In 1990, Congress passed the Global Change Research Act, which created the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The program was intended to study environmental changes and their impact on society. [emphasis, links added]
The USGCRP involves 15 government departments and agencies and has a budget of $4.95 billion as of 2025.
The goal of the USGCRP is to provide the “scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States” on climate change.
Now, over three decades on, what USGCRP amounts to today is little other than a slush fund for government contractors to push climate alarmism under the guise of nonpartisan “science.”
For example, the USGCRP’s most recent report, published in 2023, warned that “severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.” Based on these reports, federal departments and agencies set regulatory policies and make funding decisions.
To produce its National Climate Assessment, the USGCRP outsources much of its work to contractors, the primary one being a massive government contractor known as ICF.
In June 2021, the ICF was awarded a five-year, $34 million contract to help produce the National Climate Assessment (NCA). According to an official who has worked on the Assessment, the ICF essentially controls the [NCA] report’s outcome.
“By providing all staff for the USGCRP, a federal agency, the ICF exerts undue influence over the global change narrative and priorities presented by the federal government,” the official explained.
“The ICF, through the USGCRP, exerts an undue influence on the production of the National Climate Assessment every four years. [Except for] its Executive Director and the Director of the National Climate Assessment, the ICF supplies all staff associated with the USGCRP.”
Tellingly, only two full-time employees are listed on the USGCRP’s website. Furthermore, both of those employees appear to be ideologically committed to a leftist worldview.
One contributed to Democrat candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and the other lists her preferred pronouns in her Instagram bio, describing herself as a “climate scientist focused on preparing for a warmer world.”
However, the ICF may be the more significant problem, as the contractor doesn’t hide its leftist partisan views. It would appear that both DEI and a commitment to climate alarmism run strong with this outfit.
As noted above, ICF is a massive government contractor, and during the Biden administration, it received over $2 billion in contracts. Is it any wonder ICF was effectively feeding the Biden administration the “science” it wanted?
Of note, following Donald Trump’s election victory last November, ICF’s stock value has dropped precipitously from $171 per share on November 5 to $83 per share yesterday.
Interestingly, this fall in share value follows the same pattern as when Trump was first elected in 2016. That factor alone makes it hard to claim that ICF doesn’t present a partisan view on climate “science.”
Houston Keene, a former journalist and current leader of a government transparency organization, argues:
“There can be no proper assessment with scientific integrity when a clearly partisan and financially conflicted activist organization is holding the pen.”
This is reminiscent of Big Tobacco paying for its own “independent” researchers to study the health effects of smoking.
When you already have an established conclusion, spending money on “research” is simply designed to provide a supporting narrative, which is exactly what ICF appears to have been doing.
h/t Steve B.
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