Trump is an infamous climate change sceptic. For instance, during his campaign, Donald Trump described climate change as a concept that “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive.” Joke or not, it’s clear that he doesn’t take the fact that the Earth is globally 1.7°F warmer than it was in 1880 or that we are loosing 286.0 gigatonnes of land ice per year seriously. And as if that wasn’t enough, he announced that the U.S. was pulling out of the Paris climate change accords earlier this year.
Though he is far from alone in this sentiment, there remains a voice of reason. In fact, on Friday, the American government gave the green light for a very important scientific study to be made public regarding climate change. It directly contradicts the Trump Administration’s skepticism and declares that climate change is our fault. The “Fourth National Climate Assessment” is mandated by Congress and published every four years.
The last few years have seen a record number of climate change related disasters (hurricanes, floods, etc.), while the last three years have been the warmest ever recorded, according to the report. Its authors state theses phenomenons will persist.
Notably, this analysis of the state of the climate concludes that “on the basis of many indicators, it is extremely probable that human activity, especially with the release of carbon dioxide, is the main cause for the global warming that is observable since the middle of the 20th century.” This further contradicts Donald Trump and members of his administration, including Scott Pruitt, the director of the EPA, a global warming skeptic close to the fossil energy sector. According to him, the science behind climate change is “far from settled.”
This American report has been published with interesting timing since the COP 23, the continuation of the Paris accords, is happening Monday. The main objective of the COP 23 is to prepare working towards the objectives they set out to accomplish at the COP 21. For instance, they would like to limit any global warming to 2°C. Despite Trump threatening to leave the accords, they can’t legally pull out till 2020. In terms of ecological matters, the U.S. will have to stand alone.
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