The Trump administration told U.S. government scientists working on a vital global climate report to stop their work, according to a scientist involved in the report—the latest move to withdraw the U.S. from global climate action and research.
The U.S. had been highly involved in planning for the next installment of the report due out in 2029 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading scientific authority on climate change.
The IPCC assesses how the climate crisis is affecting the planet according to the latest science. Its reports take thousands of scientists many years to produce and are used to inform policymakers across the world of the risks posed by global warming.
In a sense, all of the world’s current, accepted knowledge about climate change stems from the IPCC and its reports, the first of which was published in 1990.
An international meeting of IPCC authors that was scheduled to take place in China next week is now in limbo. Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor, was supposed to co-chair the discussion but was impacted by the stop-work order, according to the scientist involved in the report. The meeting was planned to talk about next steps in the development of the report.
“Dr. Calvin will not be traveling to this meeting,” a NASA spokesperson said. NASA denied CNN’s request for an interview with Calvin.
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