@MikeLevin:
This should be a bigger story.
A Reagan-appointed judge just ruled Trump’s Energy Secretary illegally ran a secret panel of climate deniers to cook up a biased report and sabotage clean air rules.
They didn’t follow the law, didn’t follow the science, and betrayed the public to serve Trump’s agenda.
Disgraceful.
@DadManTheBad:
Impeach all of them. ALL OF THEM.
A Secret Panel to Question Climate Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules, The researchers produced a report that was central in a Trump administration effort to stop regulating climate pollution by Lisa Friedman, Jan 30, 2026, NYT
A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming.
The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.
But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the Energy Department did not deny that it had failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group.
“These violations are now established as a matter of law,” wrote Judge Young, who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He said the Climate Working Group was, in fact, a federal advisory committee designed to inform policy, and not, as the Energy Department claimed, merely “assembled to exchange facts or information.”
Erin Murphy, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, which brought the lawsuit together with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ruling should undercut the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate climate regulations.
Ms. Murphy said that emails and other internal documents made public under the judge’s orders showed that Energy Department political appointees had coordinated with the E.P.A. and relayed instructions to the climate researchers to produce what she called a “slanted” scientific report.
“It was powerful for the court to issue this order making it clear that this is a legal violation and not how the government should be approaching policy,” she said.
The agency disbanded the Climate Working Group shortly after environmental groups sued, and argued that, having done so, any legal concerns were rendered moot. The court disagreed.
Ben Dietderich, a spokesman for Mr. Wright, noted in a statement that, despite the ruling, Judge Young did not accede to a request by the environmental groups to erase the report from the public record.
“The activists behind this case have long misrepresented not just the actual state of climate science, but also the so-called scientific consensus,” Mr. Dietderich said. “They have likewise sought to silence scientists who have merely pointed out — as the Climate Working Group did in its report — that climate science is far from settled.”
Hundreds of scientists, including researchers from the American Meteorological Society, a leading climate science organization, denounced the group’s findings as riddled with errors and misrepresentations.
The members of the Climate Working Group were Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist; Judith Curry, a climatologist; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor. All of them have questioned the scientific consensus that climate change poses severe risks to the planet and to human health.
I’d say death is quite unhealthy; global warming has already directly killed many and indirectly killed many more.
Thousands of pages of emails and internal documents made public under the judge’s orders showed that the group had worked diligently to keep its existence shielded and met in secret more than a dozen times.Dirty inhumane douche fuckers!
In April, shortly after the group was convened, Travis Fisher, the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, who coordinated the Energy Department report, emailed the researchers from a personal email account.
He said the “exact charge” of the panel was to provide an update on science as it applies to the endangerment finding. He also informed them that the Environmental Protection Agency had asked that the document be “D.O.E.-branded.”
Mr. Fisher on Friday declined to comment.
The lawsuit named both the Energy Department and the E.P.A. Judge Young on Friday wrote that he had found “no persuasive evidence” that the E.P.A. violated the advisory committee law.
@ObservatoireUS:
Folks, Secretary Wright knows that climate change is real and caused by human activity.
They all know, that’s why Greenland is so important now.
@elsid22:
While this is good news to uncover, will these horrible people be made accountable? Will they face charges? I think we all know the answer to that.
@Baldwin1970:
The PSYCHOP has already convinced MAGA that climate change is fake & it’s OK to toxify our air & water cause there is no major damage being done now
SCOTUS rulings to remove regulations from EPA & also allow more toxic shit in our waterways is ALL for big corpnotably insane billionaire tech bros’ CSAM and women abusing super polluting water guzzling useless AI and data centres.
Esp upcoming mining
@drig1130:
Cleaner Air rules are not just for climate science. Cleaner Air is essential to respiratory health.
From 1970-1990, The Clean Air Act prevented :
•205,000 premature deaths
•672,000 cases of chronic bronchitis
•21,000 cases of heart disease
•843,000 asthma attacks
•189,000 cardiovascular hospitalizations
•10.4 million lost I.Q. points in children – from lead reductions
•18 million child respiratory illnesses
That’s ONLY the first 20 years. The laws improved and improvements in health outcomes improved as well
@olddguy:
…and the Energy Secretary is going to jail —- when, exactly?
?
@dbpromotionsca:
Breaking the law is now a @GOP campaign strategy as is pedophilia, child trafficking, murder & cannibalism.
@KellySeven3:
This kind of thing is infuriating. Climate affects the ENTIRE WORLD not just his fucking portfolio. Absolute prick of a thing to do. He should go to prison for life. With no air conditioning.
@tavistorer:
Trump’s Sec. Chris Wright is a Heartland Institute Climate Realist (aka a rebranded Climate Change Denier.)
For context, the Heartland Institute is known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change & the negative health impacts of smoking.
@shandiggies:
What should be bigger news is Elon Musk building 35 massive, unpermitted, unmonitored, illegal methane turbines, suffocating the people of Memphis. Only caught when choking residents had drones launched. XAI generates as much smog as a mid size city. Just one data center.which sexually abuses women and children
@lovelylilymoon:
And MAGA are so stupid they cheered about the deregulation of environmental rules on air and water and the land.
Cause I guess clean air is woke.
Morons.The mass stupidity of the human species, and greedy hatred of spending any money to sanely protect other air, water, land, food, earth, kids and other species, is one reason I chose not to have kids. Ours is much too cruel and hideous a species for me to risk forcing a child of mine into a lifetime of being poisoned and abused.
Refer also to:
