New Federal Climate Change Report Contradicts Trump Administration: It’s Real And Humans Are Causing It

The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday detailing the growing threats of climate change. The report stands in stark contrast to the administration’s efforts to downplay humans’ role in global warming, withdraw from an international climate accord and reverse Obama-era policies aimed at curbing U.S. greenhouse-gas output.

The White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law, despite the fact that its findings sharply contradict the administration’s policies. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea-level rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and enumerates climate-related damage across the United States that is already occurring as a result of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

More from Politico:



“Fundamentally, it’s reaffirmed that climate change is real, that humans are the dominant cause of warming, and that it is having an effect in the U.S. And those effects will grow more severe as long as we continue to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” said Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a contributor to the multi-agency report.

Sea levels are expected to rise from 1 foot to 4 feet by the end of the century and could swell by up to 8 feet if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, according to the final Climate Science Special Report, the first volume of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment.

Episodes of heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and intense, and heat waves will become more common. Kopp said the report also shows the U.S. can expect more compounded extreme weather events, like the multiple hurricanes and wildfires that occurred this summer.