President Donald Trump took to social media Sunday night to express his displeasure with one of the nation’s preeminent scientific bodies over a manual issued last year to help judges understand climate science.
The manual, produced last year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a congressionally chartered independent organization that advises the U.S. government on science and technology, cites the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment that there is little doubt that fossil fuel emissions directly contribute to climate change.
The manual notes the IPCC “is generally viewed as the leading scientific authority in this field,” and that the panel concludes: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” and this has caused “[w]idespread changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the report was “political fraud and false science.” His post did not list any specific claims that he disputed, nor did he cite any examples of malfeasance on behalf of the researchers who compiled it.
Instead, Trump posted that the NAS was run by “Radical Left Dumocrats” and that the manual had been “totally discredited.”
“I hereby order Federal Suspension and Debarment Officials to review this conduct,” Trump said in the post.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
A spokesperson for the NAS, when asked about Trump’s post, said the body was committed to scientific integrity.
“The National Academies remain committed to our mission to provide independent, objective scientific advice,” the spokesperson said via email. “Our activities are conducted to ensure scientific rigor, transparency, and independence. Those enduring values remain our commitment.”
The NAS manuals are meant to inform government officials, including judges, on scientific issues they may encounter. Trump’s Truth Social post stated that the manuals have been used by judges “to decide massive “Climate Change Cases, and have created huge losses across our Country.”
Geoff Gisler, program director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that Trump’s criticisms were “misplaced.”
“The manual is a tool for judges who may be encountering scientific concepts for the first time to become familiar with basic science,” Gisler said in an email. “It cannot decide cases.”
Gisler said the administration’s criticisms of the manual are likely efforts to make climate litigation more difficult.
“By omitting discussion of climate science, the administration is seeking to make it harder for justice to be done in cases where polluters could be held liable for their contribution to climate change by making it harder for judges to understand the underlying science,” Gisler said. “Changing the manual won’t change the reality that people across the country are dealing with the consequences of climate change every day through heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and floods.”
Though the manual in question is not new, Trump made the post just days after another NAS report concluded that scientific advances over the past decade have “strengthened the foundation for extreme event attribution,” or how much climate change impacted specific extreme weather events.
“As the frequencies of multiple types of climate extremes have increased, the likelihood of them co-occurring simultaneously or in close succession, in the same location or across regions, has increased,” the 14 authors wrote in the extreme weather attribution report produced by the NAS.
Climate scientist Michael Mann praised the NAS report as “a comprehensive and objective assessment” of attribution science, compiled by “a blue ribbon panel of highly respected leading experts.”
Mann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who also serves as director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, argued the report could have been more definitive in connecting climate and extreme weather events.
“I would argue that the report’s conclusions—in places—are more conservative and more tentative than the science objectively dictates,” Mann wrote in a blog post.
Trump, in his second term, has continued to assail mainstream climate science and elevate fringe views downplaying or denying the negative impacts of climate change.
Last year, Trump’s Department of Energy commissioned a report downplaying the impacts of climate change. Leading climate scientists called it “deceptive,” “cherry-picked” and “antiscientific.”
The Trump administration initially cited the report in its proposal to overturn the EPA’s endangerment finding, the legal cornerstone underpinning the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. After significant criticism, the report was omitted from the final rule.
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Dennis Pillion is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Alabama. He joined ICN in 2024 after 17 years working for Alabama Media Group, including nine as the statewide natural resources reporter. His work for AL.com and The Birmingham News, won numerous Green Eyeshade and Alabama Press Association awards for his coverage of environmental issues in Alabama. He was born and lives in Birmingham, Ala.
