New report warns of worsening disasters, contradicting Trump

DISASTERS like California’s catastrophic wildfires are worsening because of global warming, according to a US government report that frequently contradicts Donald Trump.

The White House’s National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in California and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael ravaged the east coast and Florida.

It says warming-charged extremes “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration”.

The report notes the last few years have smashed US records for damaging weather, costing nearly£312 billion since 2015.

The recent Northern California wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connection to those in Southern California, said co-author William Hohenstein of the US Department of Agriculture. “A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years,” he said at a press conference.

The report was originally scheduled for December. It often clashes with the president’s past statements and tweets on the legitimacy of climate change science, how much of it is caused by humans, how cyclical it is and what is causing increases in recent wildfires. Trump tweeted this week about the cold weather hitting the east, including: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

The report seemed to anticipate such comments, saying: “Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity ... Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”