The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: Trump Energy Dept. Under Fire for Banning ‘Climate Change’ and Related Terms
Dear Diary. Use any metaphor you like on this one. Here are a couple: See no evil, hear no evil, dare to speak or post no evil when it comes to mentioning anything related to our changing climate. Like an ostrich hiding from danger (and the truth), let’s just stick our head in the ground (to drill baby drill and as discussed yesterday with coal, mine baby mine).
We can also go back to George Orwell’s book 1984 in which Dear Leader tried to scrub history from archives that he didn’t like, outlawing some wording to be printed. Well, that is the case here with the “inconvenient truths” of climate change. The words climate change and any words associated with it are being scrubbed off government websites at a time when the climate crisis is ramping up across the planet, much more so than the first two decades of the 21st century.
Here are more details from Common Dreams:
Trump Energy Dept. Under Fire for Banning ‘Climate Change’ and Related Terms | Common Dreams
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy stand around President Donald Trump as he signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 14, 2025. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump Energy Dept. Under Fire for Banning ‘Climate Change’ and Related Terms
“It’s like they’re trying to cover up a homicide,” said the Environmental Voter Project.
Sep 29, 2025
President Donald Trump’s administration has faced a flood of criticism since Politico reported Sunday that the US Department of Energy has added “climate change” and other related terms to its “list of words to avoid” at a key office.
According to a Friday email obtained by the news outlet, other banned words at the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy include carbon/CO2 “footprint,” clean, decarbonization, “dirty” energy, emissions, energy transition, green, sustainability/sustainable, and tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.
“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid—and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the administration’s perspectives and priorities,” Rachel Overbey, acting director of external affairs, reportedly wrote.
While the DOE did not respond to Politico‘s request for comment, critics were quick to blast the administration for yet another anti-science move.
“Welcome to the Donald Trump post-truth world,” Dr. Ali Khan, a retired US assistant surgeon general, responded on social media.
Since returning to power in January—after raking in campaign cash from Big Oil by promising to “drill, baby, drill”—Trump has also ditched the Paris Agreement (again), declared an “energy emergency” to benefit the fossil fuel industry, and claimed during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week that scientists’ predictions about the climate crisis were “wrong” and “made by stupid people.”
Trump also nominated climate liar and former fracking CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary. Under his leadership, the department has celebrated planet-wrecking coal on social media while spreading disinformation about solar and wind energy. It also published a July climate report that independent experts said is “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.”
The department crafted that report as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to scrap the ”endangerment finding,” the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people, which underpins federal climate policy.
Responding to the DOE’s newly revealed directive on banned words, the Environmental Voter Project charged, “It’s like they’re trying to cover up a homicide.”
Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group and a Bennett scholar at the University of Sussex, said, “Death cult does its thing.”
Climate Rights International’s advocacy director, Lotte Leicht, declared: “Ridiculous! Banning words won’t change reality… Censorship can’t erase facts: The climate crisis is real, it’s human-made, and deadly. Silencing science = endangering lives.”
Rakesh Bhandari, associate director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of California, Berkeley, warned of the likely impacts of the DOE’s banned words.
“This will not only affect research and policy directly, it will also affect what we see and don’t see and what we say and don’t say. The state has this power in virtue of its legitimate and cognitive authority,” Bhandari said. “Note that the Democrats are pretty silent about what matters most to the GOP: The protection of fossil fuels.”
Nodding to the Trump administration’s broad assault on First Amendment rights, Ross Seidman, senior counsel for a Democratic state senator in Maryland, said, “More ‘banned words’ from the party of free speech.”
The New York Times in March compiled a list of nearly 200 terms that agencies’ leaders have told staff to limit or avoid as part of Trump’s purge of “woke” initiatives. They range from clean energy, climate crisis, and climate science to activism, disability, diversity, gender, hate speech, mental health, pregnant people, sexuality, racism, stereotypes, and victim.
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Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
More:
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)