As you might have seen, on Wednesday, Trump tweeted,
“Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
Just as some Americans faced the coldest Thanksgiving in over a century, a new US government report just out delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating impacts.
The economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars –or possibly more than 10% of its GDP– by the end of the century.
The federal study was released by the Trump administration on Friday, right when millions of Americans are on a long holiday weekend, distracted by family and shopping.
David Easterling, director of the Technical Support Unit at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, emphasized that there was
“no external interference in the report’s development.”
The global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced, and this warming trend can only be explained by human activities.”
CNN reports that he study comes from the,
“US Global Change Research Program, a team of 13 federal agencies, the Fourth National Climate Assessment was put together with the help of 1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists, roughly half from outside the government.
It’s the second of two volumes. The first, released in November 2017, concluded that there is ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for the changing climate other than ‘human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases.'”
The report’s findings run counter to Trump’s consistent message that climate change is a hoax. The science is crystal clear:
Climate change is not disproved by the extreme weather of one day or a week; it’s demonstrated by long-term trends. Humans are living with the warmest temperatures in modern history.
The costs of climate change could reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually;
• The Southeast alone will probably lose over a half a billion labor hours by 2100 due to extreme heat.
• In parts of the Midwest, farms will be able to produce less than 75% of the corn they produce today, and the southern part of the region could lose more than 25% of its soybean yield.
• Heat stress could cause average dairy production to fall between 0.60% and 1.35% over the next 12 years — having already cost the industry $1.2 billion from heat stress in 2010.
Higher temperatures will kill more people;
• The Midwest alone, which is predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by 2090.
• There will be more mosquito- and tickborne diseases like Zika, dengue and chikungunya. West Nile cases are expected to more than double by 2050 due to increasing temperatures.
Wildfire seasons could burn up to six times more forest area annually by 2050 in parts of the United States.
• Burned areas in Southwestern California alone could double by 2050.
• Dependable and safe water for the Hawaii, the Caribbean and others are threatened by these rising temperatures.
Along the US coasts, public infrastructure and $1 trillion in national wealth held in real estate are threatened by rising sea levels, flooding and storm surges.
• Energy systems will be taxed, meaning more blackouts and power failures, and the potential loss in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of the century.
• The number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit will multiply; Chicago, where these days are rare, could start to resemble Phoenix or Las Vegas, with up to two months worth of these scorching-hot days.
• Sea levels have already gone up 7 to 8 inches since 1900. Almost half that rise has been since 1993, a rate of rise greater than during any century in the past 2,800 years.
• By midcentury, it’s likely that the Arctic will lose all sea ice in late summer, and that could lead to more permafrost thaw and as the permafrost thaws, more carbon dioxide and methane would be released, amplifying human-induced warming, “possibly significantly.”
A report from the UN in October urged all governments to take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid disaster from climate change.
• That report predicted that the Earth will reach the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by as early as 2030.
• It also suggested the world faces a risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people.
Beverly Wright, founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and a professor at Dillard University said,
“The findings in the Trump administration’s NCA report show how the health and daily lives of Americans are becoming more and more interrupted because of climate change. We challenge the administration to finally begin using this information to rebuild and strengthen the communities in the direct path of the atrocities wrought by the fossil fuel industry and decades of poor policies that have neglected our concerns. The science is undeniable, let’s fix it.“
Meanwhile, the EPA has removed the phrase “climate change” from its websites and has prohibited its own scientists from speaking about the issue.
(Photo. U.S. Global Change Research Program ;via CNN)