Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are suing President Donald Trump‘s Department of Energy, which the two organizations allege has violated federal law by secretly recruiting a group of five people — portrayed in the lawsuit as climate change skeptics — to write a report downplaying global warming.
The lawsuit claims: “In March 2025, shortly after being confirmed to office, Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright quietly arranged for five hand-picked skeptics of the effects of climate change to form a Climate Working Group.”
According to the EDF, Wright had the group working “in secret for months to produce a report for DOE and EPA that would provide justification for their predetermined goal of rescinding the Endangerment Finding.”
[At issue is the 2009 EPA endangerment finding that determined “the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” — the basis for subsequent laws regulating emissions.]
EDF and UCS say the new report, which is titled ‘A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,’ claims climate models contain “exaggerated projections of future warming” and that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed.”
“The Climate Working Group worked in secret for months to produce a report for DOE and EPA that would provide justification for their predetermined goal of rescinding the Endangerment Finding.”
Here’s how we’re fighting back, with @UCSUSA : https://t.co/TZEhVc01fN
— EDF (@EnvDefenseFund) August 14, 2025
Note: The lawsuit includes the EPA, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and the Climate Working Group as defendants. The five authors of the report are: physicist Steven E. Koonin, climatologist Judith Curry, atmospheric scientist John Christy; meteorologist Roy Spencer; and economics professor Ross McKitrick.
Koonin, a former chief scientist at energy giant BP, is the author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (2021), promoted with the line: “The climate is changing, but the why and how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe.”
Curry’s book, Climate Uncertainty and Risk, shows with “great clarity that exaggerated claims about climate change made for political purposes are wide of the mark,” writes reviewer Matt Ridley. Curry provides her own thoughts on the report here in a blog post below.
My blog post provides context regarding the new DOE climate assessment reporthttps://t.co/KB0WCVddFT
— Judith Curry (@curryja) July 29, 2025
In the forward of the report, Secretary Wright wrote: “I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science, with a focus on how it relates to the United States.” He added, “I chose them for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate. I exerted no control over their conclusions.”