The National Climate Assessment is broken – appointing Matthew Wielicki to lead it won’t help. But here’s what really bugs me: the conversation around climate science has become a surreal game of whack-a-mole, where every time we think we’ve made progress, a new administration buries it under layers of denial. Wielicki’s appointment isn’t just another bureaucratic shuffle—it’s a deliberate act of sabotage, and it raises a deeper question: Why do we keep letting people who’ve never studied climate change shape the very tools meant to save us from it?
Let’s be clear: The National Climate Assessment (NCA) has always been a bit of a ghost. It’s the report that tells us, in excruciating detail, that the planet is melting, but then leaves us stranded at the shore with no life raft. You know the drill—here’s how hot it’s going to get, here’s how many hurricanes will hit your town, but when it comes to solutions? Silence. The NCA has been like a doctor who tells you you’ve got cancer but refuses to hand you the chemo. What makes this particularly fascinating is that the report’s mandate includes helping communities adapt, yet it’s been mired in academic jargon and a refusal to engage with the messy, real-world decisions people actually face.
I’ve spent years studying how humans make decisions under uncertainty, and the NCA’s approach is baffling. Imagine being told your house is at risk of flooding, but the only advice you get is a list of statistics about rainfall trends. No guidance on elevating your home, no examples of how other towns have survived, no discussion of the trade-offs between insurance costs and retrofitting. It’s like giving someone a roadmap to a city they’ve never visited, but without a compass or a map of the streets. This isn’t just a failure of science—it’s a failure of empathy.
Now, throw in the Trump administration’s decision to appoint Wielicki, a man whose career has been defined by dismissing climate science, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. What many people don’t realize is that Wielicki isn’t just a podcaster—he’s a walking case study in how ideology can warp scientific institutions. His leadership of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) would be like handing a demolition crew the keys to a hospital. The administration already gutted the USGCRP in 2025, replacing it with a team of climate skeptics who produced a report so full of holes it was thrown out by a court. This isn’t about politics anymore; it’s about whether we’re willing to let our most critical climate tools be weaponized against us.
Here’s the thing: The world isn’t waiting for the NCA to fix itself. The 10 hottest years on record have all come since 2015, and Americans are already feeling the heat—literally. From wildfires in California to floods in Iowa, the climate is no longer a distant threat; it’s a daily reality. Yet the NCA remains stuck in a time loop, repeating the same warnings without ever offering a path forward. A detail that I find especially interesting is that the report’s creators have always avoided recommending specific actions, citing a need to stay neutral. But neutrality is a luxury we can’t afford. When your house is on fire, you don’t ask the fire department to stay neutral—you call them and follow their instructions.
So what’s the fix? It’s not about hiring more scientists—it’s about changing the entire mindset of the NCA. We need a report that doesn’t just list problems but offers a menu of solutions, complete with pros and cons. Think of it as a Yelp for climate policy: Here’s how New York City used scenario planning to prepare for rising seas, here’s why Flagstaff, Arizona, passed a ballot initiative to address wildfires, and here’s what happened when Georgetown, Texas, tried to go 100% renewable. These aren’t just data points—they’re blueprints for survival.
But this requires leadership that understands the stakes. Wielicki’s appointment is a red flag. If the NCA is to have any hope of being useful, it needs someone who can bridge the gap between science and action, someone who can look at a flood risk map and say, ‘Here’s how we build a levee, here’s how we buy out residents, and here’s how we decide which option is worth the cost.’ Right now, the USGCRP is like a car with a full tank of gas but no steering wheel. Without the right person at the helm, the whole system is doomed to spin in place.
In the end, the NCA isn’t just a report—it’s a mirror. It reflects our priorities, our values, and our willingness to face the future. If we keep letting people like Wielicki shape it, we’ll get a mirror that shows us a world we’ve already burned down. But if we demand better, we might just get a chance to build something new.
