Leaked Federal Climate Report Finds Link Between Climate Change, Human Activity (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited. "Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," a draft of the report states. A copy of it was obtained by The New York Times. The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. "Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change," they wrote. The report was completed this year and is a special science section of the National Climate Assessment, which is congressionally mandated every four years. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft report, and the authors are awaiting permission from the Trump administration to release it. "The report concludes that even if humans immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would still feel at least an additional 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit (0.30 degrees Celsius) of warming over this century compared with today," reports The New York Times. "The projected actual rise, scientists say, will be as much as 2 degrees Celsius." Given the Trump administration's stance on climate change, some of the scientists who worked on the report are concerned that the report will be suppressed.

Comments

Re:It's no longer climate change

[bugs2squash]

No, the new title will be: Make America Sweat Again

Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien

[Zontar The Mindless]

Because the earth has been hotter than now prior to the industrial age.

QED

Every time I see this, I want to reply, "And during the Hadean, it was hot enough that most of the Earth's surface was molten lava..."

This time, I did.

Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien

[houghi]

I was on a sinking ship. We had two holes. Some people said it was punishment from God and we should die. Others said it was because the ship hit some rocks.

Now I am not a rabid religious (not that they are all like that), I think there's a lot to both sides of the equation, here.
[snip a lot that could be compared]

Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle. So we should just leave one hole open and close the other one.

So let's stop the hyperbole and have some reasonable discourse about how to deal with it instead of pointing fingers and name calling.
That way we will all be happy.

Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien

[TeknoHog]

Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle...

Silly attempts to look "fair & balanced" on the climate is a big part of the problem--as soon as you start doing that, you've caved to the anti-science crowd who think that, if they tell themselves enough fairy tales, they'll become true.

For a practical example, let's meet in the middle with the Flat Earth crowd, and agree that the Earth is a very oblate spheroid.