A few months ago there was an “exhaustive scientific report” about the state of the climate allegedly leaked to the media to prevent the Trump administration from burying it because it contradicted his assertion that climate change is a Chinese hoax to hurt America. On Friday, the White House actually approved the report mandated by Congress for release and it literally destroys everything Trump and EPA chief Scott Pruitt claim about global warming; specifically that humans have no impact on the climate.
According to “several White House officials,” Trump was “hardly aware of the report’s existence” and it was left to Trump’s National Economic Council director, Gary D. Cohn, to approve the report for release. Cohn was concerned that blocking the report’s release might be a distraction from the GOP’s crusade to explode the deficit, rape the poor and infirm, and hand over the treasury to the rich and corporations; what Republicans are calling “tax reform.”
The report was conducted by 13 federal agencies and concluded “humans are the dominant cause of global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.” Trump claims those agencies and the scientists responsible for the report are lying because he saw it snowing on television. Although the “official” stance of the White House resisted calling the report part of the notorious “Chinese hoax,” or that there is snow falling someplace on the planet, it did put out a statement undercutting the “high level of confidence” the 13 federal agencies and hundreds of scientists based on mountains of empirical evidence.
A White House spokesman, Rah Shah, issued a statement saying:
“The climate has changed and is always changing. As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on ‘remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate’ to greenhouse gas emissions.”
Mr. Shah must be hewing closely to the White House requirement for employment that bald-faced lying is official policy. There was no “uncertainty” in the scientists’ minds and in fact, they stated that human activity related to “greenhouse gas emissions” is the only reason for the “record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes.”
In fact, the report states “unambiguously” that “there is no alternative explanation that anything other than humans – the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, and the forests we destroy are to blame. Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”
However, there is a 14th Century anti-science religious administration certain that there is no such thing as “scientific consensus on the anthropogenic climate change in the report.” It is why the Scott Pruitt-run Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still banning the few scientists still with the agency from “presenting any scientific reports on the climate.” Pruitt is also still erasing any and all references to climate change from the EPA website. The EPA administrator, evangelical Scott Pruitt, still preaches that carbon dioxide emission are not now and never have contributed to global climate change, and Energy Department secretary Rick Perry argued vehemently on Wednesday past that “the science is out” on whether human beings cause climate change.
The hundreds of scientists at the 13 federal agencies compiling the empirical data proving that human activity is the only cause of the warming climate disagree with Trump’s fossil fuel funded puppets. A professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, Michael E. Mann disputes everything Trump’s anti-science cohorts claim saying:
“This new report simply confirms what we already knew. Human-caused climate change isn’t just a theory, it’s reality. Whether we’re talking about unprecedented heat waves, increasingly destructive hurricanes, epic drought and inundation of our coastal cities, the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are upon us. That’s the consensus of our best scientists, as laid bare by this latest report.”
It is noteworthy that “this latest report” reveals that:
“Every part of the United States has been touched by warming, from droughts in the Southeast to flooding in the Midwest to a worrying rise in air and ground temperatures in Alaska; and conditions will continue to worsen. The frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase in the future as global temperature increases. Extreme precipitation events will continue to increase in frequency and intensity throughout most of the world.”
The effects of global warming have been “bad enough” that climate change-related severe weather events have already cost the United States over $1.1 trillion at the time the multi-year report was compiled. And that is noteworthy because the report was still being prepared for publishing a year before the recent spate of severe hurricanes, massive flooding, and horrific wildfires in America. There is no “confusion” or “debate” among sane human beings that climate change is a clear present and future danger or that man is not responsible.
The hundreds of scientists responsible for the report belabor the point saying:
“This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
It is unclear where in the report Trump’s people found any ambiguity or uncertainty, especially in light of the recent weather events climatologists have warned about for decades that have developed and arrived precisely as predicted. No reasonably intelligent American should be confused about what it means that someone in Trump’s immediate circle “allowed” the report mandated by the United States Congress to be released. They have no intention of heeding the dire warnings no matter the danger to the national security, economy, the population’s health or the environment. Maybe if Trump and the GOP donor class profited from addressing climate change, there would be a concerted effort to join the rest of the world’s effort on the climate.
America under Trump, and Republicans particularly, is losing whatever leadership role it had in the world and this archaic and vehement opposition to science is allowing other nations, especially China and the European Union, to be the dominant economic and technological leaders going forward. In remarking on Trump’s climate denial idiocy, the director of Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Christopher Field said:
“This profoundly affects our ability to be leaders in developing new technologies and understanding how to build successful communities and businesses in the 21st Century. Choosing to be dumb about our relationship with the natural world is choosing to be behind the eight ball.”
America chose to be dumb when it allowed a corrupt imbecile and Republican barbarians with their religious racist supporters to run the country right into the ground. This country’s ability to be leaders in anything suffered a fatal blow with Trump’s ascendancy and the proof is that despite a major multi-agency scientific report contradicting everything his environmental policies are based on; Trump still says there is no climate change because it’s snowing someplace on Earth.
In allowing the report’s release and still refusing to acknowledge the reality of climate change Trump is giving a big “fuck you” to national security, scientific research, America’s global leadership, and the health and welfare of the American people; exactly as he’s done since the day of his poorly-attended inauguration.