A major study on climate change produced by the United States government has leaked to the New York Times due to fears that the Trump administration would attempt to alter its findings—or bury it altogether.
The draft of the report was created by scientists from 13 federal agencies as part of the National Climate Assessment, which is released every four years. Its findings confirm alarming statistics about the progression of climate change since 1980, and researchers behind the study predict potential catastrophic global warming over the coming decades.
President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese government. Other members of his administration, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, have said they do not believe human activity contributes to climate change, despite overwhelming consensus to the contrary from the scientific community.
Here are some of the report’s key findings and context:
- It’s gotten hot in here: The past near-four decades were the warmest in the past 1,500 years, researchers concluded.
- SO EXTREME: Researchers found strong links between human-contributed climate change and some extreme weather events. Not all extreme weather is conclusively linked to climate change, however, the researchers say.
- On the rise: The average global temperature will rise by 0.5 degrees Celcius by the end of the century—even if all human activity immediately ceased, the report concludes. Researchers predict the actual rise will be 2 degrees Celcius. If temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celcius, researchers say, it will have devastating consequences.
- Just sayin’: The report does not suggest any policy recommendations but does conclude that a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is necessary for keeping global warming below the 2-degrees-Celcius threshold.
Read the Times‘ article on the report here and the full draft report here.