Someone Leaked a Major Federal Climate Change Report Before Trump and Pruitt Can Cook the Books
On Monday, the New York Times published a leaked copy of the special science section of the draft 2018 National Climate Assessment, which federal climate researchers had completed but feared Donald Trump’s administration and new Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt were plotting to smother in its crib.
The draft report reflects federal scientists’ continued and unshaken belief human industrial activity is the primary driver of climate change, despite Trump’s belief that there is cold weather at all debunks the whole thing and Pruitt’s belief human CO2 emissions might not be related. It takes note of thousands of scientific studies, and particularly focuses on the rapid rise in US average temperatures since 1980. It also emphasizes research indicating the past few decades have been the warmest in 1,500 years.
One of the figures from the draft report
Credit: New York Times
“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” the report’s executive summary informs readers. “Thousands of studies conducted by tens of thousands of scientists around the world have documented changes in surface, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures; melting glaciers; disappearing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; rising sea level; and an increase in atmospheric water vapor. ... The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, as well as the warmest years on record for the globe.”The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which coordinates federal climate reports, also had no staff in its science division left as of July 1.
“There are no alternative explanations” to human industrial activity being the cause, it adds, and “no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate.”
The report cites a documented rise in global annual average temperature from 1880 through 2015 of over 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 Fahrenheit). It also warns that even if humans simply stopped pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today, temperatures would rise another .3 degrees Celsius (.5 Fahrenheit) this century, but current projections put humanity on a path towards over 2 degrees Celsius rise, which would be disastrous.
In another blow to Trump’s conviction the weather somehow disproves climate change, the report noted scientists are increasingly able to link extreme weather events like heat waves, storms and droughts to rising temperatures.
The 2018 National Climate Assessment is legally mandated, meaning the Trump administration could face lawsuits if (or more likely, when) it suppresses it. The scientific section of the report leaked today requires sign-off from 13 agencies, including the EPA and others now headed by climate skeptics, and the White House.
In early August, Nature received documents suggesting Pruitt was moving ahead with a shamelessly cynical plan to require future EPA research be vetted in a “red team, blue team” format, which would turn its review board into a war between actual scientists and industry flacks. Pruitt had already fired half the EPA board of scientific counselors, seemingly in preparation to hire red team panelists recommended by the fossil fuel industry-backed Heartland Institute.
The leak of the report is a clear middle finger to Trump, Pruitt and their plan to derail federal climate research and policy, and it ensures the public has an opportunity to review it before they get their big, grubby mitts all over it. But given Trump’s penchant for launching into a self-destructive rage every time a leak embarrasses him, it could also inspire the White House into an ill-advised act of revenge.
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Original article http://gizmodo.com/someone-leaked-a-major-federal-climate-change-report-be-1797622534/amp by Tom McKay http://kinja.com/tommckay Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/
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Fahrenheit 451...
You know the NYT published a retraction right? The government published this report months ago.
There's no retraction.
The Times article stands as is.
You'll have to read the articles.
Fake news Bob.
But when you get your "news" from far left red meat sites, I guess that will happen.
Hi, Sean...
I'm not surprised you'd try to use an irrelevant error to disqualify an important topic. It's rank intellectual dishonesty, so... no surprise.
Say, Sean... While I have your attention... I posted a seed from the Daily Storm . I'd like to have your comments on it.
Now that's some grade A intellectual dishonesty.
You just posted fake news premised on a false claim of a report being leaked and then turn around and dismiss proof that the article was not leaked as "irrelevant."
Do you know how ridiculous that makes you look?
I posted a seed from the Daily Storm
Nazis suck. Feel free to copy and paste that response of mine to every single seed on Charlottsvile. There's only so many different ways to say it.
Now that's some grade A intellectual dishonesty.
Comment removed for CoC violation [ph]
Ok, folks...
Apparently I have to explain...
Somebody leaked to the Times a report that had already been posted a couple months earlier.
There really was a leak. Not false.
And the Times charged ahead with its story.
And the risk to see the report quashed still exists. Which was always the essential point.
And, now you show your ignorance of the internet. In order to quash a report that has already been released on a webpage, the page would have to be taken down and all the archive sites out there would have to be scrubbed of that report. In other words, this is a non-story as there has been no attempt made to scrub any archive site of this story. And, since the report was released on the EPA website already, it cannot be leaked as it was already published. You are trying to create a fear that is non-existent in reality by publishing this article here.
The report has NOT been officially released.
Until it is officially released, it could be quashed.
Now that the Times has made so much noise, the quashing is less likely.
The report has NOT been officially released.
Until it is officially released, it could be quashed.
Now that the Times has made so much noise, the quashing is less likely.
The person that comments aimed to will not have a clue about what you're talking about and you will never be able to get him to understand it no matter how many different ways you explain it. And that goes for everyone like him who continue to spread the lie that this report was made public in January. There heads have cemented into that lie and nothing can crack it.
Did your conscience cause you to hesitate at all before you decided to argue that a publicly available report was "leaked?" There's a reason all responsible left wing outlets stopped claiming or implying it was leaked after the scientists who worked on the paper pointed out it has been available to the public for months.
Since you'll murder the English language in service of your ideology, is there anything you won't do in service of your partisan agenda?
Why is everyone arguing about if the report was officially leaked or not? Who cares! The report is there and is very scary, so why not talk about it instead of constantly distracting about how it was released.
The focus on "leak" is a derail. It's a purposeful attempt to shift attention from the dire content of the report, and the awful possibility that the Administration suppress it.
This is how the right works: never face the facts... sidestep... distract...
It's so miserably hypocritical. The only possible reason for such behavior is that they know that their arguments cannot stand on their own, so they must resort to subterfuge.