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Since human-caused changes to the Earth’s climate were first identified in the late 1800s, the scientific community has continually advanced its understanding of the processes underlying observed changes, the potential impacts, and solutions. ¹ Scientists are confident that we are living through the warmest period in human history and that human activities are the main cause of climate change.² Climate science has developed due in great part to the persistent, skeptical nature of the scientific method; the dedication and mission of its practitioners; and a bounty of data and analysis. New observations and data spark scientists to hypothesize, analyze, and draw conclusions, as well as feed additional study. The U.S. Congress has long funded and defended this virtuous cycle of discovery and its solid foundation of climate and energy data and research on a bipartisan basis; nonpartisan federal career staff have managed the programs; and scientists in government and academia have advanced their findings in the United States and abroad, underpinning the international understanding of and response to the climate challenge. These champions understand the benefits of the scientific endeavor and the urgent need to combat climate change.³ To date, the abundance of climate and energy data and their increasingly diverse sources, levels of precision, and wide range of practical applications have increased Americans’ understanding of the global climate system and benefitted users from a wide range of fields, including scientists, policymakers, business leaders, and farmers, among others.

Donald Trump’s presidency has fundamentally changed this state of affairs. President Trump, his political appointees, and his congressional allies have repeatedly attacked federal programs that operate or fund climate and energy data and research. With access to budget, regulatory, and other decision-making authorities, the Trump administration and the industry interests supporting it have great power and discretion over not only language, staffing, and policy direction but also the more fundamental aspects of these programs, including funding and operating climate and energy data and research programs. The Trump administration’s budget proposals and explicit attacks on science, scientists, and scientific norms indicate their intent is to undermine not just individual programs, but the entire scientific process, and in so doing to cast doubt upon the severity of the climate challenge facing the United States and the world.

Trump and his allies are seizing on a moment when the federal budget and appropriations processes have become more rancorous than ever. This atmosphere has magnified fights over budget details and line items and led to multiple government shutdowns—hamstringing the federal government’s ability to function properly, putting long-term programs dependent on consistent funding at risk, and painting targets on activities that do not align with the political agenda of those in power. These issues currently affect funding for climate and energy data and research because—even where Congress took steps to maintain or increase funding for several such programs—political appointees still have broad discretion to reprogram funds away from climate change-related activities; to leave available funds unspent; to make policy changes that alter how science is used in federal decision-making; or to deny federal scientists’ requests to conduct professional travel, present their findings at conferences, or publicize taxpayer-supported climate studies. As this report details, these forces pose a grave threat to the public’s understanding of climate change, its science, impacts, and potential remedies, now and for years to come.

President Trump and his allies seek nothing less than to burn the data. By targeting climate and energy data and research, the persistent, well-funded, industry-connected fringe of commentators, policymakers, and researchers who deny the science and reality of climate change are augmenting their former tactic of sowing doubt about published and accepted research by additionally seeking to tear up the scientific apparatus, root and branch. By creating gaps in data, forcing out the federal science workforce, changing how science is used to make decisions, and undermining the performance of federal scientific endeavors and partnerships, Trump and his allies seek to erode public confidence in climate science and in facts themselves. Because climate change poses unprecedented threats to the lives, livelihoods, security, and safety of the American people, monitoring, publicizing, and defending against these attacks on science is not just a matter of transparency or advocacy—it is one of survival.

This report analyzes the climate and energy data and research programs the Trump administration has targeted, their history and major federal funding streams, and their status in the context of President Trump’s attacks on science.

Climate and energy data date back millennia, but modern, consolidated weather and climate record-keeping and major energy analytical tools date to the mid-twentieth century.⁴ In the 20th century, the United States became a global scientific powerhouse, in part because of the federal government’s decadeslong commitment to funding basic and applied research across the sciences. This commitment also made the United States an indispensable part of the global scientific community studying climate change.

Domestic climate and energy research arose from the massive scientific endeavor during and following World War II. In the 1950s, the U.S. government centralized its weather data collection efforts in what has since become the National Climatic Data Center.⁵ In the years that followed, scientists at the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Laboratories, several federal agencies, and universities developed climate models and energy systems analyses.⁶ In 1990, Congress created the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) “to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change,”⁷ and to coordinate activities among 13 federal agencies related to climate research.⁸ Authors from these agencies have produced three editions of the National Climate Assessment, which describes the most updated climate science and impacts, and the annual Our Changing Planet report, which describes the progress, accomplishments, and funding levels of USGCRP research activities.⁹ (see Figure 1)

Federal agencies participating in USGCRP annually identify and submit budget information to indicate their contributions to the coordinated research efforts. Agency discretion in this self-identified reporting process complicates tracking of funds over time. Additionally, the USGCRP budget totals have added or removed the participation of certain federal agencies over time, including the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of State, and U.S. Agency for International Development.¹⁰

Despite Congress’ intent in the Global Change Research Act to prevent political interference in climate science, public concern for political interference has surfaced. In August 2017, a leaked draft of the Climate Science Special Report, the first of two volumes in the Fourth National Climate Assessment, raised fears that politically motivated edits may be made between the draft and issuance of the final version.¹¹ Public awareness of the initial draft put pressure on the Trump administration, which subsequently released a final version without changes.¹²

However, the Climate Science Special Report appears to have only narrowly escaped efforts to interfere with its release, as a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered emails showing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt editing a press release, according to The Washington Post. The press release, which was never sent, described Pruitt as “‘leading the effort” to assemble a team of experts that could “write a detailed criticism” of the report.”¹³

Much like the USGCRP’s coordination of climate research across the U.S. federal government, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations, to “prepare, based on available scientific information, assessments on all aspects of climate change and its impacts, with a view of formulating realistic response strategies.”¹⁴ Since its establishment, the IPCC has produced five comprehensive assessments of the scientific basis for understanding climate change and its observed and anticipated impacts on the planet, economy, and society. Work on the sixth assessment is underway, and it is expected to be fully completed in 2022. Like the National Climate Assessment, IPCC does not conduct new scientific research or monitor climate indicators; instead, the assessments synthesize the conclusions of thousands of peer reviewed studies and public and private data sets to present the best possible consensus view. Scientists from around the world participate on a volunteer basis to draft and peer review the multiple products that comprise each comprehensive IPCC assessment.

Beyond contributing directly to the funding of the World Meteorological Organization, the United States has some of the best climate data in the world, and they are essential to the production of the IPCC assessments and the studies upon which they are based. For instance, the historic global surface temperature data that helped the IPCC determine in its 2014 report that “[w]arming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” derives primarily from three sources, two of which are U.S. federal data sets.¹⁵

Similarly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Global Historical Climatology Network data set is one of the key sources of information for the IPCC’s conclusions about observed changes in precipitation patterns around the world.¹⁶ The DOE provides key data on annual carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production.¹⁷ In addition, climate models and supercomputing resources developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have contributed to every assessment conducted by the IPCC, and Livermore researchers were recognized when the IPCC was coawarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.¹⁸

Beyond the IPCC, U.S. federal research assets have contributed enormously to the global understanding of climate change. Mauna Loa Observatory, part of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory network, is home to arguably the most famous climate change monitoring project in the world. The Keeling Curve, named for the scientist who first recorded the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, is based on continuous measurements conducted at Mauna Loa and relies—in part—on federal funds to operate.¹⁹

These are only a few examples of how federal investments in the United States’ climate data and science programs underpin the global understanding of climate change. While other countries, notably the United Kingdom and Japan, are also home to important data sets and research programs, future IPCC assessments would be harder to complete without continued U.S. commitment, and the quality of such assessments could suffer from a reduction in available data.

Damage to the international system as a result of the Trump administration’s attacks on climate data and science go beyond the IPCC. A common trope among opponents of domestic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that America cannot trust other countries, and particularly emerging economies, to tell the truth about their efforts to reduce carbon pollution. When announcing his intent to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, President Trump claimed that other countries such as China and India would be allowed to continue increasing their carbon emissions indefinitely, while the United States would be subject to sharp reductions.²⁰

While this claim doesn’t accurately reflect the terms of the Paris agreement or the “nationally determined contributions” put forward by China and India as part of the Paris agreement process, it also makes the administration’s recent decision to cancel NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System seem particularly shortsighted.²¹ The Carbon Monitoring System enabled the remote monitoring of carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which can help verify whether countries are living up to their pledges to reduce deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) in the tropics, for instance, as many are being funded to do under the United Nations’ REDD+ program.²² These examples point to the critical importance of the federal budget process to building and maintaining the foundation of domestic and international climate and energy research.

Under normal circumstances, the White House, federal agency leadership, and Congress formulate a budget with funding levels that highlight—or demote—priorities, and each, in turn, responds to the agendas put forward by the others. The president outlines an initial agenda and funding levels in consultation with federal agency leadership; Congress responds and sets binding funding levels, or appropriations; and the president’s administration then provides specific direction to agency offices regarding spending levels based on each appropriation. The level to which each party heeds or dismisses the budget ideas of the others depends on their political relationships and the funding priorities of individual members of Congress.

At each step in the federal budget process, small decisions can reshape entire programs; the deference or discretion granted by Congress to agency leadership between dictating appropriation levels and actual program spending ultimately creates tremendous latitude for political interference. The entire budgeting process may also take several years, especially when considering long-term projects such as research and development, grant-making, facility construction and operation, or ongoing monitoring and data collection.²³

Circumstances have been abnormal since at least 1997, the last year in which Congress passed all required appropriations bills on time.²⁴ Funding federal programs has become an uncertain endeavor in terms of timeline, size, and policy direction. It has promoted political gamesmanship that has shut down the government on multiple occasions and risked continuity of funding and operation of long-term climate and energy research.²⁵

Proposed funding cuts to climate and energy data and research

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2018 and 2019 budget requests met intense criticism for the enormous size of cuts proposed to scientific research, climate science, and energy programs. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX), the highest ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, described the administration’s FY 2019 cuts as “so extreme … that it will be summarily rejected on both sides of the aisle.”²⁶ The Trump administration nonetheless touted its defense of scientific research and development spending, relying on DOD development proposals and ignoring massive cuts to basic or applied research in civilian agencies.²⁷

In January 2018, the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Novim published an encyclopedic assessment of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to climate and environmental programs across the U.S. government, including the USGCRP programs considered in this report and going beyond to the vast array of environmental protection and research programs at the EPA and other agencies.²⁸ Aptly titled “Warning Signs,” the report details the effects of FY 2018 proposed cuts to long-term investment and capacity at research institutions within and outside the federal government; environmental and climate modeling and observation, from supercomputers to satellites; climate and environmental impact assessments; and the federal science workforce.²⁹ Novim’s analysis found that the Trump administration had proposed a $2.046 billion, or 21 percent, cut to federal climate and environment spending between FY 2017 and 2018 levels.³⁰ In May 2018, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) also published a report assessing federal funding for climate change-related activities, including a broader set of activities from science to research, development, and deployment of mitigation technologies and resilience planning and strategies. That report indicated total spending on climate change reached $13.2 billion in FY 2017, across 19 federal agencies.³¹

In the context of the Trump administration’s budget proposals, including the more recent FY 2019 budget request, the Center for American Progress performed an extensive budget analysis to determine specific line items under threat from explicitly proposed cuts or potential political interference in the future. (see Figure 2) Given the interdependent nature of climate change and energy systems, CAP focused its analysis on climate and energy data and research programs, rather than the broader analysis Novim performed. This budget analysis included those agencies that cooperate within the USGCRP, but CAP expanded its scope to capture a broader definition of climate science, energy discovery, and non-USGCRP initiatives such as energy industry data collection activities. CAP also investigated relevant programs in the DOD and other agencies that participate in USGCRP, but do not publish budget data.

According to CAP’s analysis of federal climate and energy data and research funding, President Trump’s budget requests would have yielded a $2.408 billion, or 16.8 percent, cut between FY 2017 and 2018 and $1.893 billion, or 13.2 percent, cut between FY 2017 and 2019.³²

CAP’s analysis of the 2018 omnibus confirmed in many cases that appropriators had either salvaged or increased funding levels for many key programs and agencies. The appropriations process reports such data at aggregate levels for several agencies, thus obscuring details needed to effectively track specific climate and energy data and research funding levels. The challenge for appropriators is to strike a balance between giving direction to agencies to ensure funds are used for the purposes Congress intends and wanting to avoid micromanaging agencies to the point where they struggle to respond to new and unanticipated demands on their programs and expertise in between funding bills. However, in places where appropriators have not provided specific direction, public observers may only have access to information provided by the political appointees making funding and programmatic decisions and may therefore remain unaware of efforts to defund, reprogram, or otherwise attack climate and energy data and research programs.

Nonetheless, examples of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts reveal the potential for blunt trauma to climate and energy data and research programs. The White House has proposed restructuring the land and climate research units of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)—cutting funding for projects that model how the climate is changing and how that will interact with ecosystems and important land uses, such as agriculture.³³ Both budget requests have aimed to make it more difficult for agencies to account for climate change in the management of natural resources. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—the agency responsible for protecting threatened species and running national wildlife refuges—has attempted to improve its management of wildlife by preparing for the effects of climate change on broader landscapes and investing in climate science to help managers made sound decisions.³⁴ Both of these programs have been zeroed out in White House budget proposals, but Congress has continued to fund the programs. Despite these programs’ bipartisan roots, dating back to the era of former President George W. Bush, the Trump administration is persistent in asking Congress to eliminate them entirely.³⁵

Among the three agencies that make up the majority of federal climate and energy data and research funding—NASA, NOAA, and the DOE—the Trump administration has proposed eliminating key NASA Earth Sciences missions, reduced funding for NOAA’s monitoring programs, and severe cuts to relevant programs under the DOE’s Office of Science.³⁶

At NASA, the Trump administration’s FY 2018 budget justification included about $150 million in cuts to the Earth Sciences programs, and completely eliminated four major Earth Sciences missions: Plankton, Aerosols, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE), Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3), Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), and Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder.³⁷ These missions provide vital insights about the planet Earth; for instance, PACE intends to deepen our understanding of how the ocean and ocean plankton interact with carbon pollution in the atmosphere—an important area of research, particularly when one understands that oceans act as an enormous carbon sink.³⁸ OCO-3 is a planned satellite that intends to monitor “the distribution of carbon dioxide on Earth as it relates to growing urban populations and changing patterns of fossil fuel combustion,” according to NASA.³⁹ Understanding these trends informs policymakers’ plans to cut carbon pollution from human activities, and it could help analyze whether other countries are meeting their pledges to reduce emissions under the Paris agreement. All four missions were restored in the omnibus appropriations bill passed in March 2018.⁴⁰

At NOAA, the Trump administration’s FY 2018 and 2019 budget requests proposed to completely eliminate competitively funded climate research, which provides universities, NOAA labs, and NOAA research institutes with resources to study the climate system, to the tune of nearly $40 million.⁴¹ In fact, the FY 2019 NOAA budget proposal frankly states it will “dismantle the Climate Program Office (CPO) as it currently exists,” and proposes cuts to every other item with the word “climate” in its title.⁴² NOAA’s budget is blatant about its large-scale attacks on “climate” programs, but for programs that contribute to climate-related research, it presents death by a thousand cuts. Cuts of less than $10 million are proposed to the Big Earth Data Initiative, the high-performance computing for water models, the Sustained Ocean Observations and Monitoring program, partnerships with universities for ocean and coastal mapping, and environmental satellite data analysis and improvement, among others.⁴³ The 2018 omnibus appropriations bill restored funding for the competitive research program, and increased funds for NOAA laboratories and cooperative institutes, National Weather Service observations and forecasts, and other key programs—not just above the Trump administration’s budget requests but above FY 2017 actual expenditures.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has frequently championed the “crown jewels” of the National Laboratories and their computational abilities, but his rhetoric elides budget cuts large and small.<