With Trump and climate change, denial is a hell of a drug

Nowhere has this approach been clearer than on climate and the environment, where, in its efforts at “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry,” the administration has demanded that thousands of datasets be removed from federal websites, including the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, and NASA — or hidden so the public cannot find them.

But the scientists still exist, for now, and those pesky facts are going to keep on coming. The Trump administration has a plan for those too, however. On Wednesday, we learned they’re doing all they can to kill a flagship climate report that shapes environmental policy across the country.

The National Climate Assessment pulls together work from hundreds of scientists from some 15 federal agencies and beyond to paint a detailed picture of the effects of climate change in every part of the country. It is the most comprehensive and vital reference available to local governments hoping to get ahead of the crises that have become inevitable.

“If you’re trying to figure out what you need to do to prepare for the risks associated with storms or flooding or wildfire or a multitude of other hazards exacerbated by climate change, that is the place to go,” said R. Max Holmes, a climate scientist who heads the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole.

The report is mandated by Congress, which decided in 1990, that we should know what the planet is in for. The next report is due in two years or so.

But it doesn’t look like that report is going to happen, because the White House has axed funding for the group that produces it. It’s easier to claim climate change is a hoax if there’s no definitive report filled with empirical research saying otherwise, right?

This was always the plan. Russ Vought, the meticulously malevolent chief of the Office of Management and Budget, tried but was unable to kill the 2018 report. He is not going to fail twice. In Project 2025, his blueprint for Trump’s second coming, Vought wrote that reports like the National Climate Assessment “reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making,” and “frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control.”

In other words, Vought doesn’t want the government’s own experts contradicting the president’s absurd climate denialism with long-settled science, and he definitely doesn’t want their work being used in court. God forbid those unelected, deep-state scientists produce evidence that environmentalists might use to stop a Trump-endorsed oil field.

And just to make extra sure, the Trump administration is seeking to put hundreds of those scientists out of work with devastating cuts to climate research at NASA, NOAA, and other agencies that do the groundbreaking work on which the climate assessment is based.

Still, even officially disappeared facts are stubborn things, as many of this country’s farmers, coastal dwellers, and tornado-besieged residents already know first-hand. Trump’s party is telling them to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears, as George Orwell would put it, but that will only go so far.

“Climate change doesn’t care if you believe in it,” Holmes said. “It is here, it is accelerating, and the impacts are already quite dramatic.”

Governments at all levels rely heavily on the National Climate Assessment. Without it, they will be less prepared for storms, flooding, sea level rise, and extreme heat. It will make it harder to harden infrastructure before calamities hit, which means more damage, and more expensive cleanup afterwards.

“It will cost lives, it will cost money, it will have impacts in the business community and the broader economy,” Holmes said.

None of that matters to Trump, Vought and the rest of the nihilists who now run this country. The fact is, they just don’t care.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.