The ostrich sticks it’s head in the sand for a good reason, to dig a hole to hide eggs. Climate deniers have no such reason, they just cower and cover their eyes saying, “it’s a plot against poor people, who can’t afford renewable energy,” or something equally absurd, when all around them, the scientists they revile are barraging them with facts. Americans have already paid with their lives for climate change-caused tragedies, hurricanes and wildfires, to name a few, while the idDJT in the White House refuses to acknowledge the causal connection that is glaringly evident to every other world leader. It is not new information that since 1901, temperature records show the United States has warmed 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since 1960 mountain snowpack has shrunk significantly and arctic ice has receded. The seasons are topsy turvy. Sixteen of the warmest 17 years on record have occurred since 2000. While our fearless leader assures us it’s all a Chinese hoax, this chilling report informs us, simply, if we don’t haul ass in the other direction immediately, we’re toast. The Atlantic:
“It shows us that climate change is not a distant issue. It’s not about plants, or animals, or a future generation. It’s about us, living now,” says Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the report and an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University.
The report visits each region of the country, describing the local upheavals wrought by a global transformation. Across the Southeast, massive wildfires—like those seen now in California—could soon become a regular occurrence, smothering Atlanta and other cities in toxic smog, it warns. In New England and the mid-Atlantic, it says, oceanfront barrier islands could erode and narrow. And in the Midwest, it forecasts plunging yields of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice.
Its projections of sea-level rise are just as ominous. If carbon pollution continues to rise, a huge swath of the Atlantic coast—from North Carolina to Maine—will see sea-level rise of five feet by 2100. New Orleans, Houston, and the Gulf Coast could also face five feet of rising seas. Even Los Angeles and San Francisco could see the Pacific Ocean rise by three feet.
Even if humanity were to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, the report forecasts that New Orleans could still see five feet of sea-level rise by 2100.
It will come as no surprise that the protocols reached by the Paris Accord, which we dumped at the behest of Steve Bannon, shortly after Trump took office, are still our best guideline on how to avert catastrophe, in a future which is very much nearer than the idiot deniers suppose.
“If the United States were to try and achieve the targets in the Paris Agreement, then things will be bad, but we can manage,” he said. “But if we don’t meet them, then we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives every year that are at risk because of climate change. And hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Now what about the release of this vitally important report? A holiday weekend is a news abyss, generally speaking. So what happened?
If you think the Friday after Thanksgiving seems like an odd day to publish such a major report, you’re right. The assessment was originally scheduled to be released in December at a large scientific conference in Washington, D.C. But earlier this week, officials announced that the report would come out two weeks early, on the afternoon of Black Friday. When politically inconvenient news is published in the final hours of a workweek, politicos call it a “Friday news dump.” Publishing a dire climate report in the final hours of Black Friday might be the biggest Friday news dump of them all.
The scientists don’t know why the report was scheduled for an early release. One of them was baking pies when she learned, only Tuesday, of the upcoming Friday release and put down her oven mitts and picked up her laptop to submit any last minute revisions. The Atlantic reporter asked the White House a) why the push up in the release date and b) would the report lead Trump to reconsider his beliefs? It didn’t respond directly to the first question, here’s it’s oblique response to the second.
But a White House spokeswoman did send me a lengthy statement saying that “the United States leads the world in providing affordable, abundant, and secure energy to our citizens, while also leading the world in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.” (This is only true if you start counting in 2005, when U.S. emissions peaked.) The spokeswoman said this new assessment was based on the “most-extreme scenario,” and promised any future report would have a “more transparent and data-driven process.”
So, the White-washing House is characterizing empirical evidence, compiled by the best minds on the subject, as a “most-extreme scenario,” and sweeping the issue right under the rug, once more. Not surprising. Trump told a 60 Minutes reporter recently about scientists, “they have a very big political agenda, Lesley.” This is why the report got released in the .news no mans land of Black Friday.
Most significantly, the National Climate Assessment—which is endorsed by NASA, NOAA, the Department of Defense, and 10 other federal scientific agencies—contradicts nearly every position taken on the issue by President Donald Trump. Where the president has insisted that fighting global warming will harm the economy, the report responds: Climate change, if left unchecked, could eventually cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and kill thousands of Americans to boot. Where the president has said that the climate will “probably” “change back,” the report replies: Many consequences of climate change will last for millennia, and some (such as the extinction of plant and animal species) will be permanent.
This is idDJT’s view on the issue
This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2014
He hasn’t changed one bit.
Maybe you could ask somebody in your administration to explain to you the difference between climate and weather.
— Ursula Faw (@ursulafaw56) November 22, 2018
Somebody get him a primer on climate science to go along with his civics coloring book for Christmas, will ya?
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