New DOE Report On How Greenhouse Gases Affect U.S. Climate

U.S. Department of Energy Forrestal Building in Washington.

CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

A new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report was released on July 29: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. Below are miscellaneous comments on certain claims in the Report, so this is a review of some statements appearing in the critical review by the DOE. Many of the thoughts below are based on, or extended from, studies that have been published in book form.

Statements From Foreword Written By Energy Secretary, Chris Wright.

One: “I’m a physical scientist who sees modern energy as nothing short of miraculous. It powers every aspect of modern life, drives every industry, and has made America an energy powerhouse with the ability to fuel global progress.”

This is a glowing accolade, which is largely true. But we have to remember that progress is often accompanied by, or left with, things that are detrimental to society. In the case of energy, things such as the Superfund program, managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, addresses the cleanup of hazardous waste sites left behind by industrial activities. Waste sites have been leftover from oil and gas drilling. There are also plastics, largely made from chemicals like olefins that come from breaking of crude oil molecules. Plastics from water bottles to car interiors are a big part of mountainous landfills and trash dumps in the oceans. Scotland has a new program that incinerates trash that is not biodegradable. There is evidence that the rise in autism is caused my microplastics that cling to many of the fast foods or processed foods we eat.

Two: “The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating. Yet we are told—relentlessly—that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat. Hydrocarbon-based fuels, the argument goes, must be rapidly abandoned or else we risk planetary ruin.”

The “relentless” part, including words like “existential threat”, claim these are exaggerated positions, as seen in the next Wright statement. And yet, there are facts of climate change that are sobering. One is if the rise of measured global temperature continues unabated, it will reach a level by 2100 that has never been reached in the last million years. Are we willing to take on this risk?

The second fact is that the oil and gas industry is responsible for about 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, and these emissions cause global warming, which has risen by about 1℃ in the last 40-50 years. So if impacts of global warming on society turn out to be severe, it’s clear that oil and gas are and will remain culpable.

Three: “What I’ve found is that media coverage often distorts the science. Many people walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete.”

This is true in general. A prime example is the recent flash flood in the Hill Country of Texas. Media coverage often pointed to climate change as the cause. However, historical data analyzed by Roger Pielke showed that the recent flood could not be attributed to climate change.

The IPCC arm of the United Nations concluded the following about U.S. river floods: “There is limited evidence and low agreement on observed climate change influences for river floods in North America. Based on the peer-reviewed literature and observational records, there is little empirical basis to claim that extreme precipitation has increased in ‘flash flood alley’ (or indeed, most of North America or the world). Similarly, there is little basis for claims that flooding has become more common or severe.”

Further, on a global basis, the four killer weather extreme events (droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floodings) have not worsened in the past 50 years. Therefore, any single one of these killer extreme events cannot be blamed on global warming.

Four: “Climate change is real, and it deserves attention. But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge—not a catastrophe.”

Climate change as an existential crisis always seemed to be overstated by the last administration. Global energy poverty as a genuine contender has been well-documented by Wright in his own book “Bettering Human Lives”, where he shows how GDP correlates well with energy density over many different countries. On the other hand, ordinary poverty is arguably the greatest human threat, but energy poverty certainly contributes to this. Access to reliable, affordable energy is the obvious solution for energy poverty.

As one observer put it, if you stop the big trucks from running because they burn high-CO2 diesel fuel, you will starve.

Five: “If we empower innovation rather than restrain it, America can lead the world in providing cleaner, more abundant energy—lifting billions out of poverty, strengthening our economy, and improving our environment along the way.”

This is a glorious view of the future. But the hooker lies in the first sentence. The DOE wants the U.S. to innovate rather than restrain clean, abundant energy. If this is true, why did the big beautiful mega-bill handicap wind and solar energy by reducing their tax credits? Especially when in the past two years wind and solar in the U.S. accounted for over 90% of new energy investments.

Why is the administration favoring advanced nuclear and next-gen geothermal which are commercially immature compared with wind and solar? One reason seems to be that wind and solar are not dispatchable/reliable energies. But this is false, as Australia is demonstrating—the country-wide output of wind and solar is almost half of total electricity generation. And renewables are growing. South Australia is generating 75% of its power from wind and solar and batteries. The key to reliability is to share electricity region to region, and to install grid-scale batteries, where Australia leads the world. The bottom line is that wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear and geothermal, in both U.S., Australia, and of course China. It’s noted however that recent spikes in electricity prices in Australia have been attributed to dubious bidding wars during power shortages.

Statements From Executive Summary of DOE Report.

One: “Elevated concentrations of CO2 directly enhance plant growth, globally contributing to “greening” the planet and increasing agricultural productivity [Section 2.1, Chapter 9].”

This is the big positive that emerges from increased CO2 in the atmosphere. And CO2 has increased a lot: emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement manufacture have jumped from 2 billion tons per year in 1900 to about 40 billion tons per year today. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has jumped from about 300 ppm to 430 ppm in this time. CO2 is now higher than it’s been in 3 million years. Uncertainty again: is this a positive position to be in, or a harbinger of something dreadful that will strike us?

Two: “They also make the oceans less alkaline (lower the pH). That is possibly detrimental to coral reefs, although the recent rebound of the Great Barrier Reef suggests otherwise [Section 2.2].”

This segment is confusing at best, and a real understatement at worst. First, the Report focuses on reef damage due to water pH becoming more alkaline as CO2 increases, but the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) studies emphasize rising sea temperatures (marine heat waves) and cyclone (hurricane) activity in bleaching corals. Second, the Report published measurements of hard coral cover that has rebounded since 2015. But it doesn’t mention that bleached corals are included in these surveys, meaning some of the corals they are measuring may be dead. This weakens the significance of the results.

Note: bleaching means the algae, which provide food and color for the coral, are spat out by the corals. The corals are not dead, but awfully stressed, and may die.

Since recording began in 1980, mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef, which can lead to widespread mortality, appeared first in 1998 and have been found in the last 27 years of steadily rising temperatures—in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025. In the 2025 event, 78 out of 281 reefs (27%) had high bleached coral fractions (31-60%) or very high bleached fractions (61-90%)

Is coral bleaching world-wide? NOAA reported in April 2024 the world is in “the 4^th Global Bleaching Event,” and it occurred in 83 countries.

Three: “The world’s several dozen global climate models offer little guidance on how much the climate responds to elevated CO2, with the average surface warming under a doubling of the CO2 concentration ranging from 1.8°C to 5.7°C [Section 4.2]. Data-driven methods yield a lower and narrower range [Section 4.3].”

This is a remarkable statement that demonstrates the uncertainty of climate modeling. It lies in stark contrast to the modeling done by Exxon in the late 1970s and early 1980s. An Exxon study done in 1982 focused on global warming by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Remarkably, Exxon accurately predicted that by 2019, the earth would hit a CO₂ concentration of 415 parts per million (ppm) and a temperature increase from 1980 of almost 0.9°C. These models were serious, sophisticated studies of global warming predictions that Exxon was happy to publish in peer-reviewed journals between 1983 and 1984: Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences and an American Geophysical Union monograph. It is clear that Exxon got global warming right, first at forty then at twenty years ago. But in later years it has been alleged that Exxon, in public, cast doubt on the science of climate change. The whole story has been documented elsewhere.

Exxon’s predictions were about global warming, not climate change. Prediction of the effects of climate change is another big step and is fraught with uncertainties. Perhaps Exxon looked at the long-term data on hurricanes, or wildfires, or droughts, from 1980 to 2000 and saw no worsening, so they waited. Perhaps they looked again up to 2010, but there was still no worsening, so they waited. Perhaps Exxon kept waiting until the long-term data would begin to show a worsening to confirm an important global warming prediction, but it never did.

Until climate models can explain why there has been no worsening of the killer quad of extreme weather events over the last forty to fifty years, Exxon should be safe by saying that climate change, and its effect on humanity, is too uncertain to be predictable.

Four: “Most extreme weather events in the U.S. do not show long-term trends. Claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts are not supported by U.S. historical data [Sections 6.1-6.7].”

This is an important claim. And it supports the claim that, on a global basis, the four killer weather extremes have shown no worsening over the past 40-50 years, when the global temperature has risen by 1℃, the details of which are published.

Five: “Global sea level has risen approximately 8 inches since 1900, but there are significant regional variations driven primarily by local land subsidence; U.S. tide gauge measurements in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate [Chapter 7].”

Sea levels are rising in most places around the world, and the average in the recent decade is 2–3 mm per year, which amounts to 0.08–0.12 inches per year. This would mean only about 8 inches total by the year 2100. This could be serious, but not a catastrophe unless sea level rises are accelerating. The DOE Report says they are not accelerating in the U.S., based in several tidal gage measurements.

Figure 1. Global sea level change – composite of tidal gage data and satellite data 1900 – 2018.

NASA

But on a global basis, the picture is different, and this needs to be investigated because global warming is the real issue. Figure 1, from NASA, shows an overall increasing rate of sea level change modified by different factors. Items with pluses (+) are factors that cause global sea level to increase, while minuses (-) are what cause sea level to decrease.

The data over 120 years can be matched by an approximate exponential curve. The extrapolated curve hits the year 2100 at 35 inches (almost 3 feet) measured from the year 2020. That’s a sizeable increase, and would cover up nearly 30 feet of beach, using a standard rule of thumb. A storm surge that is 3 feet nowadays would become 6 feet in 2100, and cause much more flooding damage. If global warming continues unabated, the projected sea level rise will become a catastrophe for low-lying nations later this century.

But the DOE Report is focused on global warming in the U.S., and the U.S. tidal gauges do not show any acceleration of rate of sea level rise. No explanation for this has been put forward, so this is unsettled. It’s also good to point out that sea level rise has been small, and apart from some flooding of very low-lying islands, is not an imminent threat to the world. 75 years until the year 2100 is plenty of time to mitigate the threat by building seawalls. In fact, Singapore plans to spend US$74 billion over the next one hundred years to protect against rising sea levels. That would provide about $740 million every year to build seawalls.

Six: “Moreover, solar activity’s contribution to the late 20th century warming might be underestimated [Section 8.3.1].”

This statement harks back to theories, largely accepted, that GHG emissions are totally responsible for global temperature rises. It’s an important challenge. Now there exists a continuous plot of total solar irradiance (TSI), which is a possible contribution to global warming, calculated from sunspot data on the surface of the sun over the years 1600 to 2000. The sunspot data is a proxy for TSI. This period includes the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 when there were no sunspots and the world was in a deep freeze (paintings of people skating on the River Thames, etc). Along with ups and downs, the sunspot data increased to a maximum in 2000, called the Modern Maximum.

The shocker is a plot of earth’s temperature, obtained from ice cores and lake sediments, tracks minima and maxima of the sunspot plot at six different times between 1600 and 2000. This makes it awfully hard to dismiss solar effects on global warming at earth when a solar forcing index matches the shape and trend of the temperature record.

But what happens beyond the year 2000? Here’s where it becomes complicated. The two curves stop tracking. While global warming continues to trend upward, the solar sunspot index turns downward. There are explanations. One, the GHG effect accelerates as global emissions continue to increase, perhaps after encountering a tipping point. Two, the sun rotates about the center of gravity of the solar system, and comes slightly closer to or further away from the earth for a few months at a time, increasing or decreasing the solar irradiance. Studies predict that between 2020 and 2060 a falling TSI from this effect will lead to a serious cold spell that could challenge the world’s energy required for warmth, but also impact the growth of food supplies. A professional but entertaining video, explains Dr Zharkov’s theories. As of August 2025, global temperature is still increasing, so this matter is unsettled also.

One last point to confirm the DOE Report on uncertainty in climate modeling based primarily on GHG emissions. One study models global warming by including GHG, TSI as described above, and Astronomical Harmonic Resonances (AHR), which is the gravitational effect of the sun rotating about the center of gravity. A best match to the global warming data from 1880 to 2015 is 0.76 ⁰C distributed between the Sun 0.35 ⁰C, the GHGs 0.28 ⁰C, and the AHR 0.13 ⁰C.

Seven: “U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays [Chapter 12].”

Is waste drilling wreckage left to rust just a small impact for a rancher who owns the land? Are armloads of plastic trash washing up on sunny beaches just a small impact for whale watchers or sunbathers or swimmers?

Is the issue about the size of the impact U.S. policy makes, or the size of the wreckage left behind which might eventually bite us or our grandchildren? What wreckage? The U.S. is responsible for about 11% of global greenhouse emissions in 2025 (second after China). The fossil fuel industry is responsible for about 73% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Takeaway.

The DOE Report is a critical review of GHG emissions and how they affect climate, written by five scientists with five PhDs. This article is a review of some statements appearing in the DOE Report, written by one scientist with one PhD. There is affirmation and challenge in this article, but it should add to the narrative in significant ways.