Whitehouse and Murray Demand DOE’s Sham Climate Report Be “Withdrawn in Shame”

Washington, D.C.- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, fired back against the Department of Energy (DOE), denouncing the agency's pseudoscientific climate report written by known climate deniers with close ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Rife with disinformation, cherry-picked statistics, and outright falsities, the report peddles the lie that human-caused climate change is not a threat. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relied on the report to justify its proposed repeal of the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific determination that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and welfare. In a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the Senators demanded that the "mockery" of a report be "withdrawn in shame" and the proposed repeal of the endangerment finding withdrawn.

"Lacking credible science to support its desired outcome, the Trump Administration has turned to the same small clique of climate science deniers that the fossil fuel industry regularly trots out to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is real and presents grave environmental and economic threats. But just because these climate change deniers exist does not mean they are credible: there is a greater than 99% consensus in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that human-caused climate change is real," wrote the Senators.

"Under metaphorical cover of darkness, then, these 5 science skeptics produced a report purportedly debunking all of mainstream climate science in under two months, without peer review. The Report recycles fossil fuel industry talking points that have been rebutted many times over …. Numerous scientists whose research is cited in the Report have pointed out that the Report misrepresents their work," continued the lawmakers.

Scientists, including those whose work was cited in the report, have vigorously criticized the Trump Administration's many clear errors, cherry-picked data, and misrepresentation of facts.

Notably, the authors of the report have close ties to the fossil fuel industry and its decades-long campaign to spread climate disinformation and obstruct climate action. "The rampant conflicts of interest shared by the five authors of the DOE Report are disqualifying on their face," wrote the Senators.

For example, multiple authors are affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a conservative group that rejects mainstream climate science and is funded by "ExxonMobil^, a longtime funder of climate denialism; DonorsTrust, the 'Dark Money ATM of the conservative movement'; and Murray Energy, a coal mining company owned by Robert Murray, a Trump donor who drafted a wish list for the President of actions to prop up the coal industry." Others have connections to the Heritage Foundation, which receives funding from "DonorsTrust, ExxonMobil, the Koch Family Foundations [entities affiliated with brothers David and Charles Koch and their fossil fuel-reliant megacorporation Koch Industries], and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, whose money comes from the Mellon industrial and oil fortune."

The Trump Administration's lack of transparency also appears to have violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA is aimed at promoting public transparency across government and applies to "advisory committees" that are "established or utilized to obtain advice or recommendations for…or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government."

"Yet DOE failed to comply with FACA or its implementing regulations. Among other infirmities, DOE did not file a Federal Register notice announcing creation of the group, submit to the General Services Administration its 'plan to attain fairly balanced membership' in the Group, or conduct required outreach to interested parties and stakeholders …. Because DOE failed to file a charter with required information about the Group, the Group had no authority to meet in the first place, but DOE compounded the problem by failing to provide notice that would have allowed interested members of the public to attend the Group's meetings," the lawmakers explained.

The full text of the letter to Secretary Wright is available here.