The National Climate Assessment is Broken. Putting a Climate Denier in Charge Won’t Fix It.

Matthew Wielicki is a terrible choice to lead the USGCRP.

4 August 2026. Earlier this month, the Trump administration quietly tapped Matthew Wielicki to lead the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The move places a climate-change-denying podcaster and, importantly, someone who has never been meaningfully involved in research on climate change or its impacts at the top of one of the country’s most important scientific enterprises, one mandated by federal law.

Under the law, the Global Change Research Program—USGCRP for short—is required to prepare and submit a National Climate Assessment to the president and Congress at least every four years Its purpose is to help the country’s businesses, communities and governments at all levels make better decisions about how to respond to the growing risks posed by climate change.

The National Climate Assessments have done two things exceedingly well since the first report was released in 2000: They have told hard truths about the risks climate change poses to the United States, and they have made clear that, if left unchecked, those risks are going to get much worse.

But despite the best intentions and science, the NCAs have largely failed to fulfill their most important mandate: They haven’t provided decision-makers with a clear accounting of the range of national and local options for adapting to or mitigating climate risks. They have also remained largely silent on which adaptation or mitigation strategies are most appropriate in different places and under different climate scenarios. And they have said next to nothing about how to make decisions in the face of the risks—and inevitable uncertainties—posed by climate change. It’s for this reason that I have argued that the NCA, and other climate reports like it, is broken and in urgent need of repair. 

I come to this conclusion from my experience not only as an interdisciplinary climate and decision scientist, and also as a member of the team that reviewed the Fourth National Climate Assessment beginning in 2017 and as chair of a National Academies working group charged with figuring out how climate assessments like the NCA could better support decision-makers in business and government.

Fixing a broken the NCA is the job of the person in charge of the USGCRP. But the fix it needs isn’t pretending that climate change isn’t happening. The real fix is to expand the focus of the NCA from just reporting the causes and consequences of climate risks to providing better advice about how to manage them. 

To be fair, scientists who develop assessments like this tend to focus on the evidence and avoid recommending particular courses of action because doing so would have required making explicit value judgments that extend beyond the scientific evidence. This is a level of restraint we have come to expect from the scientific community. But as the risks posed by climate change have become more acute, this omission has limited the NCA’s usefulness for leaders in business and government who might want—or need—to use it. 

Step back from climate change for a second and imagine learning from your doctor that you have been diagnosed with a serious illness only to be ushered out of the office before hearing about either your treatment options or what other patients have done—and how they have fared—under similar circumstances. That's largely the story of the NCA. It does a terrific job of enumerating risks but a poor job of helping people decide how—and, in some cases, even if—they should manage them. 

Appointing Matthew Wielicki to lead the USGCRP and oversee the NCA won't address the assessment's shortcomings. In fact, it will make them worse. 

Given the administration’s history, it's not a stretch to imagine a USGCRP under Mr. Wielicki’s leadership soft-pedaling climate risks or, worse, amplifying the debunked "climate change is a hoax" narrative advanced by the Trump White House. Why? Because it’s already happening.

The administration dismantled USGCRP in 2025. Then it commissioned a group of climate skeptics to write their own government report dismissing the risks of climate change to assist the administration’s effort to rescind a decades-old federal finding that climate change endangers public health and welfare. A court later determined that that report was illegally produced. Now the administration is trying a new approach.

Policy-makers and business leaders across the United States understand that climate change poses real threats. 

The world’s 10 hottest years on record have all happened since 2015, the evidence of climate change in worsening storms, heat and drought has become increasingly clear. Leaders are looking for ways to alleviate these risks. Indeed, the long-term success of their businesses demands that they do so.

What decision-makers in business and government across the country really need isn’t denialism; it’s information about the costs, benefits, and uncertainties associated with different climate risk-management options that they can act on. They also need a clearer picture of the tradeoffs associated with acting now, delaying action, or—in some cases—choosing to do nothing.

Over time, an improved NCA would build a searchable library of practical and relatable case studies of climate risk-management decisions. They would describe, among thousands of examples, why and how New York City used scenario planning to prepare for sea-level rise and more intense storms; why Flagstaff turned to a ballot initiative to address flood and wildfire risks; how places from Burlington, Vermont to Georgetown, Texas fared after transitioning their electricity grids exclusively to renewables; and why governments in South Florida have continued to avoid policies that would limit development or pursue managed retreat from vulnerable areas despite swelling political and scientific consensus about the long-term risks. |Cases like these are what would form the backbone of a more effective NCA.

One key to making these case studies useful is to be candid about the strengths and weaknesses of competing options for managing risk, including maintaining the status quo. Another is to provide guidance on how the lessons from each case can be adapted to different places and different kinds of risks. An important third is to keep these cases updated over time so users of the NCA can learn from the outcomes of others’ decisions. All three are well within the grasp of the USGCRP if it is operating under knowledgeable and experienced leadership.

And this brings us back to the analogy of the doctor and the patient. Some patients will opt for treatment, while others will choose to ignore their diagnosis and refuse treatment for reasons that may seem completely irrational to their doctor or to others.

It’s the same story for how organizations and governments respond, or not, to climate change. Only by developing a better understanding of how and why specific decisions to act on climate were made, and then what happened next, can those charged with managing future climate risks be better prepared to confront decisions about climate action when it’s their turn to make them. 

— JAR