Report for Trump links human activity to climate change
WASHINGTON:US President Donald Trump’s administration has given him a draft of a report that incontrovertibly links human activity to climate change and warns of significant warming if nothing is done.
The climate science special report said the global annual average temperature has increased by more than 0.9 degrees C between 1880 to 2015, and the average temperatures in recent decades is much higher than at any time in 1700 years.
Put together by 12 federal agencies, the report’s findings are contrary to what Trump, his cabinet colleagues and many Republicans believe — that global warming is a natural phenomenon but the impact and role of human activity is far from proven.
Trump has called climate change a hoax, tweeting in 2012, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, saying it unfairly favoured some countries like India and China. The US formally communicated to the UN last week that it was withdrawing from the deal.
And Trump has packed the administration with climate change deniers.
Scott Pruitt, who is in charge of the environmental protection agency, has said, “I think that measuring... human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.”
A final call on the report, which is being reviewed by the White House, will likely be taken by Trump himself.
And the report leaves him with few options, should he care to take it seriously.