We touched upon this briefly in March: liberals were going haywire that Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, would take a hatchet to the “crown jewel” of the climate change cult. The National Climate Assessment is a U.S. Global Change Research Program project. It’s a multi-billion-dollar operation sanctioned by Congress, but it only has two employees. They don’t do the study, so what’s the deal?
Well, this organization outsources it to a massive government contracting group, ICF, and the people they do business with are prima donna panic peddlers who are pushing for doomsday, though it has yet to materialize. It hasn’t stopped green warriors from embarking on their private jets to ritzy destinations to discuss climate change. The irony is not new, but still entertaining. The Daily Wire did a deep dive on the financials, and it’s given more reason for Vought, the Trump team, and DOGE to place this entire operation under the microscope (via Daily Wire):
Sources familiar with past iterations of the National Climate Assessment say the work is largely outsourced to a group called ICF, a massive government contractor that has an active contract to work on the report. The Daily Wire identified at least one active contract from NASA for ICF to “support” the U.S. Global Change Research Program. ICF is set to be paid millions of dollars during the Trump administration to “assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”
The contract was first announced in June 2021, and described as a $34 million, five-year contract to help with the National Climate Assessments. Only $18 million has been paid out, according to the government spending database. But with another assessment on deck and ICF under contract for another year, the additional $16 million could be disbursed in the next year.
A climate scientist who has worked on the National Climate Assessment in the past says ICF runs the show, virtually controlling the entire U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“By providing all staff for the USGCRP, a federal agency, the ICF exerts undue influence over the global change narrative and priorities presented by the federal government,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the work. “The ICF, through the USGCRP, exerts an undue influence on the production of the National Climate Assessment every four years. With the exception of its Executive Director and the Director of the National Climate Assessment, the ICF supplies all staff associated with the USGCRP.”
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Houston Keene, a former reporter for Fox News, is quoted in the Daily Wire piece, pointing out the obvious—that it’s wrong for all this money to be allocated to shadow researchers and contractors who have massive sway on American energy policy:
The public deserves an honest assessment from the government on the state of climate science. That requires an objective, nonpartisan author who does not have financial interests in the outcome. ICF appears to be none of these things. There can be no proper assessment with scientific integrity when a clearly partisan and financially conflicted activist organization is holding the pen.
Do your worst, Mr. Vought (or DOGE).
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