The White House appointed Matthew Wielicki to oversee the National Climate Assessment, a report detailing the impacts, risks, and responses of climate change in the U.S., which Congress mandates be delivered at least once every four years.

The problem is, Wielicki has no background in climate change. And, he has frequently criticized the science that proves humans are responsible for global warming.

Politico was first to report last week that Wielicki will oversee the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which authors the report. Just last year, the future of the report hung in limbo because the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists who were participating in drafting the latest round of the National Climate Assessment—essentially gutting the program. 

The new appointment indicates that the assessment will move forward, albeit with a likely much different lens.

Wielicki has a background in geochemistry, which studies the physical composition of Earth and other planetary bodies, and no experience in climate science. He taught at the University of Alabama’s Department of Geological Sciences, which he reportedly resigned from in 2023. 

He’s since described himself as a “professor-in-exile” and has collaborated on videos produced by the far-right educational platform PragerU. He also authors a Substack called Irrational Fear, the description of which reads: “An in-depth look at some of societies [sic] most irrational fears, from climate change to politics and everything in between.” Last spring, Wielicki announced he was taking a new direction in his career: “I was coming out of a difficult place professionally. I had spent years in academia, built a career as a scientist, and then found myself increasingly at odds with the direction things were going.”

That new direction is in the Trump administration. Wielicki linked to the Substack post when he announced the new appointment on X.

The administration characterizes Wielicki’s leading the U.S. Global Change Research Program as a move toward restoring its mandate.

“For too long, the U.S.G.C.R.P. has been used as a vehicle for political agendas instead of sound science. We look forward to restoring the U.S.G.C.R.P. and ensuring it fulfills its legal mandate,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement to multiple media outlets seeking comment.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote on X last Thursday that Wielicki “is an honest scientist who follows the data wherever it leads.”

While the appointment indicates the assessment will still be published as planned, past editions of the report have been removed from websites. The government in 2025 shut down the online archive hosting the five editions going back to the assessment’s inception in 2000.

The insertion of politics into the climate report echoes similar moves by the Trump administration to influence key governing boards that have power over major environmental rules. It’s reminiscent of a tactic by the Department of Energy, whose leaders handpicked a group of researchers to write a report on climate change. That report was then used as evidence by the administration to justify removing the EPA’s own Endangerment Finding, which found that carbon emissions pose severe health risks and, as a result, must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

This is also not the administration’s first move to erase hard but real facts related to its own country’s impact on climate change and the reality we’re facing with warmer global temperatures. Earlier this year, officials directed the National Park Service to remove any signs that don’t align with the Trump administration’s talking points–including posters acknowledging the impact of climate change. It’s part of a broader theme, as I reported previously, of the White House sneakily changing the narrative by obfuscating or deleting inconvenient data altogether.

It’s unclear who else will help author the National Climate Assessment, but what is clear is that, despite record-breaking global temperatures and a heat dome that has occupied large swaths of the U.S. in recent weeks, Wielicki remains skeptical of any climate links.

“If every extreme weather event ends up being attributed to climate change in one way or another, is it really attribution science … or just confirmation bias dressed up as science?” he posted Thursday on social media. “A hypothesis that can explain everything risks explaining nothing.”

It’s unlikely that the national assessment will be met with the same level of consideration as, say, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Two scientific societies, the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, have already said they would produce peer-reviewed research to fill the gaps from the administration’s clearance of climate science.

Either way, I’m sure the national assessment will make for some fascinating reading.