Climate activists are seething at President Donald Trump’s July 22, 2026, public directive via Truth Social: exposing climate fraud at its core, the President has called out the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) for publishing fraudulent manuals on climate change. His post below puts it simply:
On their homepage, the NASEM claims that they are “recognizing and advancing outstanding science and providing advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world.” Yet if “outstanding science” has become biased in the field of climate change, they cannot claim to be an organization for real science. Science should be apolitical: scientists should study the facts and then create the best models to describe reality. For an organization that has been receiving tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, it is crucial to have strict regulations and careful scrutiny to ensure that they are only promoting sound science and policy.
The NASEM recently released a report on attribution science, “Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts,” in which extreme weather events are tied to human-caused climate change. It is a “science” that Chris Martz, meteorologist and policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), calls “scientific fraud.” Those promoting attribution science have an end goal in mind, namely, litigation against oil and gas companies.
When the NASEM creates its reports, they are used by federal judges to influence public policy, and so it is crucial that they represent the highest quality science from unbiased sources. The losses that President Trump refers to in his post are the demanded compensation for supposed climate harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions emitted primarily by oil companies. The Daily Wire reported that “Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen argued that the manual [Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Fourth Edition released by the NASEM] ‘was designed to influence judges in multi-billion-dollar climate cases, was funded by climate litigation funders, was written by academics with little relevant scientific expertise and documented financial and institutional ties to climate litigation advocacy.’”
The NASEM and the reports it has produced over the years have been unjustifiably strangling American energy and restricting growth in industry. This is, of course, averse to the scientific method. Researchers should follow the science regardless of the outcome rather than cherry-picking data and fine-tuning models to reach a conclusion useful in court. It was following publication of “Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts” that Trump issued his Truth Social directive telling federal agencies to explore suspending or cutting off funding to the NASEM and properly reviewing its conduct. Republicans on the House Science Committee also wrote a letter on July 16 to request information on the attribution committee that has since been kept confidential. It is crucial to release this information as many agencies rely upon its results, and having it behind closed doors is not only bad scientific practice, but begs the question: why would it not be available for public review?
National Climate Assessment
Dr. David Wojick, an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT, writes that “the periodic National Climate Assessment (NCA) report has been the flagship of American alarmism.” For instance, in the Fifth National Climate Assessment, they write, “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.” Despite the fact that the document is strewn with alarmist rhetoric and claims of climate doom, it too has been used in court cases throughout the country for years.
Wojick also writes that “The assessments are produced by a small federal office called the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) which ironically does no research.” The first NCA came out in 2000, and a new report is released every four years. Happily, Earth scientist and climate realist Dr. Matthew Wielicki has just been appointed to lead the GCRP and take it in a new direction, creating realistic reports on the effects of climate change. Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted on X that “Matt Weilicki is an honest scientist who follows the data wherever it leads. That is what science is all about. He will lead our efforts to honestly present the empirical climate data to guide policy makers.”
We can now hope that new NCAs will present real science and encourage critical thinking about one of the most heated debates of our time. It will be a monumental task to analyze the alarmist NCA and overcome the hurdles posed by climate activists who have been working on the NCA reports for decades. Reversing this will take time, but as an experienced researcher who has been promoting climate realism for many years, Wielicki is more than capable of navigating these challenges. When accused of being a “climate denier,” Wielicki sensibly replied, “How exactly do you deny a noun? Can you deny baseball? Can you deny grass? Can you deny mountains? Climate exists. And if you're asking whether I deny climate change, then you've clearly never listened to anything I've said.”
With the President bringing NASEM under scrutiny, and Dr. Wielicki spearheading a reality-based National Climate Assessment, climate realism will continue to gain traction for the rest of the Trump presidency. As the public comes to learn about the lies promoted by alarmists—and, perhaps even more impactfully, the negative consequences of their push to rob us of conventional, reliable energy—we have renewed hope that the climate scare will soon be axed once and for all. Good riddance!
Mary-Jean Harris, BSc, MSc (physics), contributed to this article.
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