Related Article
Science report: Who gets hotter, wetter with climate change
Read more
President Donald Trump and his band of climate deniers are stealing our time.
Notice we didn’t say they are stealing our planet — because that’s a given. And they are doing so by sitting on their hands as temperatures rise. They are, quite literally, snuffing out our world and our children’s future.
Temperatures globally have risen 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1901, and much of that increase — 1.2 degrees — has occurred just since 1986, according to a draft of a 500-plus-page Climate Science Special Report, required every four years by Congress.
The draft makes it clear: There is at least a 95 percent likelihood that more than half of that mercury spike could be attributed to human activity. And there’s at least a 66 percent likelihood that all of the extra heat has been caused by people.
Despite all this evidence — most of it already known but now compiled in this report by scientists from 13 federal agencies — the report still awaits an Aug. 18 approval by the Trump administration, which has mostly maintained that climate change is a hoax. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is one of 13 agencies that is part of and expected to sign off on the draft, but its administrator, Scott Pruitt, has said he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.
Oxfam activists wearing masks of US President Donald Trump, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel stage a demonstration in Giardini Naxos, near the venue of the G7 summit in the Sicilian town of Taormina, southern Italy, in May. Climate change promises to be problematic for the world. (AP Photo/Paolo Santalucia)
Oxfam activists wearing masks of US President Donald…
Photo by Paolo Santaluca
Related Article
Draft U.S. report says extreme storms driven by climate change
Read more
The spectre of this coming showdown has scientists on edge. They fear Trump and crew will dismiss their blunt assessment, according to The New York Times and numerous other news outlets.
“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” the draft states. “Thousands of studies conducted by tens of thousands of scientists around the world have documented changes in surface, atmospheric, and oceanic temperatures; melting glaciers; disappearing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; rising sea level; and an increase in atmospheric water vapor.”
The draft adds: “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate changes.” What’s more, it is now possible to connect some extreme weather events to climate change, something climate scientists have traditionally avoided.
And here’s the kicker: Even if carbon dioxide emissions from industrialization were to cease immediately, there are enough heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere to raise global temperatures another half degree Fahrenheit by century’s end, the draft report found.
That half-degree might not sound like much, but a small difference in global temperatures can make a big difference.
The draft states that with significant reductions to CO2 emissions, we’ll see a global temperature rise of 3.6 degrees or less. Without major carbon reductions, we’re looking at a mercury spike of as much as 9 degrees by the end of this century.
Repeat: As much as 9 degrees by the end of this century.
The report — the work of more than 300 scientists overseen by about 60 experts — is filled with facts that greatly contradict what President Trump and other administration officials have claimed about global warming. Trump, Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have all downplayed the human impact on the climate.
What’s worse, they have undone policy after policy aimed at slowing the pace of global warming.
But the report also points up stark contrasts with warming facts and public sentiment.
The study examined every corner of the nation and found that all of it was touched by climate change. Temperatures will continue to rise as the West, Southwest and Southeast dry up and the Southern Plains and Midwest get wetter.
In March, the Yale Program on Climate Communication looked at how Americans think about climate change.
The findings were pretty stunning in a “not-in-my-backyard” sort of way.
A majority of Americans said they believe global warming will harm people in the U.S.
But far fewer than half said they expect it to harm them personally.
That same Yale survey also found that 69 percent of Americans — a majority in every congressional district of the country — want to restrict carbon emissions from coal power plants. And 75 percent supported regulating CO2 generally as a pollutant.
The Trump administration wasn’t tuned in to Americans any more than it has been tuned in to scientists. Just days after the Yale survey was made public, Trump signed an executive order to review the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and unravel a number of other energy orders and memorandums.
And, of course — lest we forget — Trump also announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement. He said the “deal” was bad for America.
Doesn’t it make you wonder what part of climate change our president thinks is good for America?
