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Climate Change: Ignoring the Evidence Doesn't Change the Reality (#744)

Rick LeCouteur
Sep 29
7 min read

Updated: Sep 30


There is something strangely revealing about the phrase climate change.


It sounds almost gentle.


Climate has always changed. Seasons change. Weather changes.


Perhaps, somewhere in the language itself, we have made it easier to regard what is happening as gradual, distant, debatable - even optional.


But the climate does not care what we call it.


Climate does not vote. Climate does not watch television. Climate does not read social media. Climate has no ideology and recognizes no political boundary.


Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation regardless of which political party controls Congress.


Ice melts when it becomes warm enough. Water expands as it warms. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. A warmer ocean contains more energy.


These are not political positions.


They are physical processes.


And perhaps that is the most unsettling aspect of climate change in 2026:


We increasingly seem capable of ignoring something simply because acknowledging it has become inconvenient.


We already know


The scientific argument over whether the planet is warming because of human activity is, in its essentials, over.


NASA summarizes multiple independent lines of evidence - from modern instruments and satellites to ice cores, tree rings, ocean sediments and corals - and describes the influence of human activity on the warming climate as established fact.


The measurements themselves are increasingly difficult to absorb.


The World Meteorological Organization reported in March 2026 that 2015 through 2025 were the eleven hottest years on record. The global average temperature in 2025 was about 1.43°C above the 1850–1900 average. Ocean heat content reached the highest level in the 66-year observational record, and Earth's measured energy imbalance reached a record high.


Global mean sea level is now about 11 centimeters higher than it was in 1993, and its rate of rise has accelerated.


These are not projections for our grandchildren.


They are measurements.


Now.


And yet we turn away


This is where the material that prompted this essay becomes particularly disturbing.


The United States has, for decades, produced a National Climate Assessment: A large synthesis of scientific knowledge intended not simply for climate scientists but for farmers, city planners, businesses, emergency managers, public-health officials and ordinary citizens.

Such assessments matter because no mayor, farmer or homeowner can reasonably be expected to read thousands of scientific papers. Assessment reports collect that knowledge, evaluate its strength and uncertainty, and make it usable.


Such assessments tell us both what the evidence can and cannot tell us.


Ignored Reality


The Fifth National Climate Assessment concluded that climate change is already affecting every region of the United States. Extreme heat has become more frequent, intense and persistent; climate change is contributing to risks involving drought, heavy precipitation, flooding, wildfire and hurricanes; and the consequences extend into health, agriculture, infrastructure, water supplies and the economy.


One might imagine that evidence of this magnitude would make gathering better information an obvious national priority.


Instead, in 2025 the current administration dismissed the authors working on the Sixth National Climate Assessment after the process had already begun.


Please read that again.


It happened.


The Congressional Research Service (CRS) subsequently reported that the administration had canceled a NASA contract supporting the U.S. Global Change Research Program and that the assessment's authors had been dismissed. CRS noted uncertainty over whether the administration would pursue another approach to meeting the statutory assessment requirement.


This essay describes the resulting vacuum starkly:


Work on the next assessment was shut down, contributing authors were removed, and past reports disappeared from federal websites and had to be preserved elsewhere.


Ignored Reality


Whatever one's political views, there is an important distinction here.


A government may legitimately disagree about what to do about climate change.


How quickly should fossil fuels be replaced? How much should adaptation cost? Who should pay? What role should nuclear power play? How should environmental objectives be balanced against energy prices, employment and economic growth?


Those are political questions.


But whether to measure what is happening is a different question.


Suppressing or discontinuing an assessment does not alter the physical processes the assessment was intended to describe.


The weather keeps arriving


The title of this essay contains a wonderfully simple observation:


Even when the government would prefer to ignore them, climate impacts keep arriving.


Ignored Reality


That may be the central point.


Reality is remarkably indifferent to whether we acknowledge it.


A coastal community still must decide where it is sensible to build. An insurance company must calculate wildfire and hurricane risk. A farmer must decide what to plant and how much water may be available. A city must decide whether a stormwater system designed for the climate of 1970 will be adequate for the climate of 2050. A physician still treats the patient suffering from extreme heat. And somebody still pays when a house burns, a crop fails, a road washes away or a power grid cannot meet demand.


The Fifth National Climate Assessment estimated that extreme weather events were already costing the United States close to $150 billion annually, while explicitly noting that this was a conservative estimate excluding some costs such as deaths, healthcare and damage to ecosystem services.


Climate change, in other words, does not disappear when we remove it from a government website.


It merely appears somewhere else on the balance sheet.


When government steps away, science does not stop


There is, however, an encouraging part of this story.


Scientists did not simply go home.


The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society created the U.S. Climate Collection, an independent effort to preserve and extend the scientific synthesis that would otherwise have contributed to national and regional assessments.


The organizations explicitly say that their project does not replace the National Climate Assessment, but provides a mechanism through which the underlying peer-reviewed work can continue.


The first roadmap brought together 175 authors and identified priorities for future climate assessments.


Importantly, those priorities are not confined to measuring temperature. They include improving climate models, understanding regional effects, evaluating adaptation and emissions-reduction efforts, and examining emerging pressures such as rapidly increasing electricity demand associated with AI data centers.


There is something admirable about that response.


If one institution stops asking questions, others continue asking them. If a report disappears, researchers preserve the evidence. If a centralized process collapses, a distributed one emerges.


Scientific knowledge is unusually difficult to extinguish because its authority ultimately does not reside in a particular government department.


Its authority resides in evidence that other people can examine, challenge, reproduce and improve.


But there is a larger problem


Climate denial has changed.


The simplest form was once: climate change isn't happening.


That position has become increasingly difficult to sustain against observations.


A more subtle form is emerging:


Yes, climate change is happening, but we would rather not look too closely.


That may ultimately be more dangerous.


Because ignoring reality does not require anyone to disprove the science. It requires only delay.


Defund the measurement. Discontinue the report. Remove the website. Question the institution. Postpone the decision. Treat each flood, fire, drought or heatwave as an isolated event. Argue about terminology while another year passes. And another. And another.


Meanwhile, greenhouse gases accumulate. The ocean warms. The ice retreats. The sea rises.


The consequences compound.


The lesson is larger than climate change


There is a principle here that reaches well beyond environmental science.


Evidence is not valuable because we like what it tells us.


Evidence is valuable precisely when we do not.


A veterinarian does not decline to look at a biopsy because the diagnosis may be unpleasant. A physician does not stop measuring a patient's blood pressure because the number is unwelcome. An engineer does not ignore a crack in a bridge because repairing it will be expensive.


The rational response to disturbing information is to understand it more completely.


Climate science deserves the same intellectual discipline.


We can argue vigorously about policies. We can debate costs, priorities and trade-offs. We can change governments. We can rewrite regulations. We can decide that one proposed solution is ineffective and another preferable.


But none of those choices changes the underlying physics.


And this, perhaps, is the ignored reality.


We do not have to believe in climate change.


We do not even have to talk about it.


But while we argue, postpone, rename, defund and look away, the experiment continues around us.


The atmosphere keeps the record. The ocean keeps the record. The glaciers keep the record. The forests keep the record.


And eventually, reality sends us the bill.


Background Information


Research Priorities for Robust Climate Assessments in the United States. 22 September 2026. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/107/9/BAMS-D-26-0305.1.xml


Plain Language Summary

  • Scientific assessments are critical in informing households, communities, businesses, institutions, and governments as they respond to intensifying climate hazards.

  • As climate change impacts accelerate, the pace of assessment and integration of science with decision-making and action must accelerate as well.

  • A network of U.S. climate assessment efforts could rapidly synthesize actionable science and case studies to inform climate response strategies.

  • To support future processes, this paper presents a selection of foundational topics needing assessment and near-term research across climate impacts, risks, and actions from the perspective of the United States and some of its key regions, environments, and economic sectors.

  • For example, assessment is needed for the increasing threats posed by compound extremes and cascading climate risks, which can overwhelm systems developed for independent events.

  • The effectiveness of climate responses likewise requires continuous evaluation and improvement, with consideration of the broader impacts (e.g., economic, environmental, health) associated with those strategies.

  • System-level understanding of integrated climate response strategies can be advanced by combining observations and modeling with mitigation, adaptation, climate interventions, disaster management, and resilience decision scenarios.

  • Overall, these research priorities aim to encourage new research and future national, regional, local, and sectoral climate assessments that support climate-informed decision-making in the United States.





T___p Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back. https://rcei.rutgers.edu/trump-is-attacking-climate-science-scientists-are-fighting-back/


 

 

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