The Trump administration has pulled the plug on the federal program that has produced three decades of overly alarmist climate projections. Tuesday, "stop work" orders were issued to the contractors supporting the Global Change Research Program. This is a federal group established by Congress in 1990. It works under the direction of NASA and coordinates efforts among 14 federal agencies, the Smithsonian Institution, and hundreds of outside scientists to produce the National Climate Assessment.

The National Climate Assessment is a Congressionally mandated report produced every four years. It is not known for its accuracy, but its prominence and the imprimatur it gets from being the US government's official estimate of the number of unicorns climate change impacts ends up driving a lot of government and business decisions. The report requires us to suspend our disbelief and disregard our lying eyes to accept its findings. It has claimed global warming worsens heat waves and increases the number and severity of wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. None of that has materialized over the life of the report.

The biggest scam is that the National Climate Assessment looks at a time span that ends around 2100, too far in the future for the authors to be held accountable but enough of a window for climate change alarmists to do maximum damage.

Incredibly, the Global Change Research Program huffed $4.95 billion in federal cash in 2025 despite only employing two full-time federal employees; see We Taxpayers Are Funding the 'Consultants' Spreading Climate Doom - to the Tune of Billions – RedState. This is because most of the work is performed by a giant leftist environmental consulting firm called ICF; see Targets for the DOGE: The US Global Change Research Program Begs for Scrutiny – RedState. (Full disclosure: I worked as a contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency on the "Energy Star" program and had daily contact with ICF, then called ICF Kaiser, staff also supporting the program.) The stop work order issued by the administration brings work on the 2027 Climate Assessment to a screeching halt. 

By providing the experts and the support staff to write the assessment, ICF essentially controlled the project from concept to final product.

A climate scientist who has worked on the National Climate Assessment in the past says ICF runs the show, virtually controlling the entire U.S. Global Change Research Program. 

“By providing all staff for the USGCRP, a federal agency, the ICF exerts undue influence over the global change narrative and priorities presented by the federal government,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the work. “The ICF, through the USGCRP, exerts an undue influence on the production of the National Climate Assessment every four years. With the exception of its Executive Director and the Director of the National Climate Assessment, the ICF supplies all staff associated with the USGCRP.”

Look for the White House to take more control over the development of this report. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has written on the importance of taking the development of this report off autopilot:

The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research pro grams. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also, since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review, USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control. 

If the administration simply stops providing the climate alarmists with the ammunition they need to destroy our economy and society, we can rate this as a major success.

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