While it is true that the left abuses scientific inquiry (all forms of inquiry, really) with baseless claims carefully couched in hedge words such as could, might, may, etc., that does not mean that we should reject every hypothesis out of hand even if it is expressed using those same hedge words, as they are the proper framework for stating a hypothesis. Healthy skepticism is fine but flat rejection of ALL hypotheses is a good way to get dunked.
While I understand your point, these same agencies are looking for government dollars any way they can get them.
Blowing out projections are a great way to convince the government it better pay up quick, or else.
I’m not saying that they all have evil intentions. It’s just that the projections are frequently wildly off. For that reason the information is worthless, and serves to discredit other reasoned reports.