In order to undermine the next National Climate Assessment, the Trump administration plans on curtailing the projections used in the evaluation, The New York Times reports.
The National Climate Assessment is released every four years, with several agencies working together to produce it. The administration wants to only include computer-generated models that project the effects of climate change through 2040, rather than through 2100 as done previously, and no longer show worst-case scenarios, the Times reports. Scientists argue that this is misleading, as the major effects of current emissions won't be felt until after 2040.
"What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that's consistent with their politics," Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told the Times. "It reminds me of the Soviet Union." The last National Climate Assessment showed that if greenhouse gas emissions aren't curbed, the atmosphere could warm by as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, leading to rising sea levels, food insecurity, and intense storms and droughts.
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Trump is also listening to a physicist named William Happer, who is part of the National Security Council and wants to create a new climate review panel that is skeptical of climate change being man-made. "The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," Happer told the Times. For more on the National Climate Assessment, how Trump is being influenced by friends and donors who made their money from oil and gas, and the few administration officials urging Trump to ignore Happer, visit The New York Times.
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