Katelyn Weisbrod | August 10, 2017
A draft report under review at the White House says climate change is “extremely likely,” and over half of the world’s recent temperature rise has been caused by human activity.
The report, called the Climate Science Special Report, was authored by numerous federal employees and representatives from universities and private organizations. It highlights several climate-change-related phenomena, such as sea level rise, extreme weather events, glacial melting, and global temperature rise.
Members of the Trump administration have often claimed the cause of climate change is uncertain, and cannot be directly linked to human activity. However, this report claims with high confidence that most of the observed climate changes over the last half century have been caused by humans, and very little of the change is natural.
Even if humans were to stop emitting greenhouse gases immediately, the report says, the Earth would still warm at least another 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few decades depends primarily on the additional amount of greenhouse gases emitted globally, and on the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to those emissions,” the report says.
The Washington Post says it is still unclear what the Trump administration will do with this information. The administration may choose to disregard the report completely, like the 2000 Climate Science Special Report, which was deemed flawed under the Bush Administration, and was not cited in future reports.
