


Sea level rise is not accelerating. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be good for plant growth. The computer models used to predict global warming tend to exaggerate future temperature increases.
These arguments, routinely made by people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, were included in an unusual report released by the Energy Department on Tuesday. The report, which is meant to support the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to roll back climate regulations, contends that the mainstream scientific view on climate change is too dire and overlooks the positive effects of a warming planet.
Climate scientists said the 151-page report misrepresented or cherry-picked a large body of research on global warming. Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and the payments company Stripe, called the document a “scattershot collection of oft-debunked skeptic claims” that “are not representative of broader climate science research findings.”
The report demonstrates the extent to which President Trump is using his second term to wage a battle against climate change research, a long-held goal of some conservative groups and fossil fuel companies. While the first Trump administration often undermined federal scientists and rolled back more than 100 environmental policies, officials mostly refrained from trying to debate climate science in the open.
This time, Trump officials have gone much further.
The Environmental Protection Agency this week cited the Energy Department report in its proposal to repeal a landmark 2009 finding that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, pose a threat to public health. That determination, known as the endangerment finding, underpinned the agency’s legal authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other industrial sources of pollution.