Hiding the Endangerment Finding’s Systemic Biases – Politico’s Failed Attack on DOE’s Climate Science Report Part 1
Marlo Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Politico recently published an article by Benjamin Storrow, Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman, and Paula Friedrich titled “How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change.” The reporters’ objective is obvious and their strategy simple. They aim to discredit the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to repeal the December 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding by discrediting a Department of Energy (DOE) draft report which is cited in the repeal proposal’s climate science discussion.
From a statutory perspective, that strategy is not a winner. The EPA’s proposal to repeal the Endangerment Finding (plus motor vehicle emission standards adopted by the agency in April 2024) relies chiefly on legal arguments that do not presuppose specific climate change assessments.
However, the Politico article could sway the court of public opinion, which in turn could influence future litigation. Such influence would be undeserved. The article ignores foundational biases compromising the scientific basis of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Further, its criticisms of the DOE report repeatedly misfire or backfire, and none comes close to refuting any of the report’s conclusions.
Background
The 2009 Endangerment Finding purported to determine that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The Finding was the impetus for the Obama administration EPA’s adoption, in 2010, of GHG emission standards for model year 2012-2016 motor vehicles. To one degree or another, the Finding undergirds all subsequent climate policy regulations proposed or promulgated by the Obama and Biden administrations.
DOE’s July 2025 draft report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, does not opine on the Endangerment Finding, which is a legal document. However, the report’s non-alarming assessment of climate change risks is heresy to legions of progressive policymakers, activists, academics, and journalists.
The Politico reporters accuse the DOE report’s authors—John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer—of cherry picking, omitting context, relying on debunked or outmoded studies, and citing non-peer-reviewed analyses. They also contend the report is “overtly political” and therefore not a “scientific exercise.” As shown below, those allegations are false, misleading, or unsubstantiated.
This essay has two main parts. Part 1 summarizes the disqualifying cherry picks, omissions, and outmoded opinions fundamental to the “vast scientific consensus” the Politico reporters invoke. It also rebuts their critique of the DOE report’s discussion of climate models. Part 2 rebuts other objections they raise about the DOE report.
Part 1: Realist perspective, (part 2 tomorrow)
Mainstream climate research has a deep scientific integrity problem due to its reliance on a triply biased methodology. For decades, the usual practice has been to run overheated models with inflated emission scenarios and ignore or depreciate humanity’s remarkable capacity for adaptation. That approach is wired to exaggerate the physical impacts of GHG emissions and the harmfulness of such impacts.
All three biases compromise the major assessment reports informing the 2009 Endangerment Finding as well as subsequent assessments touted as updating and strengthening it. However, studies that exposed those biases mostly examined the later assessments. Accordingly, the following sections on unrealistic models and emissions scenarios present the information in somewhat reverse chronological order.
Warm-biased models
To project the physical impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and other “mainstream” assessments use climate change projection models “forced” with various GHG emission scenarios. The IPCC works with climate modeling groups around the world to develop and evaluate their products. This exercise is called the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP).
There have been six CMIPs, the first one in 1996. The CMIP3 model ensemble was used in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the CMIP5 ensemble in the IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and USGCRP’s 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), and the CMIP6 ensemble in the IPCC’s 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and USGCRP’s 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5).
CMIP models make projections about the evolution of global annual average temperatures out to the year 2100 and beyond. There is no way to directly test the accuracy of those projections. However, the models can hindcast global temperature changes over recent decades, and those projections can be compared to observations. That is what atmospheric scientist John Christy and colleagues have done in a series of analyses since the early 2000s.
Read more at Watts Up With That?