The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) claims its fast-tracked report, due September 2025, will objectively assess the EPA’s 2025 proposal to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding (EF), which regulates CO2 as a pollutant. However, the committee’s composition and process suggest political motivation—not scientific rigor—as nearly every member of the committee is biased.
The EF ignores that humans exhale about 800 pounds of CO2 annually, while rising atmospheric CO2 is greening the planet, boosting crop yields by up to 40% at 840 ppm—double current levels, likely 180 years away. Greater food crop yields are a tremendous benefit.
The NAS panel, with 13 of 15 members tied to climate alarmism and funded by groups like the Ford Foundation with scant climate credentials, seems primed to affirm a catastrophic CO2 narrative. It’s likely to dismiss evidence questioning the EF’s necessity, such as Asia and Africa’s rising emissions dwarfing U.S. reductions, or the economic benefits to repealing it, which will save Americans trillions in energy and food costs.
Electricity prices surged 7% from June 2024 to June 2025—twice inflation’s rate—driven by EF-based policies pushing costly shifts from coal and gas to intermittent wind and solar. The Center for American Progress reports 81 million electric customers will face $67 billion in hikes through 2028, with utilities like Dominion Energy raising bills $21/month for “green” mandates. These regulations, assuming CO2 drives dangerous warming, force premature coal plant closures, adding billions to consumer costs.
The committee, led by Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist without climate expertise, promotes alarmist claims. Marika Holland’s extreme Arctic ice loss scenarios ignore stable trends since 2005, while Kari Nadeau links CO2 to health crises, dismissing its role in increased food production. Arthur Lee’s carbon capture ties create conflicts, as his career depends on CO2’s villainization.
Notably absent are NAS members with balanced views, like William Happer, elected in 1996 for pioneering work in atomic physics, optics, and spectroscopy, and Richard Lindzen, elected in 1977 for contributions to atmospheric science, with over 200 papers and service on NAS and IPCC climate panels.
Their exclusion contrasts with Steven Koonin, who was NAS-elected in 1990 for theoretical physics and the author of the 2021 bestseller “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.” Koonin’s book, which won a 2022 IPPY Gold Medal in Science, critiques alarmist narratives and aligns with the DOE’s 2025 report, which this NAS study appears to counter.
The DOE report, co-authored by Koonin, cites the U.N. IPCC’s low confidence in worsening global weather patterns, alongside peer-reviewed studies showing CO2’s benefits, diminishing warming effects, stable extreme weather, and manageable impacts. It notes no hurricane spikes, declining wildfires, and steady sea levels since 1895—challenging the Obama EF’s premise.
The NAS report’s rushed timeline and solicitation of public comments before a draft or formal committee formation is unprecedented, to borrow a word frequently and erroneously used by climate alarmists about normal weather events. NAS’s standard protocol, per its Guidelines for the Review of Reports, involves external peer review of drafts by 10–20 anonymous experts 3–6 months before publication, with no broad public input on a study that hasn’t been made public or on the committee makeup pre-draft.
This suggests a prewritten agenda to counter the DOE’s findings and EPA’s deregulation, possibly with a secret draft the handpicked committee is set to rubber-stamp.
This approach risks echoing Lysenko’s dogma, which starved millions in Soviet Russia and Communist China by prioritizing ideology over evidence. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of such dangers in his 1961 farewell address from the White House:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
As Cold War science funding soared, Eisenhower feared government control could stifle independent inquiry, a caution relevant to today’s climate debates.
The EF’s reliance on overheated models ignores CO2’s benefits and drives policies that spike costs, harm food and energy security, and burden families. In Indiana, a 17.5% electric bill hike reflects this trend driven by premature closures of reliable coal generation.
Excluding skeptics like Happer and Lindzen ensures a biased review, not a rigorous one. Science demands objectivity, not advocacy. The NAS must include diverse expertise to avoid rubber-stamping regulations and dogma that impose unreliable, expensive energy on Americans.
This unprecedented pre-draft comment solicitation, absent a report or finalized committee, underscores political influence over scientific integrity, undermining NAS’s mission to provide impartial advice. Perhaps it is time for Congress to defund this now political organization masquerading as a scientific organization.
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