After dismissing hundreds of experts who were compiling the congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment, the Trump Administration has now hired three scientists renown for their contrarian positions about climate change. The three are John Christy and Roy Spencer — both of whom are research scientists at the University of Alabama at Huntsville — and Steven E. Koonin of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. The New York Times describes their backgrounds and arguments.

While they have scientific credentials, their work disregards inconvenient evidence while cherry-picking data to support their views, and they are therefore given little weight by the global scientific community. RealClimate lists multiple scientific de-bunkings of the work of Koonin, Spencer and Christy. How to Cook a Graph in Three Easy Lessons was posted in 2008, showing how long Roy Spencer has been “doubting” global warming and why his peers have such little respect for his work.

In addition, these three spend a lot of time projecting doubt into the public sphere, rather than engaging their critics within the scientific community.

Of course, Koonin, Spencer and Christy’s incorrect conclusions, and their efforts to give credibility to climate denialism, make them quite popular with the fossil-fuel industry, and with the Department of Energy that is now run by a former industry executive. The scientists themselves have little to say about their new jobs, but CNN has confirmed that they are now special employees of the Department and serving in the Office of the Secretary. Climate scientist Andrew Dessler notes: “hiring Koonin, Spencer, and Christy is not just irregular, it’s a recognition that none of the normal channels would give [the Trump Administration] the answer they want.”

In addition to hiring these scientists, and eviscerating the upcoming National Climate Assessment, the Trump Administration has been busy taking down past editions of the Assessment, shutting down the educational website climate.gov and laying off its staff (RealClimate has created a web page with all of the National Climate Assessment reports [2000, 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2023 ]). The New York Times notes that Trump’s 2026 budget proposes to end the sampling of atmospheric chemistry on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii and three other key sites in Alaska, American Samoa and Antarctica. The data collection at these sites, started by Charles Keeling in 1958 and continued by his son, Ralph, provide the fundamental proof that carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere. These sites also track other pollutants including methane, nitrous oxide, particulates and ozone-depleting substances.

Grist calls the Trump Administration’s efforts an example of “climate erasure,” a step beyond climate denial. One scientist states that, without these data, “we would lose any understanding of how climate is changing, at what pace, and where.” Unfortunately, this is a goal of the Trump Administration.

In addition, it is clearly Trump’s plan to overturn the endangerment finding made by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009. This finding, made pursuant to section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, concludes that greenhouse gases threaten both the public health and the public welfare, and therefore must be regulated. The New York Times reports that Trump’s EPA will soon release a proposal to revoke the finding, but without trying to refute its scientific basis. Instead, the proposal will argue that the EPA did not have the authority to make the finding in the first place. The Washington Post notes that the highest judicial body in the United Nations ruled that it is the “duty” of nations to prevent environmental damage by limiting emissions of greenhouse gases. This nonbinding ruling will not cause immediate policy changes, “but it will put more pressure on industrialized countries to live up to their pledges” under the Paris Accord.

The Hill notes that “some $15.5 billion in investments in climate friendly projects were canceled in May, amounting to 12,000 jobs lost. The vast majority of these losses — $9 billion in investment and 10,000 jobs — were in Republican districts.” Inside Climate News reports that the University of Maryland estimates that the costs of the Trump Administration’s rollbacks of renewable energy to public health and the economy are enormous, “including a stunning $1.1 trillion reduction in U.S. gross domestic product by 2035.”

The Guardian describes how “severe cuts to budgets and staff have hamstrung the agencies that manage roughly 640m acres of the nation’s public lands, leaving significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. The administration’s crackdown on climate science and the dismantling of departments that provided world-class research and weather forecasting, may also undermine early warning systems, slowing response and strategic planning.” Meanwhile, The New York Times notes that conditions are ripe for intense wildfires in California due to early snowmelt, plentiful grasses and projected high temperatures for this summer.

The New York Times explains how the United States lost its global dominance in renewable-energy technology to China. As climate change makes clear that the world must pivot to a low-carbon economy, the U.S. under Trump is doubling-down on fossil fuels while China solidifies its dominance in the renewable-power sector. Last year, more solar and wind facilities were built in China than the rest of the world combined. “Last June, the Urumqi solar farm, the largest in the world, came online in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China. It is capable of generating more power than some small countries need to run their entire economies. It’s hardly an anomaly. The other 10 largest solar facilities in the world are also in China, and even bigger ones are planned. The Chinese automaker BYD is currently building not one but two electric vehicle factories that will each produce twice as many cars as the largest car factory in the world, a Volkswagen plant in Germany.”

The Washington Post examines the aesthetic impacts of renewable and fossil-fuel energy. With President Trump calling renewable power “ugly,” while pronouncing coal as “beautiful," the article proves that pictures are worth 1,000 words. And it proves that the President is disconnected from reality. One expert noted: “Everyone has their own view of what’s beautiful and what’s not, but I have a hard time understanding how people could think that solar panels are such a desecration of the land while mountaintop mining or drilling for natural gas and crude oil is not.”

Meanwhile, the Danger Season continues. Channel News Asia reports that record-breaking rain struck South Korea, killing three people. Intense rains also hit China, with Reuters stating that 41 rivers are in flood stage around the country. The BBC reports on wildfires in Turkey and Greece, with additional wildfires burning in Albania, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Sardinia. These wildfires are driven in part by intense heat in Europe, and the Guardian notes that heat killed 2,300 people across 12 major cities in late June and early July. Attribution studies suggest that climate change made this heatwave three-times more deadly than similar events in the past. An op-ed in The New York Times notes that, despite the extreme weather, Europe’s leadership is softening their commitment to climate goals.

In The New York Times, Bill McKibben writes about how the economics of solar will inevitably doom Trump’s efforts to lock the U.S. into fossil fuels. “Last year almost 96 percent of new electricity generation globally came from sun and wind technologies and batteries. India, where coal-fired power declined 3 percent in the first half of the year, announced on Monday that it had met its 2030 goal of providing half its electric capacity from renewables five years early. China installed almost 100 solar panels a second in May, smashing its record. Even Poland, the heart of the European lignite belt, got more of its electricity from renewables in May than from coal.” He notes that September 21, 2025 will be Sun Day, a day to cultivate and celebrate the rise of renewables with a variety of activities around the country. CanaryMedia reports on solar steel-making in the U.S., which is underway but is now more difficult because of the Trump Administration’s actions.

The Guardian quotes a recent speech by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “We are on the cusp of a new era. Fossil fuels are running out of road. The sun is rising on a clean energy age. We have passed the point of no return [to fossil fuels].”

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