer workplace protections and are thus easier to fire.  

The net result, the intended result, is a staggering theft of publicly funded, publicly held knowledge and expertise—as well as the theft of all the ways in which that publicly held expertise would have served the interests of the public in the hours, days, and decades to come.  

Much will be lost outright. That which is not lost faces threats of privatization and paywalls. Think hurricane warnings for the rich—not for the most exposed; drought forecasts for commodity traders—not for the farmers planting rows.  

And this is just the beginning.  

At the same time that agencies are being forced to draw up broader plans for even more massive reductions in staffing, they are also being directed to abandon core and critical areas of work. The ensuing involuntary atrophy of capacity and achievement will then be cynically invoked to justify even further staffing cuts in the time to come.  

For those who remain, the work will change. Not just in the way in which an administration change always signals the arrival of new priorities, nor even in the way in which a specifically, relentlessly anti-science administration will antagonize the means of executing those priorities.  

No, this cuts deeper.  

The Trump administration is already forcing the nation’s remaining federal scientists and experts to insulate and isolate: to depart from coordinating bodies, to abandon collaborative endeavors, to extract themselves from the inherently interconnected affair of scientific research. 

At Musk’s and Trump’s direction, federal agencies are seizing up. And as they do, so too does the capacity of the scientific enterprise to serve the public good.  

Slashing federal support for research and innovation 

As harmful as the arbitrary attacks on federal agencies and federal experts are for the nation’s public good, attacks on the federal government’s ability to support the broader innovation ecosystem threaten to be even worse.  

In 2024, US support for research and development totaled approximately $200 billion dollars.  

More than half of that funding was dedicated to defense. Of the rest, approximately half was allocated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), while the rest was channeled through a range of agencies including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Commerce, USDA, and more.   

And yet, the Trump administration is now attempting to illegally seize the funds outright or, where stopped, undertake other means to achieve the same outcome.  

Take what’s occurred at NIH.  

Of NIH’s approximately $47 billion budget, as much as 85 percent is awarded to outside research. In 2023, that funding translated into approximately 60,000 awards, supporting more than 300,000 scientists, at more than 2,700 entities, across all 50 states. A recent sample of that research: a vaccine to treat pancreatic cancer, novel ways to detect Alzheimer’s earlier, and the most detailed mapping yet of human brain cells, to name just three.  

A scientific-, economic-, innovation-spurring, and life-saving colossus—which the Trump administration is now actively, unrelentingly working to break. 

Since Day 1, the Trump administration has alternately attempted: directly freezing funds, indirectly freezing funds, freezing the means by which funds can actually be granted, firing the workforce required to process funds, limiting the scope of what can be funded, and dramatically curtailing how research institutions are compensated.  

What’s occurred at NIH is shocking. It also should not be viewed as a one-off. 

For one thing, the administration directed the freezing of all funds, disbursed by all agencies. Same for limiting research agendas. Same for wildly disruptive workforce firings. And there is no reason to believe that attempts at abrupt, severe changes in indirect cost rates will stop at NIH. 

Accordingly, the chill is setting in. Research institutions across the country are confronting this injection of wild uncertainty into the funding picture and bracing for shattering impact. Already, word is emerging of institutions halting enrollment for the next class of researchers—the canary, in plain sight. But the specter of calamitous funding shortfalls is also leading to broader hiring freezes, holds on approvals of new instruments and equipment, and overall adoption of austerity measures.  

If these attacks do not soon relent, austerity will be just the start.  

Moreover, at the same time as the administration is attempting to knock out the research foundations of the US scientific enterprise, it is also—again illegally, again incomprehensibly—attempting to dismantle the scaffolding established by forward-looking industrial policy intended to help turn that research into applied solutions.  

These are policy instruments and investments meant to ensure that the technologies, the industries, the workforces our nation will want and need to have on hand to respond to the challenges confronting us are strategically nurtured and developed. Under Musk’s and Trump’s hands, however, the green shoots of those policies—the manufacturing investments, the job training programs, the novel solutions—are withering in salted earth.  

What could be—and what gets lost 

Musk and his team of DOGE scavengers revel in spotlighting off-beat grants—nevermind the repeated falsehoods of their “efficiency” claims, nevermind the rapidly accruing expenses resulting from their lawless execution of unconstitutional actions. Moreover, these identifications are not the wins they think. 

The hallmark of the US commitment to the scientific enterprise is just that: A commitment to science, and in so doing, a commitment to curiosity. It is precisely because of that fiercely held commitment to curiosity, and its attendant tolerance of funding work that could ultimately fail to deliver, that the US has cultivated the research envy of the world. These are, at their core, the conditions required to allow for pioneering, truly path-breaking discovery.   

Now, as Musk and his DOGE team hunt for the latest bad-faith headline to win the internet for the day, they lurch the country another step further, another step further, another step further to rendering the whole of the publicly-oriented scientific enterprise obsolete.  

As the endless frontier recedes, in its place looms the pitch-black darkness of pay-to-play, with a public cut off from the vast riches enabled by civil science, in civil service.  

Many people may be taken aback by reading the news headlines about hundreds of wildfires breaking out in the Carolinas and Georgia this week. The latest wildland fire outlook also shows extreme wildfire risks for the Southern plains, including parts of Texas and New Mexico. Unfortunately, hotter, drier conditions, coupled with gusty winds, are contributing to an early wildfire season, which already got off to a catastrophic start with the deadly, costly LA wildfires in January. The Trump-Musk regime’s cuts to crucial agency budgets and staffing will undoubtedly add to risks this year.  

Mapping wildfire risk

While wildfire risks in California have lessened for now, wildfire risk predictions in early February were already signaling the risks to the Carolinas. Here’s what the latest map of above-normal fire risk looks like for March. (And, yes, in case you were wondering, these outlooks depend in part on data from NOAA’s National Weather Service. Another reason why the Trump administration’s attacks on NOAA make no sense).

The latest wildland fire outlook report highlights especially high wildfire risks in the Southeast:

Most of the rest of the Southeast will start March off with unusually dry fuels for this time of year. The highest significant fire potential is expected to occur from the Florida Big Bend into western North Carolina due to impacts from Helene or other recent hurricanes, in addition to the longer-term dryness that has been the rule since hurricane season.

It also calls attention to high risks in the southern Great Plains:

Confidence is increasing in a high impact spring fire season across the southern Great Plains. The expected weather pattern and its impacts to the fire environment are of major concern, and at least weekly high-end wind events are plausible through March and April. Areas with normal and especially above normal grass loading will be most susceptible to unusually large fires

What’s behind the high wildfire risks?

The immediate spark for wildfires can come from fires carelessly or purposely set by people, malfunctioning power infrastructure, lightning or other proximate causes. But, once sparked, the background weather, climate and ecological conditions can greatly increase the risks of large fires taking hold and spreading rapidly.

Emerging dry and drought conditions are one of the classic precursors to an increase in wildfire risk, as we are seeing in parts of the southeast and southern plains now.

Another set of more complex factors is also highlighted in the latest wildfire prediction report: the multi-season, long-term effects of previous storms, droughts and bark beetle infestations.

For example, Hurricane Helene’s devastating impacts across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee damaged and killed trees that are now more prone to serve as fuel for wildfires and burn under dry conditions. The record-breaking rainfall that accompanied that storm also contributed to the growth of new vegetation that is now drying out, again adding to the load of flammable material. A historic drought in 2023 and subsequent pine beetle infestation are also now contributing to higher fire risks in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

All of these underlaying factors are affected by climate change, and they show how some of the markers for wildfire seasons are set well before summer, which is considered to be the time of peak fire risk.

April’s outlook shows that risks will remain high in the southeast and southwest. It also expands the above-normal fire risk to parts of Alaska, where abnormally dry conditions around Bristol Bay and Kodiak Island create high fire risk. As the report notes: If this trend continues into spring, there is the potential for a busy start to the fire season across much of southern Alaska.

It’s never too early to prepare for fire season

Hopefully, the fires burning right now will soon be brought under control and people will remain safe. If there’s one thing this potentially high impact spring wildfire season shows, it’s that it’s never too early to prepare. States and communities in these high-risk zones need to take stock now to make sure they have taken all the advance precautions they can to limit the risk of fires starting. And, should fires break out, there must be plans in place for how best to protect people from the dangers including safe evacuation routes if needed.

Policymakers at the state and federal levels must make sure adequate funding and resources are available to deal with wildfires, and to help fire-damaged communities get back on their feet.

Worsening wildfire seasons will also contribute to the ongoing challenges in the property insurance market, another hardship for homeowners and everyone struggling with the lack of affordable housing. And wildfire smoke is a health hazard that can affect people hundreds of miles away from the original fire site.

Trump administration budget cuts and layoffs will worsen risks to people

The Trump administration’s mass layoffs of thousands of forest service employees, combined with federal funding freezes that affect wildfire mitigation and prevention projects, are their own red flag warnings going into this year’s fire season. Across the board, indiscriminately cutting staff and budgets at agencies such as NOAA, USDA and FEMA that contribute to predictive data and wildfire risk mapping, firefighting, and disaster response and recovery will only make things more unsafe for everyone.

Instead, the nation must scale up investments in solutions that will help people this fire season, and in the future, as our climate continues to heat up.

Last week, I was invited to testify at a Congressional hearing entitled Leading the Charge: Opportunities to Strengthen America’s Energy Reliability. It was held by the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs.

Ahead of the hearing, I submitted written testimony to the subcommittee. You can also watch the full hearing, including all the witness statements and the questions and answers afterwards. Here’s one exchange between Ranking Member Maxwell Frost (D, FL-10) and me.

RM @RepMaxwellFrost: "As the only economist among our witnesses today, how confident are you in Trump's promise to cut energy costs in half in the next 500 days?"@UCSUSA's Rachel Cleetus: "If that promise is predicated on what we've seen in the last month, I fear not at all." pic.twitter.com/9HOh7JYXmw

— Oversight Committee Democrats (@OversightDems) February 26, 2025

Speaking at this hearing gave me the opportunity to share the facts on the economic, health and climate benefits of accelerating our nation’s transition to clean, reliable, affordable energy, drawing on insights from research done by UCS and others.

Unfortunately, other panelists used their time to boost fossil fuels, bash pollution standards for the power sector, and give full-throated endorsement to the Trump administration’s destructive actions to roll back climate and clean energy policies. One panelist even engaged in pointed anti-science rhetoric, questioning the reality and harmful impacts of human-caused climate change.

Here are my oral comments, as prepared in advance.

Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Burlison, Ranking Member Frost and members of the subcommittee for holding this hearing. My name is Rachel Cleetus. I am the policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-partisan science advocacy organization.

I want to highlight three things today:

• Accelerating the transition of our electric system to one that’s modernized, more flexible, with more renewables and storage, is the best way to protect consumer’s pocketbooks as well as safeguard health, make sure that we’re competitive on the global stage and that we’re innovating as we go along. There are tremendous economic and health benefits from this transition.
• Doubling down on fossil fuels is harmful and it’s taking us in exactly the wrong direction.  And there is ample evidence that natural gas price volatility is one of the factors driving increased electricity prices, as well that gas-fired power plants raise reliability concerns for the power grid.  
• Today, in 2025, we should not ask any American to choose between their health and prosperity. We can have both and we should have both.

The solutions to many of the challenges we see today are clear: ramping up renewable, energy efficiency and storage, and investing in a modernized, more resilient electric grid will help cut power bills, boost business opportunities, and improve public health. Doubling down on fossils fuels will instead take us in exactly the wrong direction and only serves to promote the profits of fossil fuel companies at the expense of the American public.  

Renewable energy sources are now the dominant source of new power generation capacity because, frankly, in many parts of the country they are the lowest-cost source of new electricity generation. They are also faster to build. Last year, renewables and battery storage accounted for 94% of all new large-scale capacity, with solar and battery storage leading the charge. In 2025, renewables are on track to supply 25% of electricity generation. Solar generating capacity is projected to increase 45% between 2024 and 2026.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provide critical funding for clean energy investments that are benefiting communities across the nation by expanding access to clean, affordable energy, building domestic manufacturing and supply chains, creating good paying jobs, and helping to limit pollution from fossil fuels. In the past year, U.S. investments in clean technologies reached $272 billion, crucial to keeping US businesses competitive in a world where greener products are increasingly in demand.

The current administration’s actions to claw back or freeze this funding are frankly unfathomable. It is creating disruptions and market uncertainty for businesses that are trying to lean into opportunities right now. It’s going to result in ceding U.S. leadership on technological advancement. It’s going to cut good paying jobs and, ultimately, it’s going to harm electric reliability and increase energy costs.

Trying to turn back the clock and boost fossil fuels makes no sense. Market factors continue to drive ongoing coal plant retirements. Meanwhile, an overreliance on natural gas and volatility in natural gas prices increase the risk of higher prices for industry and for consumers. A rush to further expand LNG exports is only going to exacerbate those risks. And in a carbon-constrained world, these kinds of projects are likely to become stranded assets.

Recent extreme weather events underscore that gas power plants face significant reliability concerns, with the most catastrophic failures occurring in winter. Worsening heat waves and drought are also putting pressure on the electric grid, especially during summer months. Hybrid systems that couple renewable energy with storage provide significant grid reliability services, often more effectively than gas generators. During the heat domes that we saw last year and the year before, it was solar plus storage that helped save the day.

The power sector does need to plan and prepare for increased demand both in the near-term from data centers and manufacturing and in the long term from increased electrification of energy uses. Managing and planning for this demand growth to align with the expansion of clean energy will be crucial to avoid electricity price increases, reliability concerns, and increases in pollution.

We already are at record fossil fuel highs, whether it comes to oil or LNG. There is no problem in terms of expansion of fossil fuels unfortunately, even as the climate crisis worsens. What we need to do instead is unleash clean renewable power, the transmission to go with it, and energy efficiency.

The grid is desperately in need of upgrades and expansion. It got a C minus grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers. During extreme weather and climate events we’ve seen  power outages that affect millions of people and cause billions of dollars of damages every year. We do need to quickly expand investments in a resilient transmission system built for the future climate conditions that scientists are telling us are going to worsen. By significantly expanding these grid investments, we can integrate higher levels of renewable energy, provide reliability benefits, and help reduce electricity bills.

Modernizing the power sector also provides opportunities to clean up air, water and soil pollution from fossil fuel use. Targeted investments and programs for low-income communities and communities overburdened by pollution will help ensure that all communities can reap the benefits of a cleaner, more affordable, more modern energy system.

Burning fossil fuels is also the primary driver of human-caused climate change which is already exerting a deadly and costly toll on communities and businesses across the nation. UCS research shows that we can cut sharply heat-trapping emissions while delivering billions of dollars in consumer energy cost savings and public health benefits.

In sum, modernizing and cleaning up the power sector is vital for the U.S. economy and for its ability to compete globally. It’s also the best way to protect consumers’ pocketbooks and enhance the reliability of the power system.

(There are some differences between this version and the actual remarks I delivered, as I didn’t read my comments verbatim. You can read my full written testimony here and watch my testimony below.)

Project 2025, the far-right’s playbook for systemically reshaping the federal government, specifically calls out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be “dismantled,” “downsized,” and “eliminated.” Calling the agency “the source of… climate alarmism,” it recommends the privatization of many of NOAA’s essential functions, some of which are congressionally mandated.

Although denying any knowledge of this plan throughout the campaign, the new administration appears ready to follow through. Roughly 10% of NOAA staff have been fired, with more layoffs expected. Confidential and proprietary data have been compromised, budgets are threatened, and scientists censored and ignored. And this is just the beginning.

So, what’s the big deal? How will this affect people in the United States, including those who support efforts to cut government spending? Through their mission of science, service and stewardship, the work of NOAA helps everyone in the U.S. every day. You may be most familiar with their weather forecasts, which are available to all free of charge (under Project 2025, you may need a paid subscription to get weather alerts). But NOAA provides so much more to every American every day.

Sure, NOAA lets you know if it will rain or whether you will need a light jacket or heavy coat. But the agency is responsible for so much more than that.

Your community’s safety and prosperity rely on NOAA

Your community uses NOAA products and tools to plan events and development. It relies on forecasts of hazardous weather events and blue sky flooding to protect property and save lives. Working with NOAA, towns and cities as well as rural communities and counties take science-informed actions to prepare for a changing environment and enhance their resilience to climate change and sea level rise. For every dollar invested in disaster resilience, informed in a large part by NOAA climate information, companies and communities avoid $13 in economic losses from extreme weather.

NOAA amergency alerts of severe weather events, like wildfires, tornadoes, and flash floods give people and communities more time to prepare, and protect lives and neighborhoods. NOAA scientists fly on the iconic “Kermit” and “Miss Piggy” hurricane hunters to collect data for more accurate, longer-term storm forecasts. Their seasonal outlooks and drought monitoring are essential for farmers to plan what and when to plant and harvest. Are you taking a commercial flight today? NOAA serves up aviation weather forecasts to guide your airplane safely and smoothly to its destination.

NOAA watches the oceans and coasts for you

Do you like seafood? NOAA inspects domestic and imported fish and shellfish products to insure they are safe and properly labeled. They also manage commercial and—with the states—recreational fisheries to ensure they are sustainable and productive for future generations. NOAA monitors and certifies seafood trade. Their research protects endangered species and helps vulnerable marine populations recover to healthy levels. NOAA also works to prevent and eradicate aquatic invasive plants and animals from our coastal and Great Lakes waters.

How about a day at the beach? NOAA’s monitoring and forecasts protect you from oil and chemical spills and red tides, from high surf and tsunamis, and from plastics and marine debris. They even provide a UV index so you know how much sunblock to apply. Going sailing? You’ll probably rely on a NOAA navigation chart to avoid shoals and hazards, and marine weather and tidal predictions to time your voyage.

NOAA helps the ‘blue economy‘

The nation’s thriving maritime industries and businesses contribute over 2 million jobs and $500 billion annually to the US economy. NOAA’s restoration and conservation projects protect coastal, wetland, and streamside habitats and green infrastructure, while boosting coastal resiliency and recreational opportunities, decreasing safety hazards, and creating jobs.

NOAA services and products improve the precision of marine navigation and the efficiency and safety of our ports and harbors. Ocean energy exploration and production—conventional and renewable—depend on information from NOAA to carry out siting and operations in areas and in a manner that optimizes their investment and minimizes negative interactions with marine animals and other economically important activities. Beyond traditional commerce sectors, NOAA’s New Blue Economy initiative harnesses the power of technology and big data to apply ocean and coastal data and information to our nation’s economic vitality, growth, and sustainability, and to address our societal challenges.

Marine sanctuaries and estuarine reserves protect resources and fuel local economies. NOAA scientists also study and forecast natural ecological events such as coral bleaching, marine heatwaves, and shifts in fish stocks that impact economically and culturally important marine resources and the people, businesses, and coastal communities that depend on them.

NOAA and national security

NOAA’s impact extends beyond our shores. It works closely with the Department of Defense (DOD) to protect our military assets and plan operations. Global weather forecasts are coordinated between DOD and NOAA entities, and NOAA informs resource management through dual use of DOD data and products. It coordinates with the US Coast Guard to combat illegal, unauthorized, and unregulated fishing and human trafficking. NOAA even goes extraterrestrial, monitoring solar activity and space weather that can disrupt electric power transmission, radio and satellite communications, and global navigation, as well as advising us when to expect awesome Northern Lights displays.

In short, NOAA is a critical source of factual, evidence-based, and unbiased information about our environment, communities, and economies. It helps individuals, leaders, and businesses make decisions based on science, not politics, alternative facts, or speculation. Because of NOAA, lives have been saved, property is protected, businesses are vibrant, communities are safer, and ecosystems are healthier.

What can you do to protect NOAA?

The threat to NOAA’s science, services, and stewardship is dire. The agency cannot carry out its critical functions on limited staff, shrinking budgets, and aging ships and satellites.

Call or message your elected representatives and remind them about the vital role of NOAA to you and your community. Contact your local news media; ask them to report on what is happening to NOAA and other federal science agencies and how it will impact your community and neighbors. Share your story about what NOAA means to you and how you are protecting it. And show your solidarity with federal scientists by sharing critical resources from UCS and other organizations.

NOAA has offices, labs, facilities, and staff in every state and territory, and overseas. If you want to learn more about NOAA in your state and community, you can download fact sheets about their facilities, programs, and activities.

NOAA remains a target to those taking a chainsaw to its critical government services. Take action to save NOAA in your state and your hometown.

It’s almost the end of California’s wet season. California is in a Mediterranean climate zone, characterized by long, dry summers and short, wet winters. Snow is a crucial part of our year-round water supply, serving as a natural reservoir and providing up to a third of our water supply. Today, the California Department of Water Resources conducted a snow survey to determine how much snow we have stockpiled to date. Today’s survey shows we are at 85% of average levels, statewide. That could spell trouble given above average temperatures that the state is currently experiencing. In addition, significant regional differences reveal some of the ways climate change is shifting our water supplies.

StatewideNorthCentral SouthPercent of normal to date85%104%80%70%Snowpack as of 2/28/2025 SnowTrax – Home

While February saw a set of strong atmospheric rivers bring snow to Northern California, Southern California is still well below average for yearly precipitation. Indeed, drought conditions are present across Southern California and much of the American West. In addition, 2024 was the world’s warmest on record globally, and the first calendar year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial levels. Recent wildfires in the Los Angeles (LA) region highlighted the sometimes-disastrous consequences of this combination of hot and dry conditions. Scientists have found that climate change made the conditions that drove the devastating fires some 35 percent more likely than they would have been had the fires occurred before humans began burning fossil fuels on a large scale.

Current drought conditions U.S. Drought Monitor Climate change is increasing the gap between water supply and water demand

Climate change is increasing the misalignment between when we get water from our snowpack and when we need it in our streams, fields, and cities. As climate change accelerates snowmelt and heats up spring temperatures, springtime runoff is projected to peak between 25 and 50 days earlier than it does now. That’s around a month added to California’s dry season when other stored water resources will need to meet demand. The Department of Water Resources noted that current above average temperatures mean snowpack is melting quickly.

Warming temperatures also amplify the risk of the water stored in snowpack coming down in massive, damaging, and hard-to-capture flood events rather than a more gradual steady stream. This can happen when lots of rain falls on top of snowpack, washing both the rainfall and the snowmelt into streams all at once—as in Oregon’s 1996 Willamette River flood, one of the worst natural disasters in that state’s history. The state of flooding emergency called for LA in 2017 and the devastating flooding in the US Midwest in 2019 was a similar situation.

Political stunts aren’t helping Levee breached in Pajaro River in 2023. California Department of Water Resources

What all this means is that there is more of a need to conserve our dwindling winter water supplies for the long, dry summer season. Despite this, President Trump unexpectedly ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release water from dams into the federal water supply system known as the Central Valley Project last month. This political stunt not only did not help anyone in Southern California fight fires but also wasted water that could have been stored for the summer. The sudden water release came without local and state coordination, threatening to undermine earthen levies that protect many farms and cities in the Central Valley. No one benefited— not farmers, not fish, not cities. 

The political theater didn’t stop there. A related Executive Order directed federal water projects to ignore legal protections like the endangered species act and water quality standards in order to pump more water South. Unfortunately, the reality is that exporting significantly more water out of the Delta actually threatens Southern California’s water supply. The Public Policy Institute of California explains: “If the Central Valley Project takes more water out of the Delta, the burden to meet water quality standards would fall on the State Water Project. This would likely lead to less water available for Southern California, not more.”

Currently, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project share the burden of meeting state and federal water quality standards in the Bay Delta. These standards protect drinking water quality, requiring enough water to flow out through the Bay Delta and into San Francisco Bay to hold back seawater that would otherwise intrude and make the water too salty for human consumption.

Real solutions to climate-proof water supplies are available

Indeed, LA’s largest wholesale water provider, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, has shifted from an historic focus on increasing water imports to maximizing local water supplies, like water recycling, given climate impacts. That’s why the Metropolitan Water District, along with many other water agencies, supported the recent climate bond to invest in a range of smart water solutions.

These include climate-proof strategies, such as:

• increasing groundwater recharge and storage,
• modernizing water rights,
• strategically repurposing land to maximize water savings and community well-being,
• and conserving and reusing whenever possible.

Californians resoundingly support these solutions, as shown by the passage of the climate bond in November 2024. While we expect the federal political stunts to continue, states can chart their own path to real solutions. In red and blue states alike, people expect government to continue to provide essential services like safe and affordable drinking water. Now, more than ever, states must step up.

By my count, representatives from roughly 190 countries are currently gathered in Hangzhou, China, to advance the current cycle of scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, one country is notably absent: the United States. Just as I boarded my flight to China to attend the IPCC meeting as an observer, news broke that the Trump administration’s “work stop” order would prevent any US federal scientists from participating in this crucial IPCC meeting.  

This raises urgent questions: How does this decision impact international climate collaboration, and what can we expect moving forward? The US has historically played a critical role in the IPCC in three main ways: providing scientific expertise, participating in negotiations, and helping to fund the process. The current de facto withdrawal affects all three. 

Absence of Federal Scientific Expertise 

One of the most immediate and significant consequences of the US withdrawal is the absence of US federal scientists at the IPCC plenary. US scientists from federal agencies such as NASA and NOAA have long played an important role. In this cycle, they have a prominent role in Working Group III (WG3), which focuses on climate change mitigation—assessing methods for reducing heat-trapping emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. 

The impact of this absence is particularly severe because NASA’s chief scientist, Kate Calvin, is currently the co-chair of WG3. Without her leadership, the group loses an essential voice in shaping climate mitigation strategies. 

Additionally, each working group relies on a Technical Support Unit (TSU) to provide scientific, technical, and organizational assistance. The WG3 TSU is staffed almost entirely by US personnel (9 of 10 people), and its contributions are substantial: just last cycle, the WG3 report spanned over 2,000 pages. Compounding the challenge, the NOAA Assessment Technical Support Unit, which provides editorial, data visualization, IT, and production services, is also sidelined by the work stoppage and anticipated attempts to dismantle NOAA.  

While this stoppage is technically temporary, if federal experts continue to be barred from participating, it would represent a major loss to the IPCC’s ability to produce rigorous and comprehensive reports. 

No US Negotiators at the Table 

IPCC plenary meetings are where representatives from participating countries review, discuss, and make key decisions to advance the IPCC’s work. During the meeting this week, countries are debating outlines for all the major IPCC reports. This is an important moment that sets the stage for work over the next few years. While country negotiators do not author the reports themselves, the IPCC’s influence stems in part from its consensus-based approach—ensuring that governments accept and commit the science and its conclusions. The absence of US negotiators means that the US has effectively removed itself from this process. 

Why does this matter? Without US participation, other countries will shape the discussions without US input, reducing the nation’s influence in shaping global climate assessments. This might be an overall benefit to the IPCC based on Trump’s public anti-science rhetoric on climate change, but historically the US has been a value-add to the process.  

Loss of US Funding for the IPCC 

Countries make voluntary contributions to support the IPCC’s work. The Biden administration had pledged approximately $1.5 million for this year’s IPCC budget, but those funds have not been delivered. Given Trump’s past actions—he pulled US funding from the IPCC during his previous term—there is little expectation that his administration will reinstate financial support. 

The loss of US funding, while not crippling, creates additional financial strain for the IPCC. Other nations or philanthropists (Bloomberg stepped in to cover UNFCCC funding) may step in to fill the gap, but the de facto withdrawal reinforces the message that the US is abdicating from its commitments to international climate cooperation. 

What This Means for the Future of the IPCC 

Climate change is a global challenge that requires global solutions. The IPCC was founded to foster international collaboration on climate science—science that is not policy-prescriptive, but rather provides world leaders with information crucial to crafting policy decisions. While this week’s IPCC plenary is proceeding, the absence of the United States signals a retreat from international climate leadership at a time when the worsening climate crisis demands stronger global cooperation.  

In the face of these restrictions, it’s important to remember that the IPCC’s structure allows for continued participation from non-federal scientists in the US—scientists like me. The IPCC’s strength lies in its ability to convene voluntary experts from universities, NGOs, research institutions, and government agencies worldwide. The last cycle included thousands of authors, most of whom are independent researchers unaffected by the federal work stoppage.  

However, the withdrawal of US federal support weakens the IPCC’s collective ability to provide the science the world needs to help tackle the climate crisis. In a moment when urgent, coordinated action is needed, this step back from collaboration could have long-term consequences. The path forward may not be easy, but the IPCC will continue its work and adapt to these challenges. As an observer organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists will continue to actively engage in this important scientific process. The real question now is how long the US will remain on the sidelines, and at what cost to the global effort and US communities? 

More and more communities across the United States are being exposed to extreme weather and fossil-fueled climate disasters. In 2024 alone, 27 declared disasters caused over one billion dollars in damage. Growing physical risk from extreme weather is colliding with the nationwide shortage of affordable housing. A thoughtful and equitable reimagining of our disaster response and recovery system has never been more urgent. But the Trump administration’s dismantling of federal agencies and programs responsible for disaster response puts Americans everywhere at extraordinary risk and will hamper state and local government’s ability to prepare for and recover from disasters.  

Cuts to HUD will hurt disaster recovery and affordable housing 

The Trump administration has signaled that it plans to reduce the workforce at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by half. One of the targets within HUD for layoffs is the Office of Community Planning and Development—a leaked document suggests 84% of the staff in the office will be terminated. Staff in that office run the Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) which support states and local governments to rebuild homes, public infrastructure, and fund economic development activities in areas where disaster has been declared. The Office of Community Planning and Development also administers the Continuum of Care program, which funds nonprofits and local governments in their response to homelessness—which is at a record high. Staff terminations will cause delays in these crucial programs.   

Within a week of HUD Secretary Scott Turner’s confirmation, details about climate-specific research and programs have disappeared from the HUD website. Advocates are raising concerns about the agency’s failure to disperse the most recent tranche of funding for the Green and Resilient Retrofit program, which supports improvements to federally-financed, affordable apartments.  

FEMA cuts harm communities pre- and post-disaster 

The Trump administration has also announced significant layoffs and cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA has the sole mission to help people before, during, and after disasters. As my colleague Shana Udvardy notes, the agency needs both competent leadership and funding to accomplish its mission. Unfortunately, we are seeing the exact opposite right now.  

Currently, FEMA is operating under an interim head who has little experience in emergency management or disaster response. Adding to that, recent layoffs to an already understaffed agency means decreased capacity to respond to increasingly frequent disasters. In addition to disaster response, risk reduction and resilience efforts also seem to be on the chopping block. FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities and Flood Mitigation Assistance programs have obligated over 1.6 billion dollars nationwide in the last five years. Although both programs existed before the creation of the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative, their designation as Justice40 programs in light of recent rollbacks raises questions about the continued funding despite enormous need for resilience investments.  

A pattern of politicizing disasters 

While the level of funding and personnel cuts may be unprecedented, the politicization of aid by President Trump is not. During his first term, Trump used the Office of Budget and Management (run then as now by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought) to delay obligated disaster recovery funding to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017. This weaponization of aid has continued into the second Trump administration, as evidenced by his threats to withhold aid to California after the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, and FEMA acting administrator Cameron Hamilton’s refusal of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s request to extend the 100% federal cost share for continuing Hurricane Helene clean-up efforts. 

Ripple effects of uncertainty in federal disaster funding 

The politicization of disaster aid doesn’t just delay recovery and increase near-term risk, it poses longer-term threats to frontline communities. One such threat is the impact on municipal bond markets, which provide debt securities for state and local governments to finance everything from day-to-day operations to critical infrastructure investments needed for climate adaptation. Until recently, the municipal bond market has been slow to reflect climate risk, in part because of information gaps and in part because federal investments in disaster response and recovery can help reduce future risks and thereby ameliorate the negative impacts of these disasters on local communities’ creditworthiness.   

Federal aid to state and local governments both directly increases resilience through disaster recovery grants, and indirectly by reducing the riskiness of municipal bonds through reducing climate risks to communities. The worst thing that could happen to communities hit by a climate disaster would be to then find their credit rating hit too, through no fault of their own. Investments in climate resilience pay off—for communities and for their ability to raise money through bond funding. Slashing disaster aid and resilience programs based on political whims will inject uncertainty into municipal bond markets that state and local governments simply can’t afford.  

Rethinking local climate planning as defense 

Already, state and local governments are mounting legal challenges to this administration’s rollbacks. Outside of the courts, state and local governments will need to take a more expansive view of planning for climate change, beyond emissions reductions. These expanded goals should be pursued with all available financing options before investor confidence in municipal bonds wanes drastically.

Investments in meaningfully affordable housing—from the building of new homes in less risky places to weatherization and upgrades to existing single and multi-family housing—will increase resilience. Policy changes should co-occur with investment. For example, adopting stronger building codes will help homes withstand increasingly severe storms, and developing tenant protection policies will ensure that well-intentioned investments in housing won’t inadvertently spur displacement. As property insurance premiums increase and put greater strain on homeowners and affordable housing developers, regulators on the state level could compel insurers to report more thorough data on rate increases and policy cancellations with the goal of moving towards risk reduction partnerships.    

While state and local governments can play important defense against resilience policy and funding rollbacks at the federal level, they can do much more with the funding, strong standards, and technical assistance from the federal government. As the US Congress enters budget reconciliation, lawmakers should fight tooth and nail for agencies like HUD and FEMA, federal workers, and funding that communities across the country rely on.

Amid the Trump Administration’s illegal moves to freeze Congressionally-authorized funding, shutter Congressionally-authorized agencies, and fire civil servants for political reasons, budget reconciliation looms.

Does Congressional budget reconciliation even matter right now given our unfolding Constitutional crisis?

Yes, it does. Budget reconciliation is a legislative tool with the power to fundamentally reshape federal spending for a decade if Congress and the President manage to deploy it successfully. And unlike much of what the Trump administration has sought to do so far, it is allowed by law. As a result, even as President Trump and Elon Musk continue sowing dangerous, illegal chaos, it is important to spare some energy to crawl into the weeds on budget reconciliation and understand what awaits us in the months ahead.

Who is responsible for Congressional budget reconciliation?

While both the US House and White House play critical roles in budget reconciliation, this is really all about the Senate.

Most commonly, there are two ways to move legislation through the Senate: unanimous consent or a vote of three-fifths of the Senators (60 out of 100) called a supermajority. The history and legitimacy of the supermajority requirement in the Senate are topics for another day. For our purposes, the thing to know is that requiring a supermajority vote makes enacting sweeping, partisan legislation, especially when it comes to rearranging tax and spending priorities, exceedingly difficult.

What is budget reconciliation?

Enter the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (CBA). Passed by the 93rd Congress and signed into law by President Ford, the CBA governs all aspects of the federal budget process. Among the law’s most important provisions is a rule that if the House and Senate can agree on a budget resolution, legislation implementing the spending levels in that resolutioncan pass the Senate by a simple majority vote (51 out of 100 senators). Such legislation is called a budget reconciliation bill because it is supposed to reconcile actual spending and revenues with the new budget resolution.

Reconciliation is unworkable when the two political parties share control of the federal government. During unified control of the Executive and Legislative branches, as is the situation currently with the Republicans controlling the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate, budget reconciliation offers a rare opportunity for the party in control to reshape the federal government for years to come.

Recent examples of budget reconciliation legislation include the Republican tax cuts in 2017 (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), the Democratic economic stimulus plan in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 (the American Rescue Plan), and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.

Where does budget reconciliation happen?

The budget reconciliation process starts in the House and/or Senate Budget Committees. As of today, each chamber is moving its own, vastly different, budget resolution, each proposing different spending levels across the federal government.

The Senate is considering a narrower resolution that purports to increase energy production and invest in border security, with a second resolution focused on tax policy to come later. The House is resisting the two-step approach in favor of one massive package containing all of President Trump’s planned spending, including permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

How will budget reconciliation happen?

Eventually, the House and Senate will have to agree on a single budget resolution or reconciliation will not be triggered (the budget resolution only requires a simple majority for passage and does not require approval by the President). The final budget will include instructions to a wide variety of Congressional committees with jurisdiction over different areas of spending.

For example, the final budget resolution could instruct the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find budget savings within its jurisdiction totaling a specific amount, or the Senate Armed Services Committee to identify provisions in its purview that would increase spending by a certain amount.

Each committee receiving instructions in the budget resolution will then write provisions to comply with its instructions. Finally, the budget committees package all the provisions in one legislative vehicle, which must pass the House and Senate and then be signed into law by the President. It remains to be seen whether the House approach (one big bill) or Senate approach (two smaller bills) will win out.

Senate rules prohibit the inclusion of “extraneous” matters in a budget reconciliation bill. This is enforced through the “Byrd rule,” named for the late Senator Robert C. Byrd. The Byrd rule says the Senate Parliamentarian is required to review budget reconciliation legislation and identify provisions unrelated to the budget. This review is called the “Byrd bath.” Provisions found to violate the Byrd rule are subject to removal from the bill. In other words, anything unrelated to the budget can’t be added to a reconciliation bill. (For a deep dive on the Byrd rule, please see this excellent report from the Congressional Research Service.)

To be clear, budget reconciliation legislation is required to be related to federal spending and revenues, but it is not required to actually save any money, and it rarely does. The current House budget resolution would specifically raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, which is strong evidence that the House majority expects reconciliation legislation to increase the debt, not lower it.

When will budget reconciliation start and be completed?

Great question! Who knows?

The Congressional Budget Act includes deadlines for this process, and the final budget resolution will include dates by which the committees receiving reconciliation instructions should comply, but there are no enforcement mechanisms. The Congressional Research Service summarizes the timing this way (emphasis, mine):

The record of experience with reconciliation legislation over the period since 1980 indicates considerable variation in the time needed to process such measures from the date the reconciliation instructions take effect (upon final adoption of the budget resolution) until the resultant reconciliation legislation is approved or vetoed by the President. The interval for the 24 reconciliation measures ranged from a low of 27 days (for the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990) to a high of 384 days (for the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005). On average, completing the process took about five months (155 days) . . .

Assuming the House and Senate can come to agreement on a budget resolution this spring, a budget reconciliation bill could be expected in the fall.

But don’t forget that this 10-year budget reconciliation process is unfolding while annual spending legislation for the current fiscal year expires March 14. That’s right: Congress and the Administration are focused on a long-term budget plan while they cannot agree on a plan to keep the government open past next month. Ironic, eh?

Why is Congress using the budget reconciliation process?

President Trump and Congressional Republicans hope to use the budget reconciliation process to enact a partisan spending plan that could not pass the Senate under normal rules. Just how extreme that plan will be remains to be seen.

The current Senate budget resolution would pump $150 billion into the already-bloated Pentagon, and another combined $350 billion into law enforcement agencies within the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, ostensibly to curb unauthorized migration.

Meanwhile, the Senate plan claims to defray a tiny percentage of that spending by expanding fossil fuel production from federal lands and waters. Senate Republicans have also indicated they intend to use reconciliation to repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in renewable energy and clean transportation, while overturning the Biden Administration’s fee on methane.

The House budget blueprint is even more destructive. It would extend the Trump tax cuts from 2017, which exploded the deficit and were severely skewed in favor of the wealthy. To mask a small percentage of the cost of such a move, the House budget plan would allow cuts to Medicaid, federal student assistance, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Both resolutions, and the reconciliation bill that will result, would redistribute trillions in taxpayer dollars to the already-wealthy, powerful, and politically connected, and away from poor and working-class families, while managing to grow the deficit and debt.

What can we do about this?

As this process unfolds, the Union of Concerned Scientists—working independently and in coalition with partners—will defend crucial spending priorities while highlighting the disastrous impacts of the current reconciliation plans. We will continue to provide policymakers who are willing to protect investments in a clean energy economy, respond to the climate crisis, protect programs vital to working families, pursue tax fairness, and right-size our defense spending with tools to engage in that defense using the best available science.

Enactment of a budget reconciliation plan is not a forgone conclusion. While the process does provide a crucial shortcut to Senate passage for the administration’s legislative priorities, it remains a heavy lift, made even harder by the historically narrow margin in the House and the tendency toward Congressional in-fighting.

Effective science advocacy can affect this outcome, and that is what we at UCS do. Please stay tuned.

There is an abundance of Native American imagery in the US imagination, and much of it is inaccurate: The Western films depicting cowboys winning against local Natives, Wild West TV shows, the classic tear rolling down the cheek of a man in a headdress as he looks at litter, or the picturesque images as Disney’s Pocahontas sang about all the colors the wind holds.

Some of the concepts about Native Americans that many non-Native people possess are rooted in stereotypical portrayals from the media. These concepts were crafted hundreds of years ago and codified in the Declaration of Independence, which calls us “merciless Indian savages.” Because of these propagandized portrayals routinely woven into the mainstream, the stereotypical imagery of Natives has been challenging and nearly impossible to correct.

This imagery has been exploited, propagandized, and weaponized regularly without responsibility or accountability, even as Native communities work tirelessly to continuously debunk falsehoods. These are not just old-school representations that don’t apply today. I was once asked by a judge in court how often I drank alcohol. When I responded that I don’t, he asked me, “Well, what kind of Indian ARE you?” I responded that I prefer to be outdoors, and be active. He replied, “Oh, so you’re that kind of Indian.”

It’s important to realize that there are no positive stereotypes; all stereotypes lead to a generalized assumption, and an unrealistic, erroneous expectation that leaves members of certain groups pressured and then villainized or persecuted for behaving unstereotypically—which is so harmful when the stereotypes were inaccurate in the first place. Stereotyping omits the possibility of variability and choice among the stereotyped group.  

The “Ecological Native” stereotype persists and harms

In my opinion, one of the worst and most exploited of all the stereotypes is that of the “Ecological Native”: This stereotype rests in the belief that Natives are connected to the land, inextricably and mysteriously—almost magically. To be fair, some of us are connected to our land, and it has nothing to do with magic. And others are not, which doesn’t mean they are any less a part of Native American communities. Each of us still make up the collective People; each of us contributes our talents, skills, and gifts.

Personally, I have been an outdoor-loving child ever since I can remember. I happened to understand and learn Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) without effort, and carry on sustainable practices that have been in our family since time immemorial. I also have family members who don’t like to go outside, who can’t tell what weather patterns are coming, when to gather, or when fishing season is. The danger of stereotyping resides when someone in a position of power, such as a government agent, business person, consultant, academic researcher, or nonprofit administrator, expects a Native person not skilled in environmental areas to offer information. Assuming that individuals are skilled in an area that they are not, based only on stereotypes, is dangerous. We don’t all know the same information, hold the same ideals, or have the skills and ability to produce information upon command. Situations like this become perilous when we are “asked” while expectation and pressure are embedded in the “request.”

Requests arrive from people or government agencies, and other places that want to validate information or prove inclusivity by incorporation of TEK, and by extension a Native individual. Even if someone who is contacted wishes to say no to such requests, our history of Native peoples across this land is rife with dangerous interactions and being punished to varying degrees for such refusals. Some people may even feel that if they refuse, or if they don’t live up to “Ecological Native” stereotypes, they could be fired or replaced.

Relying on false experts is dangerous

Increasingly, we’re seeing people who do not have specific TEK or Tribal knowledge—but claim to—promote themselves as “experts” to those who don’t have any information on how to carefully vet collaborators. These individuals then fall back onto tropes of land connection and meaningless verbiage while taking funding or influencing land management practices while excluding Tribal input. Often, we see non-vetted individuals be awarded contracts and funding over vetted TEK practitioners simply due to the reliance on a learned stereotype that has been exploited.

I receive emails weekly about someone who has contacted a colleague or Tribal member in search of any Native who is expected to then represent the community. This presents a difficult predicament, since some Natives are willing to give talks, but often don’t have the accurate information needed to address the topic at hand. That information is often recorded and presented as fact, and reused as being from a Native ‘expert.’ This leads to inaccurate data, unverifiable information when claiming the inclusion of TEK, and disbelief of and passing over of vetted Native researchers and specialists. This pattern also contributes to discounting Native scientists and scholars who have spent much lengthier periods of time than others specializing in TEK areas.

It is imperative that anyone who wants to include TEK or data from any discipline of Indigenous science be vetted within—and by—Tribal communities and their administrations, rather than by non-Native people who misunderstand who and what vetted Native scientists are and do.  

Additionally, the process of incorporation of Native data and select disciplines of Indigenous science must be carefully reviewed and include vetted Native scholars. Reliance on “someone who knows someone who works with a Native” or a Native who is self-proclaimed as a Native Indigenous scientist, is a dangerous, unethical practice.

Misusing TEK affects climate science

As scientists realized that Western science was failing to comprehensively address climate change, they began seeking out TEK as a method of combatting its effects. The Western science community began looking outside itself to alternative ways of knowing, and found that many Natives had been recognizing climate change in various ways while practicing their TEK. Some oral documentation of discussions of initial change goes back as far as the 1950s.

The new awareness of this perspective and our longstanding datasets offered new insight and filled the holes and gaps in the datasets based on siloed information that much Western science is based upon.

Ongoing TEK practices are carefully maintained and recognized through oral documentation by vetted practitioners. These practitioners are then at the mercy of belief systems that do not take into account the complexity of TEK, nor understand the phenology of the land and resources. 

Traditional burn systems provide a perfect example:

A common TEK practice along the West coast and other areas of the country was that of annual controlled burns to maintain vegetation, provide healthy systems, and encourage new growth. This encouraged game to return for the fresh shoots, and provided better basketry material. A detailed understanding of the forested areas, how the landscape moved and shifted, and how cool burn fires (with lower heat intensities than wildfires) would move, was common TEK knowledge.

My father can still recount a childhood memory of attending one of the last burns that was done in the Willamette Valley area of Oregon, stretching from just south of Portland through to Eugene. He recalls how those who started the fire had to then hide away for fear of being arrested for “arson.”

This kind of knowledge, and all its benefits, cannot be applied or used by Western science so long as false narratives about Native people, based on antiquated belief systems, are still the norm. This conflict remains, as Western scientists are interested in TEK but also want to cherry-pick topics to apply it to. This is problematic and ineffective because TEK is holistic in practice; understanding the system as a whole is an absolute necessity. Many non-Native scientists working on climate change don’t understand the premise of multi-generational understanding as it applies to scientific knowledge and consequently don’t take our TEK seriously .

And if at the same time they don’t understand TEK, climate scientists also subscribe to the stereotype of the Ecological Native, believing that all Natives hold the key to climate change, that faulty belief will perpetuate the issues of climate change that we all face. This is wasting time and when time is wasted it threatens our communities as well as verifiable science, both Western and Indigenous.

Painting the issue of climate change, or any other issue for that matter, as “solved by Indigenous science” is like calling John Wayne movies accurate.   

A cruel irony for TEK practitioners

On top of all of the intentional, irreparable, and ongoing harm done to Native peoples, for those of us who are blessed enough to retain and attempt to maintain our TEK, the cruel irony is that many of our homelands and natural resources—where we gained this knowledge— have been stolen, destroyed, and/or privatized. We are often barred from the areas where we hold U&A (usual and accustomed) rights to, and we are inundated with procedural blockades designed to keep us from access when we do seek to access homeland areas and resources. These obstructions come from federal, state, and local agents who gatekeep—often quite literally.

Left: a rock pile blockage on a road used for Tribal hunting. Right: a fence to keep people out and discourage hunting, with elk behind the fence. Photo credit: Samantha Chisholm Hatfield

Furthermore, the sustainability measures—like traditional burns, the ability to utilize sustainable methods of monitoring species health such as eels, salmon, or deer, or to ensure native plant species’ growth in traditional homeland areas—that we have fought for, reclaimed, and that have been left in our care to protect and be protected for at least seven generations into the future are often at risk of being blocked by some type of bias. As community members, we all know someone whose hunting, fishing, plant, medicinal, or other resource collections were confiscated, whose permit forms were “lost,” or who arrived to find the forest gates locked when they were assured they would be unlocked. This can result in missing the run, a failed hunt, or plants withering preventing harvest collections. This then throws off the sustainable TEK practices we work diligently to uphold and maintain.

Many of the follow-up conversations on situations like these and others that involve sustainability practices of TEK include responses from non-Natives in legal, agency, business, and community sectors who are clearly operating from stereotypical beliefs they hold against Natives. For example, my Tribal community members have told me they have heard inaccurate statements about themselves in these types of situations, such as that they only want to steal resources, or that Natives are “greedy,” that we don’t need natural resources since we have casinos, or that we don’t understand what it takes to manage the areas.

TEK and Western science can co-exist for the benefit of all

Indigenous and Western scientists can co-exist, but in order for this to happen, non-Natives must recognize and set aside their harmful stereotypes of Native peoples, including that we can magically solve climate change. Vetted Native practitioners of TEK must be given the freedom and trust to practice their resource management that contributes to climate change data, without the stereotyping that we will mismanage our lands, or that we don’t need our resources. Indigenous scientists, scholars, and practitioners of TEK cannot collaborate effectively with western science, when stereotypes of Natives persist and perpetuate a bias that interferes with TEK.

Non-natives in positions of power must stop viewing outreach to just one unvetted, non-expert Native person as a quick fix for their projects and initiatives, and instead seek input from Native communities, especially those that will be most affected by whatever policies or solutions they’re working on. And Native practitioners of TEK must be given the freedom and trust to practice their resource management, without the stereotypes that we will mismanage our lands, or that we don’t need our resources.

Among the many attacks in President Trump’s Day 1 Executive Order on “unleashing” American (fossil) energy, is a directive to EPA administrator Zeldin to reevaluate the agency’s bedrock 2009 scientific determination of the harms caused by heat-trapping emissions and submit recommendations within 30 days (i.e. this week). The ‘Endangerment Finding’ establishes that heat-trapping emissions harm people and the environment, and it forms a core legal basis for the agency’s subsequent actions to set standards to limit global warming pollution from vehicles and power plants, as well as methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

It’s no surprise that this anti-science, pro-fossil fuel administration wants to go after the Endangerment Finding. Of course, an honest assessment of the latest climate science will show that since 2009 the evidence has become even more compelling and dire. Climate change, driven by rising heat-trapping emissions, is already causing significant harm to people’s health and well-being and to vital ecosystems. Those harms will worsen rapidly as global warming emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, increase.

This blatant attempt to do an end-run around scientific evidence deserves to fail.

What is the Endangerment Finding?

Back in 2007, the Supreme Court reached a landmark judgment in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. establishing that heat-trapping emissions (or greenhouse gas emissions) are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The court further mandated that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must set protective standards for global warming pollutants if the agency found them to be harmful to human health and welfare.

The 2007 case was brought by petitioners (which included several state attorney generals and NGOs, including the Union of Concerned Scientists) in the context of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.

The EPA subsequently undertook an extensive process, including hearings and a public comment period, and concluded that a vast body of scientific evidence showed that heat-trapping pollutants do indeed harm public health and welfare and that motor vehicles contribute to that pollution.

In 2009, the agency issued the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases, summarized below:

• Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
• Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.

The findings have subsequently been extended to other major sources of heat-trapping emissions, including power plants and oil and gas operations, and have been upheld in court.

For more on the legal and political twists and turns in the history of the Endangerment Finding, please check out this blogpost: Endangered Science: Why Global Warming Emissions Are Covered by the Clean Air Act.

What is Zeldin being directed to do?

President Trump’s Day 1 executive order directs the EPA administrator to work with other relevant agencies to submit recommendations, within 30 days, to the director of the OMB on the “legality and continuing applicability” of the agency’s Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act.

Opponents of climate action have long understood the power of the Endangerment Finding and tried unsuccessfully to dismantle it during the first Trump administration. Project 2025 also includes a call to “Establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.”

With a new more dangerous Trump administration, thoroughly corrupted by fossil fuel interests—and with the architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, now confirmed as OMB Director—this time the risk to the Endangerment Finding is definitely greater. Gutting the Endangerment Finding would completely undermine EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and put a stop to all of EPA’s regulations to limit global warming pollution, a gift to the fossil fuel industry.

But getting rid of the Endangerment Finding is not going to be easy and is by no means a foregone conclusion, as even Lee Zeldin knows. It would require such a brazen effort to lie about climate science evidence that it’s hard to imagine courts going along with that even if the EPA were to take that unwise route.

The latest climate science is clear and alarming

There’s no question that this is a bad faith effort to try to find ways to undercut EPA’s responsibility and authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions under the Clean Air Act. The fact remains that any science-based update to the Endangerment Finding would conclusively demonstrate that the actual harms and projected risks from climate change have only grown grimmer since the 2009 endangerment finding was issued.

As heat-trapping emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, continue to rise, global average temperatures too continue their relentless climb with 2024 once again the hottest year on record. Extreme climate-related disasters—including heatwaves, storms, droughts, wildfires and flooding—are worsening, taking a fearsome toll on people, the economy and ecosystems. Accelerating sea level rise, ocean acidification and loss of major ice sheets also continue apace, with profound consequences for the planet.

If Lee Zeldin is looking for a recent authoritative assessment of the science, he should turn to the 2023 Fifth US National Climate Assessment, produced under the direction of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the USGCRP—which collaborates across 15 federal agencies—deliver a report to Congress and the President at least every four years.

Here’s the headline from the NCA5:

The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. Across the country, efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions have expanded since 2018, and US emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007. However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.

Another valuable source is the IPCC sixth assessment report, which reflects the work of thousands of scientists around the world—including many from the United States—in assessing the latest climate science, impacts, and opportunities to cut heat-trapping emissions and adapt to climate change.

The National Academy of Sciences would also be a good source of information. Here, for example, is a handy booklet on the evidence for and causes of climate change.

NOAA and NASA, premier federal science agencies, also closely monitor and track global climate change and its impacts. (And hopefully will continue to do so—although recent attacks on NOAA, foreshadowed in the Project 2025 manifesto, do not bode well.)

An anti-science pro-fossil fuel administration

Barely a month into the term of this second Trump administration, it’s clear that the President and his cabinet are hell-bent on doing everything they can to boost fossil fuels and shred climate and clean energy policies, catering to deep-pocketed fossil fuel interests.

They clearly intend to use every means at their disposal (lawful or not) to roll back regulations to help address global warming pollution. Those actions will be rightfully challenged in court, and it takes time to undo regulations in a legal way. However, any delay in implementing strong standards is harmful when the climate crisis is so acute. If the Trump administration succeeds in weakening or stopping EPA’s efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions, that will just leave people bearing the costs while fossil fuel polluters rake in profits.

Revisiting the endangerment and cause or contribute findings is just one more backdoor way to try to advance that harmful agenda. This directive shouldn’t fool anyone. It’s not a genuine effort to engage with scientific facts and listen to climate scientists. After all, the President has called climate change a hoax and many of his cabinet are climate science deniers.

The question for Lee Zeldin is whether he will just pander to that destructive agenda, or will he actually defend the mission of the agency he leads, which is to protect public health and the environment. He has already overseen a series of harmful actions at the EPA—including firing staff, cutting budgets, gutting its environmental justice work, and illegally freezing already-allocated funds for clean energy. So, I doubt we can count on a courageous defense of the endangerment finding from him.

Regardless of how Zeldin responds to President Trump’s directive, this administration cannot hide the reality of climate change. Undoing the Endangerment Finding is such an extremist anti-science endeavor, it is hard to imagine how it could succeed.

But we live in a country today where many previously unimaginable things are happening.

This post was co-authored by Dr. Astrid Caldas

What is your morning routine? Wake up, maybe make coffee, tea, or other morning beverage or meal, check the weather. It is something most people do in the US—office workers, outdoor workers, farmers, fishermen, stay-at-home folks. No matter what one’s life is like, most of us are going to go outside, and most of us check the weather. This is how we, at least partially, assess how our day will go, what we’re going to wear, what activities we will be able to perform, how easy or dreary the commute will be, etc.

This is true for days with uneventful weather, but when extreme weather is in the forecast for the next few days or weeks, weather information becomes critical—even life-saving. Your morning newscasters or social media feeds typically give you “stay cool” tips in advance of a heat wave, or a hurricane warning for your coastal city may show you maps or list areas under mandatory evacuation order due to projected dangerous storm surge.  

But the reliance on that straightforward, taken-for-granted information may be imperiled. President Trump and unelected individuals designated by him are taking aim at scientists and illegally taking over infrastructure responsible for creating and issuing weather conditions and alerts—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The blueprint for many of the Trump administration’s actions, Project 2025, calls for dismantling and privatizing some of its essential services.  

Is having extreme weather information critical? Absolutely. Do we know what happened in the days before modern weather information systems were available to warn the public about extreme weather? We sure do. The Great Blizzard of 1888, for example, dropped as much as 58 inches of snow and “paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine to the Atlantic provinces of Canada.” Transportation via cars, trains, and boats was severely impacted, more than 400 people died, and melting snow after the storm severely flooded areas of the US Northeast. Having advance information about the location and magnitude of an extreme weather event is an essential component of strategies to stay safe, from households to first responders to businesses, to government at all levels.  

The prospect of dismantling the systems and jobs that make this information available is alarming on many fronts. The impacts could be so far-reaching that it is hard to understand why such a move is even being considered. Below are just a few things that will be impacted if the Trump administration follows through with the plans laid out in Project 2025 for dismantling NOAA. 

Extreme weather alerts and forecasts

Without NOAA’s freely-available data for all who currently use it to create daily and multi-day forecasts, everyday people will find themselves at a loss about preparing for weather. With extreme weather becoming more extreme due to human-caused climate change, it is essential that communities know what is coming in order to prepare adequately.  

Emergency response agencies, business owners, outdoor workers, farmers, fishermen, parents, caretakers, and everyday folks, all need to know what is coming so they can adjust their activities accordingly. How is your kids’ school principal supposed to know when it’s going to be too hot for children to play outside so they can plan to keep them indoors during a heatwave? What happens when a winter storm demands that roads are salted in anticipation of snowy and icy conditions—but transportation authorities can’t access information about when and how much ice, sleet, or snow will accumulate? How is a coastal community supposed to know what level of storm to prepare for or what areas to issue evacuation orders for? 

Hurricane forecasts

Due to climate change, hurricanes are more destructive: they’re stronger, they drop more rain, they hang around in one place for longer to do more damage from flooding and rain, and they intensify more rapidly, sometimes with horrifying speed.

To counter these impacts, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center provides data that saves lives and allows for preparedness at the local, regional and federal levels. Evacuations, shelters, infrastructure protections all depend on knowing with certainty the likelihood that a hurricane will make landfall. And NOAA’s forecasts and storm-tracking ability is getting better.

In 2022, NOAA assessed its forecasts and storm-tracking ability and found that since 2000, it had reduced its average 72-hour storm tracking error by 57%, while its error rate in predicting storm intensity had dropped by 40%. All these improvements would not be possible without proper funding and science, and without these improvements, forecasts would not be as confident as they are now, helping prevent loss of life and property across the United States. These forecasts were invaluable during the 2024 hurricane season, when NOAA’s accurate and early storm tracks for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton prompted early evacuation orders and preparedness that saved lives and property.  

Rain, fire, drought

In addition to data for weather forecasts, the National Weather Service (a division of NOAA) provides data for daily wildfire, precipitation and drought outlooks for the entire United States. It also provides other severe weather outlooks and an overview of winter and tropical maritime conditions. The latter identifies current and expected activity in the Atlantic Ocean related to the formation of tropical storms and hurricanes. 

Fisheries

The information created by NOAA’s scientists goes beyond weather and the US borders, as it is used domestically and internationally to protect and project fisheries’ yields and determine legal catch sizes. This is done through the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), whose goals are to maintain and protect ocean ecosystems for both natural ecosystem equilibrium and sustainable fishing. 

NOAA science also informs about escalating climate impacts

The plan to dismantle NOAA could not come at a more perilous time for people facing threats to their lives and property from extreme weather and climate change.

NOAA reported that during 2024, at least 568 lives were lost in 27 separate disasters that each cost at least $1 billion in the US, for a whopping total of at least $182.7 billion.  These costs continue to climb year after year as wildfires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and heat waves decimate communities across the country.

Whether you accept climate change science or not, you cannot erase your risk in a warmed and warming world (read here for ten signs of climate change). One of our most powerful tools against fierce, deadly weather is the ability to predict where it will affect us. That is what this administration threatens to take away.

 

Disasters with total economic losses of at least $1 billion dollars. Source: NOAA. NOAA is paid by the people, for the people, not special interests

Fishermen on the Eastern shore of Maryland are feeling the pressure of climate change impacts on their yield and seasons. Farmers across the Midwest are reeling from droughts and floods. Outdoor workers are dying from extreme heat. Schools are not letting children out to play on extremely hot days.

The number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters keeps increasing: the 1980–2024 annual average is 9 events; the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2020–2024) is 23 events. The consequences of climate change and its impact on people, the economy, and infrastructure cannot be ignored by attacking an agency that actively helps prepare for said impacts with reliable, freely available data.  

NOAA is the go-to agency for scientifically-accurate global and regional atmospheric and oceanic conditions. The data collected by NOAA is used in forecasts and projections that save lives across the country.  

As we’ve said before, NOAA creates and advances climate science research to lay the unbiased, scientific bedrock of data and information for decision and policy-making that can deliver for us a climate-resilient future. We need to invest in and support—not dismantle—their mission to understand climate change to benefit current and future generations.  

NOAA belongs to us, is paid by us, and cannot be taken away from us. Why is Congress allowing an unelected billionaire to unleash his private army of tech goons on NOAA and illegally enter and usurp its functions and information technology systems? If Congress does not put a stop to this, one day we may wake up without extreme weather alert information. One day, we may wake up to a terrible storm we should have seen coming. 

Sea levels are rising, and science shows they will continue to rise for generations due to heat-trapping emissions that have already been released. This highlights a profound and enduring climate injustice: future generations will face the consequences of today’s decisions. The effects of these emissions are already unfolding, but the full extent of their impact—on coastlines, communities, and ecosystems—will play out over lifetimes to come.  

Understanding sea level rise as a long-term, multi-generational problem is essential to comprehending the scale of climate change and the need for bold action now. While this knowledge may be sobering, it underscores the importance of reducing emissions, holding major polluters accountable, and adapting to a changing world. Let’s explore what is driving this persistent rise and what it means for our collective future. 

What do we know about future sea level rise? 

Sea level rise is one of the most well-documented and predictable consequences of climate change, with models showing that average sea levels will increase over time, even in optimistic versions of the future. Scientists use computer models, such as climate models, ice sheet models, and sea level models, to make projections of future climate change. Projections of sea level rise, such as those contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report, give us an idea of what might happen in the future.  

These projections are usually based on a combination of two things: the heat-trapping emissions that have already occurred in the past and those that could occur in the future.  

The future trajectories are based on different scenarios, such as versions of the future where the world comes together to take action and phase out fossil fuels, or versions where fossil fuel production continues throughout this century. These different future scenarios, combined with what we already know happened in the past, give us a range of possible future sea levels.  

Most simulations focus on the near-term impacts by 2100, but some look forward multiple centuries to 2300, and occasionally some look even farther into the future, looking ahead 2,000 or even 10,000 years. 

Even in the most optimistic scenarios, where global average temperatures are kept below 1.5°C, model projections show that sea levels could still rise by approximately 11-22 inches higher than present by 2100. This would cause dramatic changes in island and coastal communities. Looking further into the future, the impact is even larger. Over the next 2,000 years we could see sea levels rising as much as 7.5-10 feet. Over the next 10,000 years, as much as 20-23 feet. If the world surpasses 1.5°C of warming and instead warms by 2°C the world could endure even worse outcomes with sea levels rising 7-20 feet over 2,000 years and 26-43 feet over 10,000 years. 

Looking at future sea level rise in this way gives us a combined look at the impact of both past and possible future emissions. But what if we want to know the impact of past emissions separated from the impact of future emissions? For that, we need to separate the impact of emissions that occurred over different time periods, and we need to understand the processes that make sea level rise such an enduring challenge. 

What causes sea level rise to persist for centuries?  

Because of the way the climate and ocean systems respond to heat-trapping emissions, sea levels will continue to rise even after air temperatures stabilize. This has been noted as a source of climate injustice, due to the profound impacts on future generations and low-lying coastal communities. 

The way air temperature responds after emissions cease is called the zero emissions commitment, or ZEC. Research with climate models in recent years shows that when carbon dioxide emissions stop, the rise in atmospheric temperatures will likely also stop. This means that there would be no additional warming of the atmosphere from carbon dioxide itself, but the many complex systems on Earth will continue to respond to the heat already trapped.  

So, even in a future scenario where the world achieves the stabilization of air temperatures, the Earth’s oceans and cryosphere (frozen regions like Antarctica) will continue to adjust. The oceans absorb much of the carbon dioxide lingering in the atmosphere, which contributes to ocean acidification. Meanwhile, increased atmospheric and ocean temperatures cause glaciers and ice sheets to melt and oceans to expand. 

The two dominant contributing factors to rising sea levels are: 

• Thermal Expansion: As the oceans absorb heat, the water expands, accounting for a significant portion of current sea level rise. 

• Melting Land Ice: When global mountain glaciers and the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica melt, they add mass to the ocean. The combined melt of all land ice is currently the dominant driver of sea level rise, and this trend is expected to continue into the future.  

Given that air temperatures stabilize when heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions stop, yet sea levels continue to rise, we might then ask, what is the zero emissions commitment for sea level rise? How much would sea levels rise in the future just due to the impact of heat-trapping emissions that have already occurred in the past? 

Delaying emissions reductions leads to higher long-term sea level rise 

Scientific answers to these questions are just beginning to emerge. A few studies give us insight into the committed sea level rise that can result just from emissions that have already occurred in the past. One team found that emissions just up until 2016 could lead to approximately 2.3–3.6 feet of sea level rise by 2300—even if no other emissions happened after 2016. For reference, averaged across the Earth, sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1901, meaning the full impact of past emissions has yet to materialize in our oceans and that future sea level rise in the coming centuries just from emissions that occurred before 2016 will exceed what we’ve experienced to date.  

Another study looks at how delays in reducing heat-trapping emissions impact sea level rise across centuries. ​​They find that for every five years that the world delays the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, we commit the future to a median level of an additional 8 inches of sea level rise at 2300.   

Ice sheet tipping points: A critical threat 

Ice sheets have the potential to become the dominant factor in long-term sea level response. 

One of the biggest challenges with ice sheets is that they are considered tipping elements—meaning that they can pass a threshold beyond which large scale mass loss becomes effectively irreversible on human-relevant time scales. This is especially true for the marine-based ice sheets in Antarctica, which are undergoing ice loss due to warm temperatures in both the air and the ocean. While the precise warming threshold for ice sheet tipping points is still unclear, research on times in Earth’s history where the ice sheets underwent enormous changes tells us that it could happen even at a temperature rise of around 1.5-2°C above the preindustrial average.  

That’s why climate scientists are sounding the alarm—because global efforts under the Paris Agreement to keep warming below those levels are far off track. Current pledges countries have made under the Paris Agreement are projected to lead to around 3°C of atmospheric warming by the end of the century, which means we are at risk of triggering irreversible ice sheet tipping points.  

Understanding these processes underscores the critical need for immediate and sustained global action to reduce emissions. Strong action to reduce heat-trapping emissions now can protect the ice sheets and limit long-term sea level rise. But the longer we delay, the greater the risk of crossing irreversible tipping points and exacerbating the impacts of sea level rise for centuries to come. 

Act now to reduce impacts later 

The multi-century impacts of sea level rise underscore the urgency of phasing out fossil fuels and holding major polluters accountable for their role in driving climate change. While we cannot undo the impacts of past emissions, we can limit additional damage by taking bold action now. Understanding the science behind long-term sea level rise empowers policymakers, advocates, and communities to demand accountability and push for equitable solutions to this intergenerational crisis. 

This concept of long-term sea level response serves as the foundation for ongoing research that quantifies the multi-century impacts of emissions from specific industries, paving the way for informed decision-making and climate accountability. 

We already see coastal communities around the world struggling to cope with flooding, storm surges, and salty ocean water contaminating freshwater reservoirs. But as enormous as the burden to adapt to present problems is, these changes are small compared to the extent of adaptation that will be needed as sea levels continue to rise.  

People around the world are speaking up and calling for action. World’s Youth for Climate Justice has spoken out about the intergenerational issue of rising sea levels. The Alliance of Small Island States has been working diligently for 30 years to get the world to address the climate injustices of sea level rise.  

Court cases are being filed to demand action. This past summer, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued an Advisory Opinion stating that heat-trapping emissions constitute pollution of the marine environment which drives sea level rise. The court noted that nations have obligations under international law to reduce this pollution. Taking action to phase out fossil fuels is not only the right thing to do, it is a requirement under international law.  

We know that sea levels will continue to rise for hundreds to thousands of years, but to what degree is not yet set in stone. We know that heat-trapping emissions must decline and reach zero as soon as possible. And what we need now is for world leaders to fulfill their legal obligations and act now for the sake of future generations.