Trump bars federal scientists from working on pivotal global climate report

By Ella Nilsen and Laura Paddison, CNN

The IPCC assesses how the climate crisis is affecting the planet according to the latest science. Its reports take thousands of scientists many years to produce and are used to inform policymakers across the world of the risks posed by global warming.

In a sense, all of the world’s current, accepted knowledge about climate change stems from the IPCC and its reports, the first of which was published in 1990.

An international meeting of IPCC authors that was scheduled to take place in China next week is now in limbo. Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor, was supposed to co-chair the discussion but was impacted by the stop-work order, according to the scientist involved in the report. The meeting was planned to talk about next steps in the development of the report.

“Dr. Calvin will not be traveling to this meeting,” a NASA spokesperson said. NASA denied CNN’s request for an interview with Calvin.

The person involved in the report told CNN they were “not sure what this means for the planned work going forward, or if US scientists will participate in the writing of the IPCC reports.”

“The IPCC is the backbone of global climate science, providing the world with unbiased, evidence-based insights needed to confront the climate crisis,” said Harjeet Singh, a climate advocate and founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.

“The decision to exclude US scientists significantly undermines this collaborative effort and risks compromising the process at a time when robust climate action is needed more than ever,” he told CNN in a statement.

On his first day in office this year, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, a landmark international climate change treaty in which nearly 200 countries agreed to work together to limit global warming. It’s a repeat of an action Trump took in his first term.

CNN has reached out to the White House and the IPCC for comment.

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