U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright; Rep. Chuck Fleischmann; R-Chattanooga; and Open AI CEO Greg Brockman spoke with the press during a tour of Oak Ridge-area nuclear facilities.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

Visit by energy secretary doesn’t address program cuts as former fracking CEO downplays climate change threat; visit comes following diversity program cuts; full extent of Oak Ridge impacts still unknown

Hellbender Press typically avoids the use of anonymous sources. The sources in this story spoke on condition they not be identified so they could speak on a sensitive matter.

This story will be updated. The original stories continue below.

OAK RIDGE — U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright denied that climate change was a “crisis” and downplayed its threat during a visit to an international hub of scientific expertise rattled by early actions of the second Trump Administration. His visit did little to allay fears of cuts to staff and programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the most concrete signs of change have been the dismantling of diversity efforts.

Wright visited ORNL on Feb. 28, and at a press conference defended the Trump administration’s actions on climate change, energy sources and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a group headed by Elon Musk that has recommended cutting programs and staff in various government departments.

He did not announce any layoffs at the lab itself, however, and implied research related to climate there will continue. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is home to many kinds of related research, including at the Climate Change Science Institute. CCSI does modeling and gathers data on the climate, as well as working on solutions to the problem.

Wright promoted research on artificial intelligence, which he called “Manhattan Project II,” and nuclear energy, and he appeared alongside Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., Rep. Chuck Fleischmann R-Chattanooga and Open AI CEO Greg Brockman, who also spoke and answered questions. 

“I don’t think you’ll see any reduction in the science that we do regarding climate change or any of these other really big questions,” said Wright in response to a reporter’s questions about how cuts at the lab might affect climate change-related research at ORNL, which his department funds through a partnership with contractor Battelle and the University of Tennessee. He said, however, he still “100 percent” believed there was no climate “crisis” and said scientific reports backed up his view. 

“We haven’t seen an increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, storms. Wildfires are on an uptick because we stopped managing our forests,” he said. “Deaths from extreme weather, which is what you hear the press and politicians’ fearmongering about, it declined over 90 percent in my lifetime as the population’s grown. So climate change is a real phenomenon. It’s just not even remotely close to the world’s biggest problem.” He also said an intergovernmental climate change report also showed economists saying climate change was not as important as issues like education, free trade and “empowerment.”

These claims are a mixed bag of truth. While the frequency of hurricanes hitting the United States, for example, hasn’t increased, a recent Columbia University study showed the tropical cyclones’ intensity for the East and Gulf Coasts has. Also unmentioned by Wright was any impact the climate has on disease or health conditions apart from extreme weather, a subject on which experts at Tennessee’s own Vanderbilt University have sounded the alarm.

Wright was CEO of a hydraulic fracking company, Liberty Energy, before his appointment.

“It’s a real thing, but nothing in the science of climate change or in the economics of climate change shows it to be the world’s biggest problem,” Wright said. “When you call something a crisis, it means we don’t have time to stop and think. We’ve just got to take action. That’s exactly the opposite of what climate science is.”

During the meeting, he also defended Musk, DOGE and Trump’s actions generally while not announcing any such cuts for the civilian research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory or the weapons maintenance at Y-12, which is managed by a different contractor. A reporter at the event mentioned an earlier instance in which workers at Y-12 National Security Complex received termination letters that were then rescinded. While the reporter asked him to offer reassurance on job security, he sidestepped that question.

A student farm leader takes care  of pigs at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa. Most of the college’s pigs were recovered following fatal flooding from the Swannanoa River on Sept. 28, 2024.  Warren Wilson College

Collective action helps alleviate climate anxiety in wake of Hurricane Helene

This story was originally published by The Revelator.  

Mallory McDuff teaches environmental education at Warren Wilson College.

SWANNANOA, N.C. — “We need 10 people on flush crew, five to clean out the fridges in the science building, and 15 to clear trees on the roads! We’re gonna do this together!”

This wasn’t a pep rally or a community service event. It was the morning meeting called at 9:30 a.m. each day by campus leaders in front of the cafeteria at the small college where I lived without power or water, after the climate disaster of Hurricane Helene devastated our community in Western North Carolina.

“We know the Swannanoa Valley has been hit especially hard,” the college president told the group of students and employees. “And we are here for this college and for the greater community. This is our work together.”

That day I joined my neighbor Tom Lam chain-sawing his way across campus with a crew of students clearing brush along the way.

“Now gather ‘round so you can see how to sharpen this chainsaw,” Tom said in his booming Jersey voice, pulling on his suspenders after we’d cleared trees that crushed a neighbor’s car.

I’ve spent 25 years teaching environmental education, raising two daughters, and living at this 1,000-acre campus where all students work in jobs in places like the farm, garden, forests, and even fiber arts. And I think this might be one model of how to live in community in a climate emergency.

This white oak (Quercus alba) in Burlington, N.J. is known as the Keeler Oak. It is an estimated 300 years old and is emblematic of the role these massive trees can play in the forest and beyond. The white oak is a highly valuable tree, both economically and ecologically. Its seedling survival rate is declining, but University of Tennessee researchers joined others to map the species’ DNA.  Wikipedia Commons

New research involving University of Tennessee describes the genome of the mighty white oak

Patricia McDaniels is news and information manager for the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.

KNOXVILLE — Highly valued economically, ecologically and culturally, the white oak (Quercus alba) is a keystone forest species and is one of the most abundant trees across much of eastern North America. It also faces declining seedling recruitment in many parts of its range.

In a paper published in New Phytologist, researchers representing the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, Indiana University, the University of Kentucky, the U.S. Forest Service and several more institutions described for the first time the species’ complex genome, providing insights into fundamental questions about plant evolution, tree breeding and genetic improvement efforts that could help forest managers plan for and address future forest resources.

Lead authors of the paper Meg Staton, associate professor of bioinformatics and computational genomics in the UT Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, and Drew Larson, National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University, coordinated with colleagues across the nation in academia, the U.S. Forest Service, state forests and industry to obtain genetic sequence data representative of the species.

Also central to the effort were Seth DeBolt, professor of horticulture and director of the James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits at the University of Kentucky, and Dana Nelson of the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station and director of the Forest Health Research and Education Center at the University of Kentucky.

White oak barrels are lifeblood to the bourbon industry because the color and much of the whiskey’s flavor derive from the charred wood in which it is aged.

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) weekend is underway

Each February, for four days, the world comes together for the love of birds. Over these four days people everywhere are invited to spend time in their favorite places watching and counting as many birds as they can find and reporting them to us. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.

Participating is easy, fun to do alone or with others, and can be done anywhere you find birds.

Step 1: Decide where you will watch birds.

Step 2: Watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 14–17, 2025.

Step 3: Identify all the birds you see or hear within your planned time/location and use the best tool for sharing your bird sightings:

• If you are a beginning bird admirer and new to bird identification, try using the Merlin Bird ID app to tell us what birds you are seeing or hearing.
• If you have participated in the count before and want to record numbers of birds, try the free eBird Mobile app or enter your bird list on the eBird website (desktop/laptop/smartphone).