A New Report Suggests That Climate Change is, in Fact, Real!

Climate change can be a scary concept – if you believe it.  Climate change will continue to pose major threats to many aspects of our lives.  What is interesting is that a major government climate report backs that up, and was just released. This is the same government that gutted the Environmental Protection Agency and continually downplays the possible effects of climate change.  The report states:

“Climate-related risks will continue to grow without additional action. While Americans are responding in ways that can bolster resilience and improve livelihoods, neither global efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change nor regional efforts to adapt to the impacts currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

The report is the work of more than 300 government and independent scientists.  Its the second volume to be released of the two-part National Climate Assessment.  It’s this assessment that reviews the science of the Earth’s changing climate and what that means for those of us who live here.  The report found that Americans across the country are directly feeling the impacts of climate change – right now:

“In this assessment, we’re worried about the American people, and climate change is having a huge impact on the American people.”

This is the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), which is released at least every four years – thanks to the Global Change Research Act of 1990.  It’s designed to help the government stay up-to-date on the current state of climate research. The last full report (NCA3)was released in 2014 had some interesting details the impacts of climate change on both the economy and infrastructure.  Further, the report suggests that these impacts are inevitable.  What does this mean?  Well, it doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to slow down climate change, but reducing emissions now could definitely help minimize the future impacts of climate change.

The first volume of NCA4 was released about a year ago and it focused more on the science of climate change.  The big lesson from the report is that climate change is real.  Did everyone hear that or should I say it again? This is according to Robert Kopp, the director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University.  According to Kopp: “it’s happening now, it’s having significant effects on us, those effects will get worse if we don’t do something, but it’s not too late to try to avoid the worst impacts”.

When the first volume was ready to be released, there were fears that the Trump administration would try to suppress the report given the President’s feeling towards climate change.  Those fears never materialized, and the report was released.  What is interesting though, is that the report was released on Black Friday.  Which doesn’t’ really make any sense.  Or maybe it does.  Black Friday is a day that most are concerned about the price of holiday gifts and not thinking about climate or even the planet.  That said, this might have been released intentionally so that people wouldn’t pay attention to the report which basically says that we should be doing more to stop climate change.  And climate change is completely real.