Federal Report Challenges Climate Orthodoxy; “Scientists” Fight Back

By High Country Advocate Staff

November 8, 2025

A controversial Department of Energy report released in July is challenging the scientific foundation for federal climate regulations—triggering a battle over who holds regulatory power over American energy, agriculture, and industry.

At stake is the 2009 “Endangerment Finding”—the federal determination giving Washington authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. For Colorado’s mountain communities, this means federal control over forest management, water regulations, energy costs, and ranching viability.

The Challenge

Energy Secretary Chris Wright assembled five scientists in May to produce “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” The 140-page report was completed in two months—compared to multi-year processes for typical government climate assessments.

The report’s conclusions directly challenge conventional climate policy:

• CO2-induced warming “appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed”
• “Aggressive mitigation strategies may be misdirected” and could cause more harm than benefit
• U.S. policy actions will have “undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate”
• Effects of U.S. emissions reductions will “emerge only with long delays”

“Climate change is real, and it deserves attention,” Wright said. “But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. Improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy.”

When Years Become Weeks

The two-month timeline exemplifies the Trump administration’s pattern of collapsing timeframes bureaucrats claimed were necessary. Previous National Climate Assessments took years, involving hundreds of experts across 13 agencies. Wright’s team delivered in 60 days.

The pattern repeats—tariff negotiations in days instead of years, Middle East agreements during week-long trips, Gaza ceasefire in weeks not months. The legal framework giving Washington control over rural energy and land use—built over 16 years—faces potential dismantling in 16 weeks.

Even Climate Champions Are Shifting

In late October, Bill Gates—one of the world’s most prominent climate activists—published a memo that shocked both sides. The Microsoft co-founder who wrote “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” in 2021 now says the “doomsday view” of climate change is wrong.

Gates’ October 28 memo called for a “strategic pivot” away from emissions reduction toward fighting poverty and disease. “Although climate change will have serious consequences,” he wrote, “it will not lead to humanity’s demise.” Resources focused on climate are “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing.”

Gates told reporters he’d choose eradicating malaria over preventing a tenth of a degree of warming. “People don’t understand the suffering that exists today,” he said. His climate fund, Breakthrough Energy, cut staff earlier this year.

President Trump claimed victory: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG.” Gates disputes this, calling it a “gigantic misreading.” But even sympathetic climate scientists acknowledge his tone has shifted dramatically.

The Backlash

More than 85 scientists issued a joint rebuttal in early September, claiming the DOE report contains numerous errors and misrepresents climate science. Carbon Brief published an analysis identifying over 100 allegedly false or misleading statements.

Environmental groups filed federal lawsuits. The Union of Concerned Scientists and Environmental Defense Fund sued in September, alleging Wright “quietly arranged for five hand-picked skeptics” and violated federal law by creating the report “in secret with authors of only one point of view.”

Wright dissolved the Climate Working Group on September 3, saying its work had “brought much-needed debate.” Legal battles continue in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

What’s at Stake

The Endangerment Finding, enacted in 2009, determines that six greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. That determination gives federal agencies sweeping authority to regulate emissions across the economy. Repealing it would fundamentally reshape federal environmental authority.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated the goal explicitly: “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

For rural Colorado, federal climate regulations affect daily operations. Forest Service decisions cite climate change. Water regulations incorporate climate projections. Energy costs reflect federal renewable mandates. The question isn’t whether climate is changing—even the DOE report acknowledges that—but whether Washington’s regulatory response is proportionate and whether such decisions should be made administratively or democratically.

Public Response

DOE’s 30-day public comment period closed September 2 with more than 59,000 submissions through the Federal Register.

Travis Fisher of the Cato Institute, who coordinated the Working Group, said DOE would review all comments. “If there are errors, they’ll correct them,” he told NPR. “I don’t know if any group could produce a 150-page document without any errors.”

Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M climate scientist who organized the rebuttal, said the report is “important to pay attention to” because of “how the report is being used to roll back the endangerment finding.”

Looking Ahead

Wright indicated the administration is also reviewing past National Climate Assessments, telling CNN the reports “weren’t fair in broad-based assessments of climate change.” The legal battle continues. The EPA’s proposed repeal moves forward.

For Colorado’s mountain communities, the outcome determines who controls land use, water rights, energy costs, and economic viability. Whether regulations rest on settled science or contested conclusions, whether they’re implemented administratively or democratically, determines who has power over rural America’s future.

The Buffalo Commons the Poppers proposed in 1987 was supposedly about environmental necessity. The DOE report—and now Bill Gates’ memo—raise an uncomfortable question: How much of federal climate policy is environmental science, and how much is ideology implemented through bureaucratic authority?

What took years to build faces challenge in weeks. And even climate activism’s biggest names are reconsidering their priorities.

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