Refuse to accept USGCRP assessments prepared under the Biden Administration

Research notes

Read the notice in full at govinfo (FR-2026-08-25, doc 2026-17289). Leveled attempted rather than partial because it is a proposal with no earlier directive aimed at USGCRP assessments; EO 14303 is a general scientific-integrity order and does not name them.

Reviewed 2026-09-06. Status unchanged; the amendment itself is now Evidence, and the finding cuts both ways. The amendment, on noaa.gov, could be read directly. It is seven pages, created 2026-08-19, headed “A PRODUCT OF THE U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM”, and was read in full.

What it does. §2.1 is a determination by OSTP and the GCRP that “RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and equivalent high emissions pathways do not constitute plausible baseline futures for federal planning, policy analysis, or risk assessment”, resting on the ScenarioMIP-CMIP7 update and on EO 14303. §2.2 gives five interpretation guidelines and §2.3 a standard caveat sentence to be attached to affected claims.

The open question was whether it displaces more of NCA5 than the Federal Register notice describes. It does — in reach, and the notice’s own scoping sentence is in tension with the amendment’s §4. The notice says the amendment “would not withdraw NCA5 in its entirety or disturb its compilation of observations, regional information, adaptation considerations, or appropriately described scenario-based analyses”. But §2 applies to “all NCA5 statements, figures, tables, traceable accounts, regional summaries, public summaries, derivative federal communications, and federally funded assessment-support products” that rely on the high pathways; §4.1 asks that the report’s front matter and Guide to the Report be amended to state affirmatively that RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 are not policy-plausible baselines; and §4.7, headed “Regional impact narratives”, says in terms that named claims in the Southeast, U.S. Caribbean, Midwest, Northern and Southern Great Plains, Northwest, Southwest, Alaska and Pacific island chapters “should be amended”. §4.9 reaches federal web summaries, graphics, speeches, grant solicitations and technical support documents. Chapters 2, 3 and 5, the air-quality and health claims, the economic-damage and adaptation-cost estimates and the coastal and sea-level chapters are each named.

Why the Status does not move anyway, although the question was posed so that breadth would carry it from attempted to partial. Breadth is not effect. Every operative sentence is conditional — “this proposed amendment would be added to NCA5”, “should be amended”, “should carry the scenario label” — the document is out for public comment under a Federal Register notice whose comment period closes on 2026-09-09, and no final action has been taken. Partial means “a mechanism in place or a piece delivered”; a proposal that displaces a great deal of a report if adopted has delivered no piece of it. The finding is recorded here rather than in the rung.

Also read and not cited: §3.4’s countervailing-considerations section, which states that the amendment “does not claim that rejecting RCP8.5 … eliminates global warming or removes all climate risk” and that high-forcing scenarios “may remain useful for model intercomparison, sensitivity testing, and exploratory research”. That distinction between technical use and policy relevance was checked against #84 (separate scientific risk assessment from risk management) and does not reach it: it is a rule about how one assessment’s outputs may be used, not a separation of the assessment function from the management function. #84 stands.