National Climate Assessment Report Release

Statements by Members of Congress & Clips Summary of Media Coverage

November 21 – December 3, 2018

Congressional Responses

Senate Responses

One Republican Senator released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release or about climate change since November 21, 2018.

Susan Collins (R-ME)

35 Democratic Senators released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release or about climate change since November 21, 2018.

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Michael Bennet (D-CO)

Chris Murphy (D-CT)

Tom Carper (D-DE)

Chris Coons (D-DE)

Bill Nelson (D-FL)

Brian Schatz (D-HI)

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

Angus King (I-ME)

Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Ed Markey (D-MA)

Gary Peters (D-MI)

Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Time Kaine (D-VA)

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Tina Smith (D-MN)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Maggie Hassan (D-NH)

Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Bob Menendez (D-NJ)

Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

Tom Udall (D-NM)

Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Mark Warner (D-VA)

Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

Patty Murray (D-WA)

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

House Responses

2 House Republicans released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release or about climate change since November 21, 2018. Both are members of the Science, Space, & Technology Committee.

Carlos Curbelo (Florida - 26)

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida - 27)

27 House Democrats released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release since November 21, 2018. This included 11 members of the Science, Space, & Technology Committee and 16 Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee

Science, Space, & Technology Committee (11)

Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas - 30)

Daniel Lipinski (Illinois – 03)

Suzanne Bonamici (Oregon – 01)

Don Beyer (Virginia – 08)

Jacky Rosen (Nevada – 03)

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Ed Perlmutter (Colorado – 07)

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

Bill Foster (Illinois – 11)

Mark Takano (California – 41)

Charlie Crist (Florida – 13)

Energy and Commerce Committee (16)

Frank Pallone (New Jersey – 06)

Bobby Rush (Illinois – 01)

Eliot Engel (New York – 16)

Diana DeGette (Colorado – 01)

Michael Doyle (Pennsylvania – 14)

Janice Schakowsky (Illinois – 09)

Kathy Castor (Florida – 14)

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Peter Welch (Vermont – 00)

Ben Lujan (New Mexico – 03)

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

David Loebsack (Iowa – 02)

Joseph Kennedy (Massachusetts – 04)

Tony Cárdenas (California – 29)

Scott Peters (California – 52)

Debbie Dingell (Michigan – 12)

Senate

California

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Feinstein, Merkley, Colleagues Introduce Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports. According to Dianna Feinstein, “‘The Trump Administration clearly wants to bury the findings of this new report, just like they want to bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledge the truth about our climate. But we won’t let them,’ said Merkley. ‘Climate chaos is already wreaking havoc on the US, most prominently from massive forest fires and more powerful hurricanes. We need to act boldly to save our economy and our environment. We are paying for our inaction, and the catastrophic events we’re experiencing are just a sliver of what’s to come if we don’t dramatically reduce carbon pollution.’” [Dianna Feinstein, 11/27/18 (+)]

Dianne Feinstein: “The president’s climate change denials ignore a mountain of evidence that shows we’re running out of time to slow the effects of global warming. We can’t afford to pretend the science is anything but conclusive. We must act now and do so decisively. feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.c…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Kamala Harris: “Yesterday I joined colleagues to introduce a resolution recognizing the findings of the recent climate reports & reaffirming our commitment to changing our country's path forward. Communities across the country are already feeling the effects of climate change. It's time to act.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris: “We cannot afford to continue on our current course with climate policy. The risks of more severe wildfires, droughts, sea level rise, and extreme weather are too great. We must act now. mcclatchydc.com/news/policy/en…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris: “We must chart a different path forward. As a nation, we can build upon the leadership of towns, cities, and states across the country to move to a cleaner, greener, and economically secure future.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris: “Increasing temperatures & extreme weather are projected to harm our agriculture industry, threatening farming communities & food security. And our nation’s aging infrastructure will be pushed to the limits by extreme weather events, threatening our national security & economy.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris: “Human health will be directly impacted by climate change, with extreme weather and climate-related events effecting our clean air and clean water, spreading diseases to new places, and increasing heat-related stress on vulnerable populations.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Kamala Harris: “A new report from top scientists confirmed that we have entered the era of climate consequences. Communities across the nation are already experiencing climate change & those impacts will only get more severe if we don't act now. latimes.com/nation/la-na-c…” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Colorado

Michael Bennet (D-CO)

Bennet Responds To Fourth National Climate Assessment. According to Michael Bennet, “‘The National Climate Assessment puts more facts behind what Coloradans have known for years,’ Bennet said. ‘From persistent drought to reduced snowpack to raging wildfires, our state’s farms, mountain towns, and cities all feel the effects of climate change. And those effects take a real toll on Colorado’s economy. I’m glad to see the Trump administration is finally acknowledging the science behind our changing climate—now it’s time they act on it.’” [Michael Bennet, 11/23/18 (+)]

Michael Bennet: “Today @POTUS doubled down, saying he does not believe the #NCA4 conclusions on the economic costs of climate change. Instead of politicizing science, we need a serious, bipartisan proposal to combat #ClimateChange. coloradosun.com/2018/11/26/mic…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Michael Bennet: “.@POTUS: 13 of your own federal agencies have laid out the facts and economic costs of #ClimateChange. What facts do you have to refute them? Stop politicizing science.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Michael Bennet: “I’m glad to see the Trump administration is finally acknowledging the science behind our changing climate—now it’s time they act on it. #NCA4 nca2018.globalchange.gov” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Michael Bennet: “The Trump Administration just released a report putting facts behind what Colorado farmers & ranchers have told me for years: #ClimateChange is harming agriculture & the livelihood of rural communities. Good to see the Admin start listening to science. Now let's act on it. #NCA4” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Connecticut

Chris Murphy (D-CT)

Chris Murphy: “You can't bury this information and you can't hide from it. If we choose to ignore the impacts of climate change happening right in front of us, we do so at our own peril. cnn.com/2018/11/23/hea…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Delaware

Tom Carper (D-DE)

Carper Following U.S. Climate Report: Ignoring Facts Is Costing This Country Lives, Money, And Jobs. According to Tom Carper, “‘The truth of the matter is that the Trump Administration tried to bury one of the most devastating climate reports in our nation’s history over a long holiday weekend. While Americans were celebrating with loved ones, President Trump hoped that we would miss the alarming conclusions from scientists within his own government about the ever-increasing threats of climate change. But we did notice, and, unfortunately for President Trump, facts are stubborn things. ‘Countries around the world, almost all credible scientists, and the United States military have warned us time and time again of the costs and dangers of inaction. This weekend, 13 federal agencies within the Trump Administration reiterated the same alarming conclusion: inaction on climate change is costing this country lives, money, and jobs. It is not a matter of ‘if climate change is happening,’ it’s a matter of ‘how bad will it be.’ Extreme weather events cost this country billions every year, a number that, according to this report, will skyrocket if we continue to do nothing about climate change. We can no longer afford to sit on our hands, and that’s why, as Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I stand ready to work with my counterparts on both sides of the aisle here in the Senate and in the House to find serious ways to reduce our emissions and prepare our nation’s infrastructure for what we know is next. Whether he likes it or not, President Trump can bet that we’re going to keep talking about what’s in this report because our collective future depends on it.’” [Tom Carper, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “It's a scary day when the administrator of the agency charged with protecting human health and our environment denies the very clear science and frightening conclusions in a new climate report by 13 federal agencies and over 300 scientists. politico.com/story/2018/11/…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “WATCH: While @POTUS and @EPAAWheeler cast doubt on the very real consequences of #climatechange drawn out in @NOAA's fourth climate report, I'm looking to solutions. Tune in here for my speech: facebook.com/tomcarper/vide…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “Rising seas and extreme weather don’t care what you “believe,” Mr. President. #ClimateChange is a scientific reality – and this report was produced by your own administration’s experts.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “Thank you, @SenatorCollins for speaking out on the cost of climate inaction. Democrats and Republicans need to come together and address #climatechange in a serious way. Too much is at stake.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “The Trump Administration tried to bury @NOAA's devastating climate report by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving. News flash, @realDonaldTrump: facts are stubborn and running from them will cost this country lives, money, and jobs.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tom Carper: “You're in luck, @realdonaldtrump. @NOAA is releasing a report in two days to explain just how #climatechange is bringing more erratic weather, intensified droughts and rising sea levels. I'd be happy to bring it over to talk about real solutions” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Chris Coons (D-DE)

Chris Coons: “Mr. President, we need you to recognize that climate change is real. This isn’t about politics. It’s about the planet we’re leaving to our children and our grand children. apnews.com/ba2468b9739d41…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Chris Coons: “Mr. President, climate change is real. It’s already impacting our country and our planet, and we need you to face the facts and address it. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Chris Coons: “Here’s the good news: We can reduce our combustion of fossil fuels, and we can do it in a way that boosts our economy and lifts up American workers. *But, we can only do that with real leadership, and right now, President Trump is not leading.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Chris Coons: “Although President Trump stubbornly denies the threats to our country, his own administration’s National Climate Assessment highlights the very real danger we face if we do not act now: nca2018.globalchange.gov” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Chris Coons: “Mr. President, climate change is real. The top scientists within your own administration and from all around the world are warning us that if we don’t act, the consequences for our country and our planet will be dire.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Florida

Bill Nelson (D-FL)

Bill Nelson: “For the good of our planet, our children, and future generations— we must take climate change seriously, listen to the experts, and come together to work on solutions. We have to act, and have to act now.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Hawaii

Brian Schatz (D-HI)

Brian Schatz: “I am glad we are talking about climate change on TV. Now let’s do it well. I mean if I went on TV and said that gravity only worked north of the equator I would not be invited back. Because that’s just stupid and false.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “Rick Santorum is not qualified to talk about climate change.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “If there is a market based, revenue neutral way to solve the climate crisis We are open to it. Meanwhile we will be over here with a bill we’ve drafted that is ... (checks legislative language) a market-based, revenue neutral way to solve the climate crisis.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: ““Climate change is real and who knows how much of it is caused by humans” has replaced “climate change is a hoax” which replaced “cigarettes don’t cause cancer.”” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “Don’t get me wrong I’m happy that TV news is putting climate change on its Sunday shows. This is an important step.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “Hey can people tweet some names of climate change experts so that the TV bookers have them available? (This is not a sarcastic tweet)” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “Maybe if we are going to ask people about climate change on a show they should either be an expert or know how to read something written by one?” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Brian Schatz: “We need to put a price on carbon. We need to fund our science agencies. We need green infrastructure. We need to rejoin Paris. We need to embrace the future. Doing aggressive things to solve our climate problem is not risky. Doing nothing is risky.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Illinois

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

Tammy Duckworth: “This is entirely the wrong response. We should be immediately and comprehensively addressing the impacts of climate change. We don’t have time to deny its existence like Donald Trump is doing.” [Twitter 11/28/18 (+)]

Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Dick Durbin: “Today, as the Trump Administration again denied the findings in its own #climatechange report, @SenJeffMerkley, myself, and 23 other Senators introduced a resolution backing the report’s findings & calling for immediate action. We stand with science.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Dick Durbin: “Report after report confirms what we suspected about climate change. How long will the President deny the science behind it?” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Maine

Angus King (I-ME)

Angus King: “We’re staring a threat in the face — let’s recognize it, and come together to remedy it in a way that will protect our planet for generations of future Americans. Now is not the time for denials, excuses, or equivocation — now is the time for action. #mepolitics” [Twitter, 11/24/18 (+)]

Angus King: “This report is clear: climate change is already making an impact on our lives, with many more obvious consequences coming in the near future. If we don’t act now, we will be grossly failing ourselves and our children. #mepolitics” [Twitter, 11/24/18 (+)]

Susan Collins (R-ME)

Susan Collins: “It is a grave mistake for the President to ignore the CIA’s widely reported assessment on the Khashoggi murder. If the President does not reconsider what actions our government should take toward the Saudi Government & MbS, Congress must act instead.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Maryland

Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Following National Climate Assessment, Cardin And Van Hollen Join Senate Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports & Urging Immediate Action. According to Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, “‘The Trump Administration wants to bury this new report because it doesn’t align with the president’s completely unhinged claim that climate change is a ‘hoax.’ Unfortunately for them, ignoring facts never succeeds in making them any less true,’ said Senator Ben Cardin, a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. ‘The consequences of our inaction on climate change can be found everywhere, from the record-breaking wildfires in California to the repeated, historic flooding in Ellicott City. This report highlights how these and other climate consequences will have an increasingly catastrophic effect on our economy – unless we act now.’ ‘The Trump Administration’s most recent report confirms the drastic costs of climate change, many of which we’re seeing already in lives lost and property destroyed. But as these costs mount and we continue our calls for action, the President does everything he can to deny and conceal the facts. Congress must fight back. I will continue working at the federal level to move forward on policies that address climate change, including my proposal to create a carbon cap and dividend program that would reduce carbon and put money back in the pocket of every single American. It’s past time that we take meaningful action on climate change,’ said Senator Van Hollen, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.” [Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, 11/29/18 (+)]

Ben Cardin: “Climate change is real. Trying to bury this report on the Friday after Thanksgiving does not make it less urgent. #science politico.com/story/2018/11/…” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Following National Climate Assessment, Cardin And Van Hollen Join Senate Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports & Urging Immediate Action. According to Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, “‘The Trump Administration wants to bury this new report because it doesn’t align with the president’s completely unhinged claim that climate change is a ‘hoax.’ Unfortunately for them, ignoring facts never succeeds in making them any less true,’ said Senator Ben Cardin, a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. ‘The consequences of our inaction on climate change can be found everywhere, from the record-breaking wildfires in California to the repeated, historic flooding in Ellicott City. This report highlights how these and other climate consequences will have an increasingly catastrophic effect on our economy – unless we act now.’ ‘The Trump Administration’s most recent report confirms the drastic costs of climate change, many of which we’re seeing already in lives lost and property destroyed. But as these costs mount and we continue our calls for action, the President does everything he can to deny and conceal the facts. Congress must fight back. I will continue working at the federal level to move forward on policies that address climate change, including my proposal to create a carbon cap and dividend program that would reduce carbon and put money back in the pocket of every single American. It’s past time that we take meaningful action on climate change,’ said Senator Van Hollen, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.” [Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, 11/29/18 (+)]

Chris Van Hollen: “If you're angry about the Trump Administration’s attempts to bury a new report about the consequences of climate change, act now. RT to ask Congress to pass S.2352. Our bill would make big carbon polluters pay for clean-up and return the proceeds directly to the American people.” [Twitter, 11/24/18 (+)]

Chris Van Hollen: “If we knew a disease was spreading, we would act. Yet President Trump and the GOP fiddle as the costs of climate change—in lives lost and property destroyed—continue to mount. washingtonpost.com/energy-environ…” [Twitter, 11/24/18 (+)]

Massachusetts

Ed Markey (D-MA)

Senator Markey’s Statement On Release Of The National Climate Assessment. According to Ed Markey, “‘We can see, feel, hear and experience the impacts of climate change when our communities suffer sea level rise, forest fires, and super-charged hurricanes. The Trump administration may want to bury this report so that it doesn’t get attention, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand to the threat of climate change. We need to take action now to reduce carbon pollution and implement the clean energy solutions that will help save our planet. ‘Climate change remains the most critical challenge that human civilization faces, and today’s report affirms that conclusion. In this National Climate Assessment, our best scientists are sending up an emergency flare – we need to take action now to mitigate carbon emissions or ignore the risks posed by climate change at our peril.’” [Ed Markey, 11/23/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “When Democrats controlled the House, we passed comprehensive #ClimateChange legislation. We can do it again. We must. Let’s apply the lessons of the Select Committee I chaired to once again take bold action on climate. bostonglobe.com/opinion/editor…” [Twitter, 12/1/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “I’m thrilled to be at @mit_esi as part of the People and the Planet series, speaking on the greatest challenge facing not just our nation, but the entire planet: #ClimateChange. WATCH LIVE HERE: [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “Right now and in this next Congress, I am going to fight for #ClimateAction, for a price on carbon, for investment in clean energy, for resilient infrastructure, and for a 100% renewable future. #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “In the last two months, we have received two of the most alarming reports to date on the threat posed by climate change. I’m on the Senate floor with @SenWhitehouse and @SenatorShaheen to discuss the @UN’s IPCC report and the National Climate Assessment. pscp.tv/w/1vAxRyjqOAXJl” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “Sadly, President Trump and #ClimateChange are both real. At least we can get rid of one of these nightmares in 2020.” [Twitter, 16/28/18 (+)]

Ed Markey: “#ClimateChange is the most critical challenge that human civilization faces. In this National Climate Assessment, our best scientists are sending up an emergency flare – we need to take action now or ignore the risks posed by climate change at our peril. nytimes.com/2018/11/23/cli…” [Twitter, 16/23/18 (+)]

Michigan

Gary Peters (D-MI)

Gary Peters: “Even President Trump’s agencies agree: if we don't take climate change seriously, it will devastate our economy, environment & our way of life. Climate change can be an opportunity for new, clean-energy jobs in MI & across the U.S. We must act now. nyti.ms/2P7nh0I” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Debbie Stabenow: “And given last week’s devastating report on climate change, this is absolutely not the time to be scaling back our support for electric vehicles. cnn.com/2018/11/23/hea…” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Minnesota

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Amy Klobuchar: “Wildfires, hurricanes, recent report showing billions of losses in Midwest over the next decades? The evidence is right before our eyes and we should get back in the climate agreement: G20 leaders pledge to fight climate change — except for Trump - Axios axios.com/g20-leaders-pl…” [Twitter, 12/2/18 (+)]

Amy Klobuchar: “Climate change is real and causing massive harm to our environment and economy. The Administration needs to take action, not stick their heads in the sand. Inaction is not an option. twitter.com/AP/status/1067…” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Tina Smith (D-MN)

Tina Smith: “When the President says "I don't believe it" about HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION’S CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING, it's important to remember that there are many things we need to do to protect our environment. Thanks @LCVoters & @ConservationMN for all that you do. I proudly support the #LWCF.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Tina Smith: “President Trump says he doesn’t believe the National Climate Assessment. But I do. Why? Because 13 agencies and 300 scientists IN HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION say it’s an urgent threat. So I reviewed the report. A few takeaways:” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Tina Smith: “Nat'l Climate Assessment came out today. The entire report is alarming. I've pulled together a few sections about what the future of MN & the Midwest will look like if we don't take action to address climate change for our environment, families, & economy. facebook.com/57652545936055…” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

New Hampshire

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

On Senate Floor: Shaheen Underscores Impact Of Climate Change On Granite State Environment, Wildlife & Economy. According to Jeanne Shaheen, “The report makes it abundantly clear that every American – every American – is affected by climate change, and the threat it poses will get worse unless we take action,’ said Shaheen. She went on to discuss how the effects of climate change, specifically rising temperatures that are shortening the fall foliage season, hurt New Hampshire’s outdoor recreation economy, impacting hunting, fishing, skiing, snowboarding and more, all of which contribute more than $4 billion to New Hampshire’s economy. Shaheen continued, ‘If we fail to act on climate change, we’re going to see a steep loss of jobs in revenue that is going to affect our outdoor recreation industry. And it’s going to affect our traditional maple syrup industry. New Hampshire produces more than 100,000 gallons of maple syrup annually—that makes it the third largest maple syrup producer among the New England states. Maple syrup is entirely dependent on weather conditions – we’re already seeing the impact that these [weather] changes are having.” [Jeanne Shaheen, 11/29/18 (+)]

Shaheen & Hassan Respond To Findings For Northeast Region In Federal Climate Change Report. According to Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, “‘Ignoring climate change is not an option,’ said Shaheen. ‘This report makes it clear that every Granite Stater is impacted by climate change, and the threat to our state will worsen over time unless aggressive action is taken. These findings should compel the Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress to finally face the facts and work across the aisle to address this threat to New Hampshire and the planet. This report also praises the region’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and suggests that it could serve as a model for the nation. I wholeheartedly agree, and urge leaders in Concord to maintain New Hampshire’s leadership in controlling harmful greenhouse gas emissions through RGGI. It’s time for the nation to catch up to the Northeast region in tackling climate change head-on.’ ‘There is no question that climate change is having very real and very serious consequences for our economy, environment, and way of life – and we need action now,’ said Hassan. ‘From our maple syrup and ski industries to our coastal infrastructure, this report details the negative impact that climate change is having in the Northeast region and makes it abundantly clear that the economic impacts will worsen dramatically if we fail to take urgent and meaningful action. New Hampshire and the Northeast have helped lead the way through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and I urge the President, his Administration, and Republicans in Congress to acknowledge the scientific facts and join us in addressing this massive challenge.’” [Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, 11/26/18 (+)]

Jeanne Shaheen: “By not acting on climate change, we are forfeiting our children’s future. Overwhelming evidence shows it is devastating our environment. Recent reports show how it will hurt our economy, and it’s already harming infrastructure. The admin needs to accept science & act.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Jeanne Shaheen: “The Trump admin’s climate change report details the profound impact climate change is having, and will continue to have, on NH & the nation. I’m proud of @UofNH input on this critical research, particularly professor Jennifer Jacobs who was a lead author. unh.edu/unhtoday/2018/…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Maggie Hassan (D-NH)

Shaheen & Hassan Respond To Findings For Northeast Region In Federal Climate Change Report. According to Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, “‘Ignoring climate change is not an option,’ said Shaheen. ‘This report makes it clear that every Granite Stater is impacted by climate change, and the threat to our state will worsen over time unless aggressive action is taken. These findings should compel the Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress to finally face the facts and work across the aisle to address this threat to New Hampshire and the planet. This report also praises the region’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and suggests that it could serve as a model for the nation. I wholeheartedly agree, and urge leaders in Concord to maintain New Hampshire’s leadership in controlling harmful greenhouse gas emissions through RGGI. It’s time for the nation to catch up to the Northeast region in tackling climate change head-on.’ ‘There is no question that climate change is having very real and very serious consequences for our economy, environment, and way of life – and we need action now,’ said Hassan. ‘From our maple syrup and ski industries to our coastal infrastructure, this report details the negative impact that climate change is having in the Northeast region and makes it abundantly clear that the economic impacts will worsen dramatically if we fail to take urgent and meaningful action. New Hampshire and the Northeast have helped lead the way through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and I urge the President, his Administration, and Republicans in Congress to acknowledge the scientific facts and join us in addressing this massive challenge.’” [Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, 11/26/18 (+)]

Maggie Hassan: “With its regional compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, NH has led the way in the fight against climate change, and I'm proud to see that @UofNH is continuing that tradition with its contributions to the latest climate change report. We need to act. unh.edu/unhtoday/2018/…” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

New Jersey

Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Cory Booker: “President Trump's views on climate change are beyond embarrassing – they're catastrophic. The latest report from his own administration makes it crystal clear: If we want to save our planet Earth, we must act now. cnn.com/2018/11/26/pol…” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Bob Menendez (D-NJ)

Bob Menendez: “We are the first generation to experience the real dangers of climate change and the last that can reasonably and meaningfully act to stop the worst effects from occurring. We must take this seriously.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Bob Menendez: “Investing in clean energy and reducing fossil fuel use costs nothing compared to the cost of disaster response, reconstruction, and the terrible loss of life that will result from inaction on climate change. cnn.com/2018/11/23/hea…” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

New Mexico

Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

Martin Heinrich: “This is not inevitable. By transitioning to an economy free of greenhouse gas pollution, we can regain a stable climate. Best time to was yesterday. Second best is NOW. santafenewmexican.com/news/local_new…” [Twitter, 12/2/18 (+)]

Martin Heinrich: “The Trump administration’s denial of climate change is a threat to our future. Climate change isn’t a hoax — it’s a scientific reality. We need to confront the challenge head on. #ClimateAction huffingtonpost.com/entry/team-tru…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Martin Heinrich: “When you’re relying on The Daily Caller instead of scientists for the facts on climate change, you’ve reached a new low. This is beyond willful disregard for data & facts. esquire.com/news-politics/…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Martin Heinrich: “Even if the Trump Administration refuses to confront climate change, New Mexicans are stepping up to this challenge. I am proud that @MayorKeller and the City of Albuquerque are committed to 100% renewable and clean energy use. #ClimateAction abqjournal.com/1251126/sun-is…” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Martin Heinrich: “The numbers don’t lie. Solar and wind are now more affordable sources of electric power than coal and even natural gas. These competitive prices and customer demand for climate action and clean sources of energy are quickly changing the game. forbes.com/sites/mikescot…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Martin Heinrich: “Even President Trump’s own administration admits climate change is devastating, yet ZERO leadership from this President... nmpoliticalreport.com/2018/11/26/bla…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tom Udall (D-NM)

Tom Udall: “We need a leader who will fight climate change, not deny it. @POTUS should take a look at the harm climate change is causing every day in New Mexico. It’s time for the GOP to stand up to @POTUS. Congress must come together and take action, because we can’t afford to do nothing.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

New York

Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Chuck Schumer: “Why did Trump admin release the climate report on black Friday? Because they don’t want you to know the devastating effects of their failure to address climate change. Any infrastructure package considered by Congress next year MUST invest in clean energy and climate resiliency.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Kirsten Gillibrand: “Devastating and irreversible effects of climate change are predicted to arrive by 2040, far sooner than we thought. We must take immediate action if we’re going to avoid the catastrophic consequences of global warming.” [Twitter, 12/2/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “Across New York, the country and the globe, the signs of climate change are everywhere, and it’s on us to pay attention. It’s not too late to take the necessary steps to preserve our planet, but our action has to be immediate” [Twitter, 12/1/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “Across New York, the country and the globe, the signs of climate change are everywhere, and it’s on us to pay attention. It’s not too late to take the necessary steps to preserve our planet, but our action has to be immediate” [Twitter, 12/1/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “Studies have shown that climate change is contributing to extreme weather events becoming more severe and frequent – and we can take action against climate change. How many more homes and communities must be devastated before we do something? The time to act is now.” [Twitter, 1/28/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “From day one, @realDonaldTrump has pushed one of the most anti-environment agendas in history at the cost of the clean air, clean water and our public lands. Climate change is a real threat, and by denying its credibility, this administration is putting our futures at risk.” [Twitter, 1/27/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “The science is clear: Our climate is already changing. We cannot allow lawmakers to continue ignoring this reality. The threats are too severe – the consequences too catastrophic. We must act now, while we still can.” [Twitter, 1/26/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “There’s no hiding it: Climate change is real — and the U.S. has an urgent obligation to lead the way in preventing its most damaging impacts. We can start now by putting a price on carbon, charging a polluter’s fee.” [Twitter, 1/25/18 (+)]

Kirsten Gillibrand: “Climate change is real. Its effects are being felt here and now, and we have a moral obligation to combat them. Our children deserve to inherit clean air to breathe and safe water to drink. We’ve got to come together and take action before it’s too late.” [Twitter, 1/23/18 (+)]

Ohio

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Sherrod Brown: “From the fires we’ve seen in California to the algae blooms on Lake Erie, it's clear climate change is real and it’s hurting our health and our economy. We have to put the partisan politics aside and work together to find real solutions. dispatch.com/zz/news/201811…” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Oregon

Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Following National Climate Assessment, Merkley And Colleagues Introduce Senate Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports & Urging Immediate Action. According to Jeff Merkley, “‘The Trump Administration clearly wants to bury the findings of this new report, just like they want to bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledge the truth about our climate. But we won’t let them,’ said Merkley. ‘Climate chaos is already wreaking havoc on the US, most prominently from massive forest fires and more powerful hurricanes. We need to act boldly to save our economy and our environment. We are paying for our inaction, and the catastrophic events we’re experiencing are just a sliver of what’s to come if we don’t dramatically reduce carbon pollution.’” [Jeff Merkley, 11/27/18 (+)]

Jeff Merkley: “Climate chaos will endanger our economy and our lives if we don’t act boldly. Transportation is the single biggest driver of carbon pollution in the U.S. We need a path to 100% zero-emission vehicles, & today, that’s what we’re proposing. Learn more here: merkley.senate.gov/news/press-rel…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Jeff Merkley: “This report is yet one more confirmation that we need bold, decisive action to tackle climate chaos. We can’t let the political power of the fossil fuel barons trump our future.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Jeff Merkley: “New report show climate chaos is already wreaking havoc on our planet, but @realDonaldTrump’s Administration wanted to hide the details of this report, so they released it the day after Thanksgiving. RT this and make he don’t get away with it. #100by50 noaa.gov/media-advisory…” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Ron Wyden: “Big thanks to all who attended yesterday’s Lane County #2018townhall in Eugene for a real #OregonWay conversation about election security, wildfires, climate change, campaign finance reform, health care and many other issues on Oregonians’ minds.” [Twitter, 12/3/18 (+)]

Ron Wyden: “Before today’s #2018townhall in Lane County, my friend @manningstl & I met with these smart & engaged @4JSchools students at South Eugene HS. Enjoyed #ListeningToTheFuture & hearing the students’ thoughts on criminal justice, green energy, climate change & more.” [Twitter, 12/3/18 (+)]

Ron Wyden: “Clackamas County showed with yesterday’s #2018townhall how democracy is alive & thriving in Oregon. Enjoyed the robust discussion at my 912th overall town hall about climate change, wildfires, DACA, election security, health care & more” [Twitter, 12/2/18 (+)]

Rhode Island

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Sheldon Whitehouse: “At present, only the fossil fuel industry puts sincere effort into climate legislation — into killing it. The other side has to start showing up. twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/…” Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Interesting editorial in @USATODAY. Short of modeling the @NRA, if corporate America showed up in Congress to support climate action, it would make a huge difference. usatoday.com/story/opinion/…” Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “The Trump Administration tried to bury the report on Black Friday because it contradicted nearly every assertion about climate he & his fossil-fuel-flunky cabinet have made. link.medium.com/wygHdaqXdS” Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Also @FoxNews’ Shepard Smith: “Heatwaves are getting stronger, floods are growing larger, wildfires are obliterating more of America’s landscape — it’s because of climate change that’s largely man made. thinkprogress.org/fox-news-ancho…” Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Today, I had the opportunity to hear from a distinguished panel of researchers from #RI's own @BrownUniversity @ClimateDevLab & @YaleSoc. They shared their latest research on climate denial groups, how such denials affect the media, and the influence of anti-climate PACs.” Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Not so easy for #RhodeIsland: Five key adaptations to climate change include “retreat from the coasts.” nytimes.com/2018/11/26/cli…” Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Obviously, they know they can NOT, so just try to bury the report; a key admission that climate denial is bogus — but then it always has been, so this doesn’t mean it stops. Polluter money doesn’t stop.” Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Remember, if they could challenge the science, what better time than now in Trump admin crawling w fossil fuel flunkies? thinkprogress.org/sen-mike-lee-g…” Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Sheldon Whitehouse: “Firefighters out West don’t have the luxury of pretending climate change doesn’t exist. They have seen the escalation of these wildfires up close. Some of our climate deniers might come to their senses if they traded places with these men and women for a day…” Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Virginia

Mark Warner (D-VA)

Mark Warner: “The threat of climate change, sea level rise, and recurrent flooding isn't another political football. It is a daily reality for folks in Hampton Roads and a serious national security challenge that this Administration ignores at our peril. pilotonline.com/news/local/env…” Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Time Kaine (D-VA)

Time Kaine. Soon to be overheard in elementary schools across America: Teacher: “Jimmy, you got an F on your science test. Did you even read the assignment?” Jimmy: “Yes. I just don’t believe it.” [Twitter, 11/26/18]

Washington

Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

Cantwell, Murray, Colleagues Introduce Senate Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports & Urging Immediate Action. According to Maria Cantwell, “‘The impacts of climate change are real and are already being felt in communities across the country,’ Senator Cantwell said. ‘Extreme weather events are growing more frequent, putting our homes and livelihoods at risk. Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable.’ ‘President Trump may refuse to accept the devastating reality of climate change, but it can’t stop the rest of us from shining a bright spotlight on the facts and continuing to fight for action,’ Senator Murray said. ‘For us in the Pacific Northwest, this is personal. Climate change is already starting to wreak havoc on our environment and our economy, from longer, more devastating wildfires and smoke-filled skies, to diminishing salmon runs, ocean acidification, and changing growing seasons. While it’s extremely frustrating that President Trump and his allies twist and dismiss the facts in order to suit their agenda, the rest of us who believe in science and share concern for future generations must continue sounding the alarm and pushing for meaningful efforts to combat climate change.’” [Maria Cantwell, 11/28/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “The impacts of climate change are real and are already being felt in communities across the country. Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable. Learn more here ⬇️ bit.ly/2r8l2R3” [Twitter, 12/2/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “I’ve joined 24 of my colleagues to introduce a Senate resolution calling for bold action to combat climate change. Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. columbian.com/news/2018/nov/…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “The impacts of climate change are real and are already being felt in communities across the country. Extreme weather events are growing more frequent, putting our homes and livelihoods at risk. #ActOnClimate nytimes.com/interactive/20…” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “I’ve joined 24 of my colleagues to introduce a Senate resolution calling for bold action to combat climate change. Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. ➡️ bit.ly/2r8l2R3” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which are real and are already being felt. They will continue to grow worse unless we take action to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Maria Cantwell: “The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country. Extreme weather events are growing more frequent—costing us more real dollars at the federal level and putting our homes and livelihoods at risk. #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Patty Murray (D-WA)

Senator Murray, Colleagues Introduce Senate Resolution Endorsing Findings Of Recent Climate Change Reports & Urging Immediate Action. According to Patty Murray, “‘President Trump may refuse to accept the devastating reality of climate change, but it can’t stop the rest of us from shining a bright spotlight on the facts and continuing to fight for action,’ Senator Murray said. ‘For us in the Pacific Northwest, this is personal. Climate change is already starting to wreak havoc on our environment and our economy, from longer, more devastating wildfires and smoke-filled skies, to diminishing salmon runs, ocean acidification, and changing growing seasons. While it’s extremely frustrating that President Trump and his allies twist and dismiss the facts in order to suit their agenda, the rest of us who believe in science and share concern for future generations must continue sounding the alarm and pushing for meaningful efforts to combat climate change.’ ‘The impacts of climate change are real and are already being felt in communities across the country,’ Senator Cantwell said. ‘Extreme weather events are growing more frequent, putting our homes and livelihoods at risk. Our regional economies that depend on agriculture, tourism, and fisheries are all vulnerable.’” [Patty Murray, 11/28/18 (+)]

Patty Murray: “Climate change is already wreaking havoc in WA, but it could get worse—more extreme weather creating more landslides, flooding, drought and wildfires. We must continue sounding the alarm and pushing for meaningful efforts to combat climate change. columbian.com/news/2018/nov/…” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Patty Murray: “President Trump may refuse to accept the reality of climate change, but it can’t stop the rest of us from shining a bright spotlight on the facts and continuing to fight for action—for Washington state, the devastating effects of climate change are already starting.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Wisconsin

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

Following The Recent Federal Report, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Calls For Immediate Action To Combat Climate Change. According to Tammy Baldwin, “‘Global climate change is real and we must act now to confront this fact because public health and our economy is threatened,’ said Senator Baldwin. ‘The impact of climate change can be seen on agriculture, biodiversity, extreme weather and our Great Lakes. We have a moral obligation to act on climate change so we can keep our promise to future generations to confront today’s challenges and pass on a world better than we found it.’” [Tammy Baldwin, 11/29/18 (+)]

Tammy Baldwin: “We have a moral obligation to act on climate change so we can keep our promise to future generations to confront today’s challenges and pass on a world better than we found it. That’s why I joined my colleagues to call for immediate action on climate change.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Tammy Baldwin: “There should be no doubt climate change poses a serious & growing threat to our planet, our country & our economy. We cannot afford more delay and inaction from the Trump administration. It's time for the U.S. to show strong leadership and take action now. cnn.com/2018/11/23/hea…” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

House of Representatives

Members of Energy and Commerce Committee

Republican Members

No Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release since November 21, 2018.

Democratic Members

16 Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assessment release since November 21, 2018.

Frank Pallone (New Jersey – 06)

Bobby Rush (Illinois – 01)

Eliot Engel (New York – 16)

Diana DeGette (Colorado – 01)

Michael Doyle (Pennsylvania – 14)

Janice Schakowsky (Illinois – 09)

Kathy Castor (Florida – 14)

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Peter Welch (Vermont – 00)

Ben Lujan (New Mexico – 03)

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

David Loebsack (Iowa – 02)

Joseph Kennedy (Massachusetts – 04)

Tony Cárdenas (California – 29)

Scott Peters (California – 52)

Debbie Dingell (Michigan – 12)

Frank Pallone (New Jersey – 06) Ranking Member

Rep. Pallone: “Trumpism: "The drafting of this report was drafted at the direction of the Obama administration," @EPAAWheeler said. Reality: Federal law requires the @usgcrp deliver a report to Congress and the President no less than every 4 years.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Last Friday’s #NCA4 report proves #ClimateChange is a clear and present danger to the health and wealth of the American people. Congress MUST #ActOnClimate next year before it is too late.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Unanticipated Factors Like This Flooding Made It Even Harder To Repair Damage To Other Areas, Like The Electrical System, The Report Notes.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Consider the ramifications of just one big storm. Salts from Hurricane Sandy gnawed away at the lining of our tunnels into Manhattan, threatening to shut them down for extensive repairs that could cripple the economy of the Northeast...” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Trump’s combination of power & ignorance is a genuine danger to the planet. So when federal agencies under his own administration conclude the negative effects of climate change are here and increasing, Trump will be loath to admit any of it.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Trump’s combination of power & ignorance is a genuine danger to the planet. So when federal agencies under his own administration conclude the negative effects of climate change are here and increasing, Trump will be loath to admit any of it.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “Shame on the Trump Admin for trying to bury this pivotal report on a holiday weekend. Next year, @EnergyCommerce will tackle #ClimateChange head on with an aggressive agenda to hold this admin accountable. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Rep. Pallone: “It’s clear from the #NCA4 report that no region of the U.S. has been and will be spared from the effects of a warming climate, and Americans are already suffering the costs. Read my full statement here:” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Bobby Rush (Illinois – 01)

Rep. Rush: “Whether @realdonaldtrump wants to believe the #NCA4 or not, #ClimateChange is a clear and present danger to the health and wealth of the American people. #ClimateFriday. [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Rush: “The president believes climate change is a hoax. So, he's not leading on anything. Climate change is a huge problem and if we don’t act now, it will only get worse.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Rush: Anyway. Climate change is already harming Americans, our health, and the economy. We must act now and ignore climate change deniers.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Eliot Engel (New York – 16)

Rep. Engel: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” It’s long past time to #ActOnClimate. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Engel: “By the end of this century, fighting #climatechange will save hundreds of billions of dollars just in public health costs, and save thousands of lives a year.” [Twitter, 11/24/18 (+)]

Rep. Engel: “The National Climate Assessment, produced by 13 federal agencies, says exactly what everybody except #POTUS and the @GOP already knows: #climatechange is a huge problem and we must act now.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Diana DeGette (Colorado – 01)

Rep. DeGette: “The National Climate Assessment warns that #ClimateChange will wreak havoc on Colorado's water supply, affecting everything from agriculture to winter sports to our local breweries. Whether #Trump believes it or not, the findings are clear: we must #ActOnClimate.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “#Trump's attempt to bury the National Climate Assessment can't hide the facts: The #climate crisis is also a public health crisis that could cost us precious lives and billions of dollars. Keep spreading the word -- our future depends on it.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “Colorado's outdoor economy could be decimated by #ClimateChange, according to the National Climate Assessment. I introduced a bipartisan resolution calling for action on climate change because we have to protect outdoor recreation and all of its benefits. https://bit.ly/2E0knK2” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “Though #Trump tried to bury the National Climate Assessment, we will keep pushing to highlight the report's dire warnings about the effects of #ClimateChange. They are happening now and harming us all, especially the most vulnerable -- as this graphic from the report makes clear.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “A week ago, the National Climate Assessment was released, detailing the dramatic and damaging effects of #ClimateChange now and in the future. We can't let this groundbreaking report fade into the news cycle; its alarming findings are too critical to ignore. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “The National Climate Assessment warns that #ClimateChange will wreak havoc on Colorado's water supply, affecting everything from agriculture to winter sports to our local breweries. Whether #Trump believes it or not, the findings are clear: we must #ActOnClimate.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “#Trump's attempt to bury the National Climate Assessment can't hide the facts: The #climate crisis is also a public health crisis that could cost us precious lives and billions of dollars. Keep spreading the word -- our future depends on it.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “Colorado's outdoor economy could be decimated by #ClimateChange, according to the National Climate Assessment. I introduced a bipartisan resolution calling for action on climate change because we have to protect outdoor recreation and all of its benefits. https://bit.ly/2E0knK2” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “#ClimateChange already threatens us all, and #Trump's willful ignorance of its effects could cause even more devastation. I'd say "shame on him," but he is incapable of feeling that emotion.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “Though #Trump tried to bury the National Climate Assessment, we will keep pushing to highlight the report's dire warnings about the effects of #ClimateChange. They are happening now and harming us all, especially the most vulnerable -- as this graphic from the report makes clear.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. DeGette: “The #Trump Admin. cynically tried to hide the most recent National Climate Assessment, waiting to release it during the holiday weekend. So help spread the serious conclusions from experts across the federal gov't and share their work that Trump is afraid for people to see.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Michael Doyle (Pennsylvania – 14)

Rep. Doyle: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA, concludes: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” It’s long past time to #ActOnClimate! #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Doyle: “Last week’s #NCA4 shows that #ClimateChange is already harming Americans’ health, national security, and economy. The cost and danger of severe weather events is increasing - if we don’t act now, it will only get worse. https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Janice Schakowsky (Illinois – 09)

Rep. Schakowsky: “We must #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Schakowsky: “The scientific community, the majority of Americans, and the President’s own experts all agree: climate change is not only real, it is DIRE and its effects will be profound. We need to address this crisis head-on, whether @RealDonaldTrump likes it or not.” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Kathy Castor (Florida – 14)

Rep. Castor: “Holy mackerel! This wilful denial of #climatechange is colossal failure of leadership. Hundreds of scientists @NASA @DeptofDefense @NOAA are advising America that #climatechange is a serious threat to our way of life and our pocketbooks. You know better @PressSec #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Castor: “Also, it is very troubling that the Trump Admin released this important report on #BlackFriday. The failure to #ActOnClimate and rally America to tackle the climate crisis will prove very costly.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Rep. Castor: “🚨Climate Science Special Report: Urgent action is required as higher temps, more extreme weather events, coastal flooding, health impacts pose serious threat to our way of life... and our wallets 👇” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Rep. McNerny: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” It’s long past time to #ActOnClimate. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. McNerny: “The American people - especially Millennials - care about addressing the threat of #climatechange. They want our government to work toward finding solutions for this pressing problem, not to hide from it.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Peter Welch (Vermont – 00)

Rep. Welch: “Climate change is the challenge of our time. We need to address it urgently and decisively, not bury our heads in the sand. The price of inaction is simply too high. — Peter” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Ben Lujan (New Mexico – 03)

Rep. Lujan: “We need to accelerate clean energy deployment, promote green infrastructure, and put in place sustainable water management techniques in our communities. If we don’t #ActOnClimate at the federal level, public health, our economy, and our way of life in New Mexico will suffer.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Lujan: “Climate change also puts our water resources in New Mexico at risk. The mighty waters of the Rio Grande and Colorado River Basins that have sustained our way of life for generations face drought and subsequent declines in river flows.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Lujan: “The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report makes it clear that the Southwest will face increased drought, wildfires, crop failures, heat stress, and more due to our changing climate. Our forests are already suffering.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Lujan: “While the Trump administration’s efforts to bury the facts on climate change puts the entire global community in jeopardy, New Mexicans will be hard hit.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

Rep. Tonko: “While you were enjoying precious time with loved ones, the @WhiteHouse quietly released a report on the painful costs we face from #climatechange Mark my words: when the new Congress is sworn in and we have the power to do it, the House will #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Tonko: “We no longer have time to debate settled science. Climate change will cause massive economic and health harm to Americans in every region and industry. Heavy costs have already started hitting millions of Americans across every state. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

David Loebsack (Iowa – 02)

Rep. Loebsack: “Annual costs due to #ClimateChange could exceed $100 BILLION in the agriculture, energy and health sectors by the end of the century. Trump tried to bury these findings last week jeopardizing the health and wealth of Iowans #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Joseph Kennedy (Massachusetts – 04)

Rep. Kennedy: “Those denying climate change chose to be complicit in the havoc it is wreaking on our homes, communities and country. The most powerful nation on earth cannot continue to cower before this threat.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Tony Cárdenas (California – 29)

Rep. Cardenas: “#ClimateChange is real, and the spread of misinformation does nothing but speed up the process. We must act for our children and our grandchildren. In the coming Congress, we will work hard to make up for lost time. Read more here: https://www.globalchange.gov/nca4 #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Cardenas: “It seems the only time Trump trusts his own staff is when they’re locking up children in detention centers. Climate Change is REAL and we must come together to stop it. #GreenLatinos” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Scott Peters (California – 52)

Rep. Peters: “Climate assessments are based on science, not politics. It's time the Trump Administration embraced science--and facts--which found we have limited time to make unprecedented changes to curb climate change. #ActonClimate” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Debbie Dingell (Michigan – 12)

Rep. Dingell: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” It’s long past time to #ActOnClimate. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Dingell: “We’ve seen the reports and know the facts - no one can hide from the devastating impacts of climate change. It’s past time we #ActOnClimate to protect our planet and way of life.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Members of Science, Space, & Technology Committee

Republican Members

2 Republican members of the Science, Space, & Technology Committee released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assess report release since November 21, 2018.

Carlos Curbelo (Florida - 26)

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida - 27)

Carlos Curbelo (Florida - 26)

Curbelo: White House’s Misguided Denial Of Climate Realities Is A Threat To National Security, Economy. According to Carlos Curbelo, “‘The President and his Administration have fallen victim to the illogical political polarization of climate change. They seem determined to fiddle while California burns and coastal communities across our nation continue to rebuild from severe storms. ‘Without action to address it, warming global temperature, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather caused by the emission of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere will threaten the strength of our economy, endanger our national security, and jeopardize future generations. ‘This is not a political issue, it’s a global crisis. Both political parties must promote policies that keep these gasses out of the atmosphere while maintaining economic growth and supporting innovation. We need new ways to produce goods, transport ourselves, and empower our economy across various sectors. ‘Earlier this year I introduced the MARKET CHOICE Act, which begins the process of reducing emissions by placing a price on industrial carbon pollution. Such a price gives the private sector an economic incentive to act, allowing them to make long-term investments on cleaner energy projects and less carbon-intensive products. Furthermore, it provides funding to build up, maintain, and adapt our coastal infrastructure to be more disaster resilient.’” [Carlos Curbelo, 11/26/18 (+)]

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida - 27)

Rep. Ros. Lehtinen: “Happy to sit with with Andres Jimenez, of @CitizensClimate, to discuss ways to combat #ClimateChange and #SeaLevelRise. We should all work 2 protect our natural treasures, a large economic driver in our #SoFla cmnty.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Rep. Ros. Lehtinen: Climate change is already negatively affecting our daily lives including in our #SoFla community with #SeaLevelRise + #infrastructure damage. Administration rhetoric and policies harm our environment.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Democratic Members

11 Democratic members of the Science, Space, & Technology Committee released press statements or tweeted about the National Climate Assess report release since November 21, 2018.

Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas - 30)

Daniel Lipinski (Illinois – 03)

Suzanne Bonamici (Oregon – 01)

Don Beyer (Virginia – 08)

Jacky Rosen (Nevada – 03)

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Ed Perlmutter (Colorado – 07)

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

Bill Foster (Illinois – 11)

Mark Takano (California – 41)

Charlie Crist (Florida – 13)

Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas - 30)

Rep. Johnson: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” The new Democratic House will #ActOnClimate to protect America’s future. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Johnson: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” There is no time like they present to #ActOnClimate. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Daniel Lipinski (Illinois – 03)

Rep. Lipinski: “The #NCA4 report released today is a sobering account of drastic repercussions we likely face if we don’t immediately address global climate change. It highlights the devastating impact on health & the economy we can expect if we do nothing. #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Suzanne Bonamici (Oregon – 01)

Bonamici Calls For Action On Climate Change In Response 4th National Climate Assessment. According to Suzanne Bonamici, “‘It is past time for Congress and the country to address the growing threat of climate change,’ said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. ‘The National Climate Assessment adds to the overwhelming research demonstrating that the consequences of inaction on climate change will be serious and swift. Without intervention, we will see record heat waves, more acidic oceans, raging wildfires, unprecedented hurricanes, rising sea levels, and a surge in extreme weather patterns - all in our lifetime. ‘The United States has the ability to lead the world’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I will continue to work with my colleagues to highlight this critical issue and to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies as we fight to take meaningful action on climate change.’” [Suzanne Bonamici, 11/23/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “It has been one week since the Fourth National Climate Assessment was released. We won't back down. #ClimateFriday #ActOnClimate #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Ocean surface waters have warmed on average 1.3°F per century between 1900 and 2016, and more than 90% of the extra heat linked to carbon emissions is contained in the ocean. This has a direct and independent effect on the chemistry of the ocean. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “About to go on @cspanwj to discuss the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Tune in! #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown – at United States Capitol Building” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Drought, warming temperatures, and earlier spring snowmelt have led to an increase in fire activity. Wildfires burned at least 3.7 million acres (an area larger than the entire state of CT!) nationwide in 14 of the 17 years between 2000 and 2016. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “In the Northwest, Pacific salmon populations are threatened by climate stressors, including low snowpack, decreasing streamflow in the summer, habitat loss through increasing storm intensity and flooding. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Tune in tomorrow and every day through the end of the year for more findings from the #NCA4 and the #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “The effect of humans on the Earth’s climate is unprecedented. Since the start of the industrial era, our dependency on fossil fuels, widespread deforestation, and other carbon-producing activities have caused and continue to cause irreparable damage. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “It is very likely that the Arctic will be nearly free of sea ice in late summer by mid-century. As permafrost continues to thaw, the CO2 and methane released has the potential to amplify human-induced warming. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Projections show large declines in snowpack in the western U.S. and shifts to more rain rather than snow. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “The sea level is very likely to rise 1 to 4 feet by the end of the century, devastating many coastal communities. The frequency, depth, and extent of tidal flooding are expected to continue to increase in the future with coastal storms. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Our oceans are warming and becoming more acidic. They have absorbed 93% of the heat from warming caused by human activities since the mid-20th century and are absorbing more than a quarter of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere annually #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016. Overwhelming evidence consistently points to human activities, especially greenhouse gas emissions, as the dominant cause. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are now higher than at any time in the last 3 million years. Climate change will persist for decades to millennia. #NCA4 #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “As the top Democrat on the @SciCmteDems Environment Subcommittee, I take my responsibility seriously to #DefendScience and protect our environment. To start the #ClimateCrisisCountdown, I am going to share a few of the most staggering facts from the #NCA4” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “The National Climate Assessment is too important to ignore. Every day until @HouseDemocrats take back the Majority, I will be sharing findings from #NCA4. Please like and RT to amplify the significance of #ClimateChange and how it affects us all. #ClimateCrisisCountdown” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “In its latest attempt to diminish science, the Trump admin released the Fourth National Climate Assessment on a holiday weekend when they thought no one was paying attention. But make no mistake - we noticed, and will not let them stand in the way of real climate action. #NCA4” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “The U.S. has the ability to lead the world’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I will continue working with my colleagues to highlight this critical issue and to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies as soon as possible.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Bonamici: “Climate change is real. Congress and the country must proactively address the growing threat it poses. The National Climate Assessment released today once again confirms that inaction will have serious consequences within our lifetime. #NCA4” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Don Beyer (Virginia – 08)

Beyer Statement On National Climate Assessment. According to Don Beyer, “ ‘The National Climate Assessment makes it clear that climate change is killing Americans now. It also makes it clear that the level of danger will grow over time, that inaction will be far costlier than confronting the problem, and that it is not too late to act. These truths will affect millions of American lives whether Donald Trump believes them or not. From hurricanes in the Atlantic to flooding and droughts in the Midwest to proliferating wildfires in West, it is clear from this assessment that the effects of climate change are undeniable. But we know that there are steps we can take, from mitigating sea level rise, to managing water, to putting a price on carbon. It is disappointing but not surprising that Donald Trump took this product of over a thousand scientists and government officials from the federal, state, and local levels and tried to prevent people from seeing its conclusions. The failure of the White House’s ‘Black Friday news dump’ strategy shows how concerned Americans are about the threat of climate change. They deserve leaders who have the courage to do something about it.’” [Don Beyer, 11/23/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “It is important that the incoming Democratic majority take steps to address climate change by crafting legislation. That's something I've worked on for years. But we also have to step up oversight and use our majority to fight Trump's backwards steps that put lives at risk. 8/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “The Trump Administration knows that climate change is killing people and costing huge amounts of money. But with this step today, as with their decision to roll back the Clean Power Plan and other efforts to fight climate change, they are instead actively making it worse. 7/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “The Trump Administration also quietly tried to bury findings by the US Geological Survey showing exploitation of federal lands, including offshore drilling, made up nearly 1/4 of all US greenhouse gas emissions from 2005-2014. This is a big deal. 6/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “A week ago the National Climate Assessment made it clear that climate change is killing Americans and costing billions of dollars. Trump and his Cabinet have spent the week engaging in willful ignorance of scientific findings, and now they are pushing more dirty energy. 5/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Even in a time of economic hardship the risks posed by Trump's actions would outweigh the benefits. There is absolutely no justification for intentionally welcoming this kind of damage at a time when oil prices are low and fossil fuel corporations are posting record profits. 4/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “These are just some of the reasons why coastal states, communities, small businesses, political leaders from both parties, and the United States Navy all stand united in opposition to drilling, seismic blasting, and invasive petroleum exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. 3/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Seismic blasting poses a major threat to marine life, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, which is on the verge of extinction. The potential for harm to marine life from blasting and drilling also poses a serious danger to the coastal economies. 2/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Since Donald Trump has decided to ignore the concerns of residents and stakeholders directly impacted by seismic blasting and offshore drilling, it is time for Congress to step in and put a stop to this by passing my bill, the Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection Act. 1/” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Trying to bury this report or sabotage the next one is not smart, it is cowardly, and would damage the country. If the Trump Administration makes such a move they should expect the incoming majority to make it abundantly clear to the American people who did this, and why.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “The climate change report is definitely based on facts. Just not the "alternative facts" the White House might be used to.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Climate change is killing Americans. It is clear that the level of danger will grow over time and that inaction will be far costlier than confronting the problem. No matter what Trump believes, these truths are affecting millions of lives here and now.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Beyer: “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke just published a whole op-ed about wildfire prevention without a single mention of climate change. Mr. Secretary, here is the U.S. government's report explaining how climate change is making wildfires worse, and deadlier.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Jacky Rosen (Nevada – 03)

Rep. Rosen: “The federal climate report reaffirms what we already know: climate change is a real threat and it’s already harming our health and our economy. We must make addressing climate change a priority and that means embracing a clean energy economy.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Jerry McNerney (California – 09)

Rep. McNerny: “The #NCA4, a report by 13 federal agencies including @ENERGY, @EPA and @NASA states: “Future impacts and risks from #ClimateChange are directly tied to decisions made in the present.” It’s long past time to #ActOnClimate. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. McNerny: “The American people - especially Millennials - care about addressing the threat of #climatechange. They want our government to work toward finding solutions for this pressing problem, not to hide from it.” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Ed Perlmutter (Colorado – 07)

Rep. Perlmutter: “Climate change will be expensive, wreak havoc on our communities and threaten public health. This is one of multiple reports warning of these dire consequences. It's time for immediate action. #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/29/18 (+)]

Rep. Perlmutter: “We continue to see devastating signs of climate change across the globe. We must come together immediately to #ActOnClimate.” [Twitter, 11/25/18 (+)]

Paul Tonko (New York – 20)

Rep. Tonko: “While you were enjoying precious time with loved ones, the @WhiteHouse quietly released a report on the painful costs we face from #climatechange Mark my words: when the new Congress is sworn in and we have the power to do it, the House will #ActOnClimate” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Tonko: “We no longer have time to debate settled science. Climate change will cause massive economic and health harm to Americans in every region and industry. Heavy costs have already started hitting millions of Americans across every state. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Tonko: “Yearly costs from #ClimateChange could exceed $100 BILLION in the energy, agriculture & health sectors by the end of the century. The White House tried to bury this finding last week, putting politics over the health and prosperity of the American people. #ClimateFriday” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Bill Foster (Illinois – 11)

Foster Statement On U.S. Climate Report. According to Bill Foster, “‘We know that climate change is real and largely man made,’ Foster said. ‘The latest National Climate Assessment warns that climate change will have a staggering cost for the U.S. economy – hundreds of billions of dollars – from the impact of climate change on our health and on the safety of our communities. If President Trump continues to ignore climate change, then he will abdicate his responsibility to protect the well-being and prosperity of future generations. This report shows that his anti-science posture could wreak havoc on the American economy and hurt the American people. I strongly encourage this administration to listen to scientists and act promptly to prevent economic decline and further environmental destruction.’” [Bill Foster, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Foster: “Whether @realdonaldtrump wants to believe the #NCA4 or not, #ClimateChange is real, it’s largely man made, and failing to #ActOnClimate endangers the prosperity of future generations of Americans.” [Twitter, 11/30/18 (+)]

Rep. Foster: “We have known that climate change is real and largely man made. If @realDonaldTrump fails to act, he abdicates his responsibility to ensure prosperity for future generations. It’s time to listen to scientists, Mr. President.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Mark Takano (California – 41)

Rep. Takano: “No matter what the President says, climate change is real. And we need to act, NOW.” [Twitter, 11/26/18 (+)]

Rep. Takano: “Families struggling to rebuild after hurricanes and wildfires know the pain and devastation climate change is causing. The Trump Administration is hoping that people won’t read about this shocking climate change report on #BlackFriday. Let’s prove them wrong.” [Twitter, 11/23/18 (+)]

Charlie Crist (Florida – 13)

Rep. Crist: “New climate report shows continued inaction would be catastrophic for our environment, economy & Americans’ health.” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Rep. Crist: “New report on #climatechange makes clear the clock is ticking, the time for action is now. #ClimateChangeIsReal #NCA4” [Twitter, 11/28/18 (+)]

Democrat

Tom O’Halleran (Arizona - 1)

O'Halleran Calls For Greater Focus On Impact Of Climate Change. According to Tom O’Halleran, “‘Throughout the West, and across the country, communities are facing the effects of climate change every day. From larger, deadlier forest fires to crippling droughts, it is something that can no longer be brushed under the rug. The Administration’s decision to release this report on Black Friday when no one would be paying attention is an irresponsible move that undermines our ability to properly address the issue. We need to take a serious look at the impact of climate change.’ The report, compiled by the National Climate Assessment, found that among other concerning facts, the United States is 1.8 degrees warmer than a century before and ocean levels are nine inches higher. Additionally, the report details the effect of climate change on Phoenix. Whereas the city previously has seen fewer than 100 days per year over 100 degrees, by the end of the century, that number could increase to between 120 and 150 days. ‘If we want to secure a prosperous future for future generations of Americans, we need to act. This will impact everything from crop yields to the safety of Americans living in high-risk areas near the ocean, or those living right in Arizona who face the threat of wildfires every year. This is not a partisan issue; it is something that Congress and the Administration should come together to address before it is too late.’” [Tom O’Halleran, 11/27/18 (+)]

Rep. Tom O’Halleran: “Throughout the West, and across the country, communities are facing the effects of climate change every day. From larger, deadlier forest fires to crippling droughts, it is something that can no longer be brushed under the rug. #AZ01 [Twitter, 11/27/18 (+)]

NCA Media Coverage

Reactions

White House Reactions

AP FACT CHECK: 11 Trump Climate Goofs And 1 Correct Claim. According to Associated Press, “It’s elemental. President Donald Trump got his facts about earth, water, air and fire wrong as he and his aides spent a week attacking the White House climate report. In interviews and off-the-cuff remarks, public statements and briefings, the president and the White House made a dozen discernible claims about the National Climate Assessment that the White House quietly issued on the day after Thanksgiving. Only one was supported by facts. Here are 11 ways that the president bungled the basics of climate change, the Earth and of science itself. At the end of this list, you can read what the White House got right. TRUMP: ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said Monday. Then on Tuesday he told The Washington Post: ‘One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers.’ THE FACTS: The president implies that belief is essential to the climate change issue. What to do about it is a matter of debate. But science, unlike faith, works regardless of whether someone believes it. ‘Science is not a belief system,’ said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a past president of the American Meteorological Society. He added that if someone doesn’t believe in gravity, ‘guess what happens if you fall off a ladder.’” [Associated Press, 12/1/18 (+)]

Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Doctrine Is Undermined By Climate Change. According to The New York Times, “It’s been a defining phrase of the Donald Trump presidency, ‘Energy dominance,’ a doctrine that emphasizes the expansion of coal and oil production as well as the weakening of environmental regulations, including those that address climate change. But at every turn, according to a broad scientific report on climate change issued last week, rising global temperatures threaten to undermine the president’s vision of an energy-dominant America. The blackouts and other energy disruptions of Hurricane Harvey were just harbingers, the report said. Across the United States, every element of the country’s energy infrastructure, like oil wells and nuclear power plants, will be stressed by droughts, heat waves, rising seas and fiercer storms. ‘Climate change disrupts everything, including Trump’s agenda,’ said Alice Hill, a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank who served as senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. When it comes to fossil fuel production, the disruptions are particularly serious. And there’s a fundamental irony at play. Even as emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are warming the planet, the consequences of that warming will make it harder to drill for oil, mine for coal and deliver fuel through pipelines.” [The New York Times, 11/29/18 (+)]

Trump Tries To Quell Climate Attention. It Rises Instead. According to E&E News, “The Trump administration’s rebuke of a 1,700-page climate report produced by 13 federal agencies has fueled a week of media coverage that shows little sign of dying down. The National Climate Assessment was dropped on Black Friday, an obscure time that was widely perceived as an attempt to bury the report. Instead, it’s been given extra life. Climate scientists have appeared on national and international television shows for days, newspapers continue to pump out headlines, and the president himself is being questioned about it. Administration officials have said that the report is fraudulent or exaggerated, which produces another wave of fact-checking. Some Republicans have reacted by showing support for the report, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. That shows some members of the party are embarrassed by the week of denials, said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who is now executive director of republicEn, which works to get conservatives to act on climate policy. ‘Trump is clearly becoming the climate disputer in chief and looking like a pretty silly caricature, where he is standing on his superstition about climate when the scientists are telling us about the data,’ Inglis said. ‘I think the adults in the room, like Sen. Tillis, are doing what you would expect a responsible lawmaker to do, which is pay attention to the scientists who are presenting data and to turn away from some sort of superstitious disbelief of climate science.’” [E&E News, 11/29/18 (=)]

Trump Dismantling US Climate Efforts As Warnings Grow Dire. According to Associated Press, “President Donald Trump has moved steadily to dismantle Obama administration efforts to rein in coal, oil and gas emissions, even as warnings grow — from his own administration and others — about the devastating impact of climate change on the U.S. economy as well as the Earth. Trump has dismissed his administration’s warnings about the impact of climate change, including a forecast released Friday that it could lead to economic losses of hundreds of billions of dollars a year by the end of the century. ‘As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,’ he said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post. Trump’s position has been that efforts to combat the emissions that cause climate change have hurt the U.S. economy. Announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris global climate accord in June 2017, he said, ‘The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.’” [Associated Press, 11/28/18 (+)]

Trump’s Bizarre ‘Cleanest Air’ Argument For Ignoring Climate Change. According to The Washington Post, “The White House’s release last Friday of a report detailing the expected effects of climate change didn’t exactly get buried in the way the administration may have hoped. In the days since its release, news outlets have dug into the extensive document, identifying the scale of threat posed by the warming climate and, unavoidably, noting the tension between its forecasts and the indifference of President Trump. Both he and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders were asked about the report Monday. Sanders, conducting her fourth daily news briefing since the end of August, was asked why Trump didn’t feel a responsibility to protect the environment. ‘Well, the president’s certainly leading on what matters most in this process, and that’s on having clean air, clean water. In fact, the United States continues to be a leader on that front,’ she said, later adding, ‘The biggest thing that we can do is focus on how to make sure we have the cleanest air, the cleanest water, and the president is certainly doing that and certainly leading on that front.’” [The Washington Post, 11/28/18 (+)]

Trump Ties Skepticism To 'Intelligence.' According to E&E News, “President Trump yesterday in an interview with The Washington Post offered what’s being cast as a confusing explanation for his skepticism of a federal climate report warning of dire consequences. During the 20-minute interview, Trump was asked about his public comments that cast doubt on the latest publicly released chapter of the National Climate Assessment. The report, released Friday, is the second volume of the assessment that’s required under a congressional mandate. The study, harnessing input from more than a dozen federal agencies, describes how global warming has already altered the natural world, and it uses a range of scenarios to forecast how the climate could change further as emissions rise or fall (Climatewire, Nov. 23). A team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member federal advisory committee created the report, which was also revised by a host of federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences. But Trump, when asked about the report during the Post interview said, ‘One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers.’” [E&E News, 11/28/18 (=)]

Trump Thinks Climate Change Had No Role In California’s Fires. But Here Are The Facts. According to The Washington Post, “When President Trump visited the piles of ash and charred rubble of what used to be Paradise, Calif., this month, he said that the Camp Fire was a ‘really, really bad one.’ ‘We’ve never seen anything like this in California,’ he said. ‘It’s total devastation.’ Reporters asked the president whether seeing what remained of the Northern California town and walking among the ashes made him rethink his opinion on climate change — that it is a hoax, fake news or simply nonexistent. ‘No,’ Trump answered. Instead, he placed blame squarely on California forest management. But here are the facts: Climate change is real, and it’s making California’s wildfires worse. And according to the National Climate Assessment released less than a week after Trump visited the fire-stricken state, more people will be confronted with what happened in Paradise in the future.” [The Washington Post, 11/27/18 (+)]

Trump Administration Climate Change Report Is Dead Wrong, Says Trump Administration. According to CNN, “Last Friday, the Trump administration -- 13 federal agencies working in coordination -- released the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a detailed document featuring the conclusions of more than 300 scientists that the planet is getting warmer, human activity is contributing to that warming and we are approaching a point of no return in terms of the damage to the climate. It’s a stunning document. It’s also one that President Donald Trump and his administration don’t, uh, believe. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Trump told reporters Monday of the report, acknowledging that he had only read ‘some’ of the study. Then, on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders took the whole thing a step further. ‘We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,’ Sanders said. ‘It’s based on -- it’s not data-driven. We’d like to see something that is more data-driven.’ Let’s be very clear about what is going on here: The President and his official spokesperson are rejecting the conclusions of a detailed study conducted by the Trump administration because the findings of that study don’t comport with the President’s long-held beliefs that climate change just isn’t a real thing.” [CNN, 11/27/18 (+)]

Trump Officials Mount Full-Court Press Against Their Own Climate Report. According to The Washington Post, “The White House press secretary said it was ‘not based on facts.’ The secretary of the interior said it focused only on the ‘worst scenarios.’ And President Trump said that when it comes to the devastating effects of climate change described in it, ‘a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.’ The publication Friday of a major climate report written by 13 federal agencies has prompted a series of high-level Trump administration officials, including the president himself, to mount a full-court press questioning its findings. … The conclusions of the congressionally mandated report run counter to much of the rhetoric that has come from Trump’s political appointees, who have tried to ramp up extraction of fossil fuels nationwide while often downplaying, or sometimes outright dismissing, their contributions to global warming. … And the most robust dismissal of his own government’s report came from the president himself. During an interview Tuesday with The Post’s Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey, Trump said he does not count himself among the ‘believers’ who see the problem of climate change as dire and caused by humans. ‘As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,’ he said.” [The Washington Post, 11/28/18 (+)]

More On Trump’s Paris Withdrawal. According to Politico, “The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement came ‘with no clear climate policy in place,’ the Associated Press reports, via an email obtained under FOIA. Michael Catanzaro, a former energy and environment consultant to Trump, wrote to White House and EPA officials ahead of the Paris withdrawal to set a meeting ‘to explore whether, post Paris, we need to develop, or simply piece together from what already exists, a policy proposal that can be characterized as the ‘Trump climate policy.’” [Politico, 11/29/18 (=)]

Trump Slams Fed Chair, Questions Climate Change And Threatens To Cancel Putin Meeting In Wide-Ranging Interview With The Post. According to The Washington Post, “In a wide-ranging and sometimes discordant 20-minute interview with The Washington Post, Trump complained at length about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. ‘Jay’ Powell, whom he nominated last year. When asked about declines on Wall Street and GM’s announcement that it was laying off 15 percent of its workforce, Trump responded by criticizing higher interest rates and other Fed policies, though he insisted that he is not worried about a recession. … Trump also dismissed the federal government’s landmark report released last week finding that damage from global warming is intensifying around the country. The president said that ‘I don’t see’ climate change as man-made and that he does not believe the scientific consensus. ‘One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,’ Trump said. ‘You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.’ The president added of climate change, ‘As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it.’ The comments were Trump’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with the dire National Climate Assessment released by his own administration Friday, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health and financial security of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.” [The Washington Post, 11/27/18 (+)]

Trump On Climate Change: ‘People Like Myself, We Have Very High Levels Of Intelligence But We’re Not Necessarily Such Believers.’ According to The Washington Post, “President Trump on Tuesday dismissed a landmark report compiled by 13 federal agencies detailing how damage from global warming is intensifying throughout the country, saying he is not among the ‘believers’ who see climate change as a pressing problem. The comments were the president’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with his own government’s analysis, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure, economy and natural resources. The findings — unequivocal, urgent and alarming — are at odds with the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations and absence of any climate action policy. ‘One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,’ Trump said during a freewheeling 20-minute Oval Office interview with The Washington Post in which he was asked why he was skeptical of the dire National Climate Assessment his administration released Friday.” [The Washington Post, 11/27/18 (+)]

Trump Rejects 'Man-Made' Climate Change. According to The Hill, “President Trump on Tuesday disputed the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change in his most expansive rejection yet of his own administration’s report on global warming. In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said ‘I don’t see’ that climate change is man-made and disagreed with the report’s findings that it poses significant health and safety concerns. ‘One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,’ Trump said. ‘You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.’ On the issue of whether global warming is caused by humans, Trump added: ‘As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is.’ But Trump said the air quality in places like China, Russia and South America is ‘incredibly dirty,’ an apparent acknowledgement that different countries have looser environmental standards. ‘And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over,’ he said. ‘I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from.’” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (=)]

Dire Report 'Not Based On Facts' — White House. According to E&E News, “The White House continues to reject the findings of a recently released climate report compiled by scholars from 13 federal agencies across the government. At a White House press briefing this afternoon, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the National Climate Assessment, which echoes the findings of every major science agency in the world, was ‘not based on facts.’ ‘We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,’ she said. ‘It’s not data-driven. We’d like to see something that is more data-driven, that’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.’ Sanders’ comments came a day after Trump said he did not ‘believe’ the science contained in the report (E&E News PM, Nov. 26). But the White House’s talking points are based on ‘extreme’ scenarios and those assertions are incorrect, according to the assessment’s authors. The 1,700-page report explores a wide range of scenarios and predicts tens of billions of dollars in damages, a rise in deadly heat waves and coastal communities increasingly threatened by rising sea levels if nothing is done to stem planet-warming emissions. A report author, Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, pointed out on Twitter that the White House talking points were not true and easily disproved in the report. ‘A WH spokesperson said the report was based on the ‘most extreme’ scenario,’ she tweeted. ‘No: the report considered a very broad range of scenarios, from one where carbon emissions go negative to one where they continue to grow.’” [E&E News, 11/27/18 (=)]

Sarah Sanders: Climate Change Report 'Not Based On Facts.' According to The Hill, “White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday dismissed the findings of a governmental report that warned of the impending consequences of climate change, claiming it’s ‘not based on facts.’ ‘The president’s certainly leading on what matters most in this process, and that’s on having clean air, clean water,’ Sanders told reporters at a press briefing. ‘In fact, the United States continues to be a leader on that front.’ Sanders disputed the report’s findings, claiming it’s ‘not based on facts’ and arguing that modeling the climate ‘is never exact.’ She did not indicate that Trump would call on world leaders at this week’s G20 Summit to address the report’s findings. ‘We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,’ she said. ‘It’s not data driven. We’d like to see something that is more data driven. It’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.’” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (=)]

CNN Airs Fact-Check Graphics During Sanders Press Briefing. According to The Hill, “CNN ran fact-check graphics while broadcasting White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s briefing on Tuesday. The network aired on-screen ‘Facts First’ graphics highlighting aspects of the government’s climate change report while Sanders discussed the report’s findings. ‘Climate change report involved 300 scientists, 12 federal agencies,’ the graphic read. ‘Co-author: not paid for report.’ ‘Open for review and transparency before publishing,’ another CNN graphic read, describing the report. Sanders during the briefing dismissed the findings of the report from scientists within the Trump administration, which warned of the anticipated consequences of climate change. She claimed that the report was ‘not based on facts.’ ‘We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,’ she said. ‘It’s not data driven. We’d like to see something that is more data driven. It’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.’ Sanders maintained that President Trump is ‘certainly leading on what matters most in this process’ and said the president is being a ‘leader’ on that front.” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (=)]

'If I Could Ask A Follow-Up': Acosta, Sanders Make Polite Return To White House Briefing Room. According to Politico, “Toward the end of the briefing, Sanders called on Acosta. She side-stepped his initial question about whether the president would recommend that former campaign chief Paul Manafort fully cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. ‘If I could ask a follow-up,’ Acosta said, before asking about what he called a pattern of the president not believing assessments from his administration’s climate scientists and intelligence analysts. Sanders interrupted the question midway through, saying, ‘That’s not true,’ though she allowed Acosta to finish. ‘The president has faith in the intelligence community and certainly in the team that he has assembled around him,’ Sanders said. … At one point during the briefing, CNN put a ‘Facts First’ graphic on-screen, offering additional information to check Sanders on the administration’s climate change report. The step appeared to be a new one for the network, as broadcasters have wrestled with how to fact-check in real time incorrect or misleading statements by administration officials.” [Politico, 11/27/18 (=)]

AP | Trump: ‘I Don’t Believe’ Government Climate Report Finding. According to The Washington Post, “President Donald Trump is rejecting a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released Friday by his own administration. The National Climate Assessment, quietly unveiled Friday, warns that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It says warming-charged extremes ‘have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.’ The report notes the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. Trump says, ‘I don’t believe it.’ Trump, administration officials and elected Republicans frequently say they can’t tell how much of climate change is caused by humans and how much is natural.” [The Washington Post, 11/26/18 (=)]

Trump Rejects Key Conclusion Of US Government Climate Report. According to Associated Press, “President Donald Trump has rejected a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released by his own administration, but economists said the warning of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in global warming costs is pretty much on the money. Just look at last year with Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, they said. Those three 2017 storms caused at least $265 billion in damage , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Climate Assessment report , quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It said warming-charged extremes ‘have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.’ The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. ‘The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century,’ the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. The president said he read some of the report ‘and it’s fine’ but not the part about the devastating economic impact. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Trump said, adding that if ‘every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.’” [Associated Press, 11/27/18 (=)]

Trump Rejects Findings Of U.S. Government Climate Change Report. According to Reuters, “President Donald Trump on Monday rejected projections that climate change will cause severe economic harm to the U.S. economy, findings outlined by a report his own U.S. government published last week. The congressionally mandated report www.globalchange.gov said that climate change will cost the country’s economy billions of dollars by the end of the century, but Trump said he does not believe the economic impacts will be devastating. ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine,’ he told reporters at the White House. Asked about severe economic impacts, he said, ‘I don’t believe it.’ Last year, Trump announced his intent to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Deal to combat climate change, though the country cannot do so until after the 2020 presidential election. Trump has also rolled back Obama-era environmental and climate rules such as the Clean Power Plan, while seeking to boost output of oil, gas and coal for domestic use and for shipping to allies and partners. U.S. output of crude oil is already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia. The report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, said the effects of climate change would harm human health, damage infrastructure, limit water availability, alter coastlines and increase costs in various industries.” [Reuters, 11/26/18 (=)]

Trump On Dire Report: 'I Don't Believe It'. According to E&E News, “President Trump today rejected the findings of a major new summary of climate science by scholars from 13 federal agencies from across the government. ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine,’ Trump told reporters standing next to Marine One this afternoon. When asked about the report’s findings that climate change could have devastating impacts on the U.S. economy, the president said, ‘I don’t believe it.’ The president went on to emphasize the need for action by Asian countries like China and Japan. ‘Right now we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been,’ he said. ‘If we’re clean and every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.’ The report, which the administration released Friday, found that the lives and safety of Americans are already being affected by climate change. The review also found that consumption of fossil fuels will increase the risks in the coming decades (Climatewire, Nov. 23). The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which by congressional mandate must be prepared every four years. It was written by more than 300 authors, including federal researchers as well as those from state governments and the private sector. House Democrats have seized on the report over the past few days as they prepare hearings in the next Congress to tackle climate change and scrutinize the administration’s rollbacks of greenhouse gas regulations.” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

'I Don't Believe It': Trump Dismisses Grim Government Report On Climate Change. According to Politico, “President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed a grim report on climate change produced by his own government, saying he didn’t believe the report’s prognosis of dire economic fallout. Trump was asked by reporters if he had read the report, which was released on Friday in what critics said was an attempt to bury the news over a holiday weekend. ‘I’ve seen it. I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine,’ Trump responded. The report predicted that economic losses due to climate change in some sectors could stretch up to hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century. Trump rejected that claim. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, when prompted by a reporter about the grim economic impacts projected. ‘No, no, I don’t believe it.’ … Trump said, however, that it wouldn’t mean much for the U.S. to address greenhouse gas emissions if ‘all of these other countries,’ like China, Japan ‘and all of Asia’ did not also cut back on pollution, even though the United States is the only country that has rejected the Paris climate agreement. He claimed Monday that the U.S. was ‘the cleanest’ it’s ever been. ‘You know [the report] addresses our country,’ he said. ‘Right now, we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and it’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but if every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good. So I want clean air and water. Very important.’” [Politico, 11/26/18 (=)]

Trump On Dire Warnings In Climate Report: ‘I Don’t Believe It.’ According to The Hill, “President Trump said Monday that he doesn’t ‘believe’ the findings of a major report his administration released forecasting dire consequences to the United States from climate change. ‘Yeah, I don’t believe it,’ Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a campaign rally for Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith (R) in Mississippi, when asked about the predictions of economic devastation. ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine,’ Trump said of the report. The report, part of the fourth congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment from the multi-agency Global Change Research Program, came out Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and a major shopping day for the United States. That led critics to charge that Trump was trying to bury the findings. The hundreds of government and external scientists involved in the research concluded that climate change could cost the United States billions of dollars annually within decades if greenhouse gases aren’t dramatically reduced. ‘Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century,’ it found.” [The Hill, 11/26/18 (=)]

How Trump Is Ensuring That Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Rise. According to The New York Times, “President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. Mr. Trump then laid responsibility for cleaning the atmosphere on other countries like China and Japan: ‘Right now we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good. So I want clean air. I want clean water. Very important.’ The remarks fit a pattern, and not just for their bluntness. In almost two years since taking office, Mr. Trump has denied the scientific reality of climate change and taken aggressive steps that will increase emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — despite unequivocal scientific evidence that those pollutants are warming the planet to dangerous levels. ‘Since virtually the first day the administration came into office they have systematically worked to reverse policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,’ said Robert N. Stavins, a professor of environmental economics at Harvard. ‘But this report, which is mandated by law, shows that greenhouse gas emissions are going to have profound effects on the United States in this century.’” [The New York Times, 11/26/18 (+)]

Conservative Media Fueled Trump's Denial Of Climate Report. According to E&E News, “Days after his administration released a major climate report produced by federal researchers that found climate change would kill and displace more Americans, President Trump finally weighed in yesterday. ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, it’s fine,’ Trump told reporters at the White House. But on the report’s claims about climate change’s economic toll, he said, ‘I don’t believe it.’ Trump’s rejection of the report, which was expected, fits a narrative pushed for days by conservative media outlets and televisions commentators, which includes an evidence-free rejection of the report, incorrect statistics and an attack on the hundreds of scientists from around the world who contributed to the analysis. Though the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment was released on Black Friday, a time when politicians dump news to lessen scrutiny, it’s generated days of headlines. That also includes pushback, denial and spin from conservative media outlets and Republicans who reject climate science. Among those who most aggressively attacked the National Climate Assessment were groups and media outlets funded by the Koch brothers or the Mercer family, two of the primary Republican donors who have spent millions of dollars trying to muddy climate science. Conservative outlets, including The Daily Caller and Breitbart, produced stories mocking the report’s findings. Employees from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and American Enterprise Institute also provided an evidence-free takedown of the report.” [E&E News, 11/27/18 (=)]

White House Plays Down Climate Report's Alarming Findings. According to E&E News, “The White House is downplaying the severe findings of the National Climate Assessment, a federal report released Friday that shows American life and prosperity will be increasingly at risk from global warming. In a statement, a White House spokeswoman said the newly released installment — the fourth in a series of reports mandated by Congress — began under the Obama administration and that future efforts would rely on more accurate models and show that alarm is overblown. The fifth installment would be due during President Trump’s second term if he’s re-elected. ‘To better assess the potential future effects of climate change, we need to focus on improving the transparency and accuracy of our modeling and projections,’ spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement. ‘The Fifth National Climate Assessment gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.’ … The White House claim that ‘the report is largely based on the most extreme scenario’ is false, said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University. ‘I wrote the climate scenarios chapter myself so I can confirm it considers ALL scenarios, from those where we go carbon negative before end of century to those where carbon emissions continue to rise,’ she wrote on Twitter. ‘What WH says is demonstrably false.’” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

Congressional Reactions

Progressives Say Dire Climate Reports Point To Need For ‘Green New Deal.’ According to The Hill, “Progressive House lawmakers are pointing to last week’s damning climate report as proof that Democrats next year must create a new special committee focused solely on finding a solution to warming temperatures. Supporters of the Green New Deal — an idea to create a committee that would aim to get the country to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years — are hoping the dire report issued by the Trump administration will ease party infighting and get skeptical Democratic members on board. ‘If anything these reports signify how much this special committee is needed,’ said Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Ocasio-Cortez timed the proposal for the committee with a sit-in earlier this month at the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the likely Speaker next year. She argued that the reinstitution of the old House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that ran from 2007 to 2011 — suggested earlier this month by Pelosi — needed to have a stronger focus. Fifteen lawmakers currently support establishing the special committee, which would work outside the House Energy and Commerce and Science and Natural Resources committees and have its own authority to write and pass legislation.” [The Hill, 11/30/18 (=)]

Global Warming Enters Infrastructure Talks. According to E&E News, “As momentum builds for an infrastructure deal in the next Congress, a major new report is thrusting climate change into infrastructure talks on the Hill. The second volume of the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping report produced by 13 federal agencies, warns that the lives and safety of Americans are already being harmed by climate change (Climatewire, Nov. 23). The document came after leaders of both parties have signaled a willingness to collaborate on broad infrastructure legislation in the next Congress (E&E News PM, Nov. 7). Climate change has largely been absent from those discussions. But during a hearing yesterday on surface transportation infrastructure, Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee repeatedly highlighted the report and the need to account for a warming planet. ‘We cannot have a conversation about surface transportation without talking about climate change and the increasingly extreme weather that accompanies it,’ ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.) said in his opening statement. ‘Our transportation sector is a major contributor to climate change, and our roads, bridges, and railways are also extremely vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather fueled by climate change,’ Carper said, citing the assessment’s findings. ‘Our next infrastructure bill must respond to this threat by focusing on a more resilient and sustainable transportation sector to protect communities nationwide,’ he added.” [E&E News, 11/29/18 (=)]

GOP Messaging Shift Stresses Need For Innovation. According to E&E News, “Some Republicans this week have spoken more forcefully about climate change than in the past, even making public acknowledgments that would have been startling just a few years ago. That is one of the interesting developments to emerge in the wake of the climate report released last Friday by the Trump administration. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who previously said climate change is not real — made perhaps the strongest such statement on Twitter earlier this week, calling the second chapter of the National Climate Assessment ‘a glaring reminder of the long-term risks of climate change.’ ‘Both parties need to work together to deploy an innovative, market-driven strategy to combat the impacts of climate change,’ Tillis wrote. The statement is part of an emerging rhetorical playbook in some wings of the Republican Party. Several other GOP lawmakers have thrown around the term ‘innovation’ or stressed technological advancement in public comments about climate change in the past few days, including Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida. Most have not elaborated much about what, if anything, innovation entails, and they often point out that the U.S. accounts for a fraction of global emissions. Critics say ‘innovation’ amounts to little more than a buzzword. They point out that most Republicans still oppose the kind of large-scale policies that most scientists and economists believe will be needed to halt the pace of warming in the coming decades.” [E&E News, 11/28/18 (=)]

Murkowski Paying Attention To Climate Report. According to Politico, “The Trump administration and top Republicans may be dismissing the latest climate change report, but Senate Energy Chairman Lisa Murkowski isn’t. ‘When your state gets a whole chapter, by gosh we’re going to pay attention to it,’ she told ME. ‘We’re not going to just say nice platitudes. We’re going to be talking about the things that need to be reviewed, need to have an action plan, need to be developed out and discussed.’ Murkowski said Alaska is already seeing impacts to food security, health and infrastructure from climate change and vowed to study possible federal solutions. ‘There is no one federal response,’ she said. ‘This is multi-faceted.’ Hope springs eternal: Murkowski highlighted her long-stalled energy bill, S. 1460 (115), as an example of legislation she could work on with the Democrat-controlled House next year. ‘Why wouldn’t we be able to revive anew our energy bill?’ she asked ME. ‘I think we’ve got lots of room to be working cooperatively.’ Remember an earlier iteration of that bill cleared the Senate by a wide 85-12 margin in 2016.” [Politico, 11/28/18 (=)]

Dems Blast Holiday Report Release, But Obama Did It, Too. According to E&E News, “Democrats are faulting President Trump for releasing a major climate report the day after Thanksgiving, alleging his administration intended to ‘bury’ the document. But President Obama was known for releasing important energy and environment documents on Fridays as well, conservatives say. At issue is the Friday release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, a report that found Americans are already being hurt by climate change, with additional risks becoming a reality in many parts of the country (Climatewire, Nov. 23). The report, which was produced by 13 federal agencies, is congressionally mandated every four years. But Democrats said this year is different, since the report undercuts the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. In particular, the president maintains that rescinding major greenhouse gas regulations isn’t at odds with growing the economy. But the report says unchecked global warming could shrink the U.S. economy by as much as 10 percent by century’s end. ‘The Trump administration may want to bury this report so that it doesn’t get attention, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand to the threat of climate change,’ Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement. ‘We need to take action now to reduce carbon pollution and implement the clean energy solutions that will help save our planet.’” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

Federal Climate Study Gives GHG Rule Backers New Political, Legal Tools. According to Inside EPA, “The Trump administration’s recently released national assessment outlining increasingly serious effects from climate change is giving critics fresh political ammunition to challenge officials’ efforts to dismiss the issue, and could also provide legal fodder for those fighting EPA’s various climate rule rollbacks. While the report is just one of several issues likely to arise in litigation over the agency’s rollbacks, the Nov. 23 National Climate Assessment (NCA) likely would serve as a strong rebuttal of any effort to reopen or scrap the agency’s underlying endangerment finding that greenhouse gases pose a threat, the basis for the Obama administration’s climate rules, sources say. As such, the assessment could help make the legal case that any rollback -- such as the administration’s planned vehicle rule that freezes standards at model year 2020 levels -- is at odds with the endangerment finding. ‘Given that EPA has found that greenhouse gases from automobiles endanger public health and welfare, what is the rationale for freezing the standards at 2020 levels, causing an increase of 2.2 billion tons of emissions as a result?’ says University of California-Los Angeles law professor Ann Carlson in a Nov. 26 blog post. Some legal observers add that the report could also bolster litigation challenging agencies’ approval of infrastructure projects where plaintiffs allege inadequate review of a project’s greenhouse gas and climate impacts.” [Inside EPA, 11/26/18 (=)]

GOP Senator: Trump Administration Must Take 'Harder Look At The Consequences Of Inaction' On Climate Change. According to The Hill, “Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Monday called for the Trump administrators and others to ‘take a harder look’ at the consequences and risks of climate change in the wake of a governmental report that warns the issue has already impacted the country. ‘We can’t ignore the impact of climate change on our public health, environment, & economy. This should cause all of us, including the Administration, to take a harder look at the consequences of inaction & use what is known about risks to inform policy,’ Collins wrote on Twitter while sharing a New York Times story on the report. The congressionally-mandated report, which was released on Black Friday, found that climate change has led to an increase in temperature and a rise in sea levels. It warned that its effects will lead to more intense wildfires, floods and other disasters if left unchecked. … A few Republican lawmakers were asked about the report on Sunday talk shows, where they acknowledged that the climate is changing but offered few concrete solutions to address the problem. Some lawmakers spoke about the need to find innovative answers in ways that would not adversely affect the economy. President Trump has not commented on the report since it was released, but has expressed skepticism about climate change. The Trump administration has rolled back several environmental regulations, and pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords.” [The Hill, 11/26/18 (=)]

“More Like An Economic Forecast, Not Science.” According to Politico, “The Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn, told ME he wasn’t sold either on a dire federal climate report. ‘I don’t see that it’s based on any science — it’s based on a guess as to what the future may hold,’ Cornyn told ME. ‘This is more like an economic forecast rather than science in my view.’ Asked what the government should do in response to climate change, Cornyn urged greater investment into research into new technologies. ‘I’m not for a carbon tax. I think we ought to be doing more research — things like, for example, fracking and direct horizontal drilling have helped reduce our dependency on coal,’ he said. ‘Things like that are better than more government bureaucracy, taxes.’” [Politico, 11/27/18 (=)]

The Left's New Talking Point: Attacking 'I'm Not A Scientist.' According to E&E News, “The release of the National Climate Assessment has sparked a new line of attack — and a Twitter war — about the phrase ‘I’m not a scientist.’ Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has pushed a ‘Green New Deal’ on Capitol Hill, fueled the social media debate by slamming conservatives who have used the phrase on television to question climate science. Ocasio-Cortez’s criticism, which was repeated on social media by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), climate scientists, journalist Dan Rather and political organizations, suggests it could be a renewed talking point from the left. ‘Has anyone else noticed that ‘I am not a scientist’ is the new cliché prelude for lobbyists & fossil fuel interests to slip in climate denial pseudoscience on live television?’ Ocasio-Cortez asked. Her comment was retweeted more than 6,000 times. Ocasio-Cortez posted an exchange from ‘Meet the Press’ yesterday, where Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, uttered the ‘not a scientist’ language. The discussion occurred in response to the Trump administration’s release over the Thanksgiving holiday of the second volume of the NCA, which concluded warming temperatures would continue to threaten American lives, property and economic growth. ‘Whether it’s anthropogenic, I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. I look at this as a citizen, and I see it so I understand it. On the other hand, we need to also recognize that we just had two of the coldest years,’ Pletka said on ‘Meet the Press.’” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

Congressional Republicans Largely Unmoved By Report's Warnings. According to E&E News, “Some Senate Republicans acknowledged climate change but largely toed the line over the weekend after a major federal report warned of sweeping climate impacts across the country. The second volume of the National Climate Assessment, a summary of climate science prepared by scientists from 13 federal agencies, makes clear that climate change could shrink the economy as much as 10 percent by the end of the century and threaten food and water resources, especially if greenhouse gas emissions are left unchecked. The Trump administration released the congressionally mandated report on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a time when politicians traditionally dump unfavorable news, as it forges ahead with proposed rollbacks of greenhouse gas regulations. Asked about the report on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said, ‘It’s clear that it’s changing, and it’s clear that humans are a contributing factor.’ But, he added, ‘it’s going to need to be a conversation, again, that doesn’t start with alarmism but that starts with some discussion of the magnitude of the challenge, the global elements to it and how the U.S. shouldn’t just do this as a feel-good measure.’ Sasse’s comments, and others made on Sunday news shows yesterday, are part of an evolution in a partisan debate that’s been raging for years. Rather than outright denying climate change as the science becomes clearer, Republican lawmakers increasingly focus on just how much humans are contributing or question solutions already on the table.” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

Sasse Says Conversation Needed On Climate Change Solutions. According to Politico, “Sen. Ben Sasse on Sunday called on his fellow lawmakers to begin thinking of innovative ways to combat climate change after a group of federal scientists released an alarming report this past week. A report from federal scientists was released Friday by the Trump administration, and it was very much at odds with the president’s stance on climate change. The report warns that the planet’s coastlines will permanently alter, droughts and storms will worsen, and there will be outbreaks of dangerous diseases because of rising temperatures. Sasse (R-Neb.) said during an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that the climate is changing and that humans are a contributing factor, but that ‘reasonable people’ can differ on ‘how much and how rapidly.’ He said new discussions on how to be innovative to ‘integrate our way into the future’ need to happen, but that he is not seeing any from lawmakers who have pushed climate change as their No. 1 issue. ‘I think the real question though becomes what do you do about it because you can’t legislate or regulate your way into the past,’ he said. ‘Right now, you don’t hear a lot of people who put climate as a No. 1 issue, you don’t hear a lot of them offering constructive innovative solutions for the future, it’s usually just a lot of alarmism.’” [Politico, 11/23/18 (=)]

Sasse: Climate Alarmists Don’t Offer Constructive Solutions. According to The Daily Caller, “Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse slammed climate alarmists during a Sunday interview on Fox News, suggesting they don’t offer constructive solutions for the future. ‘I think reasonable people can differ about how much and how rapidly, but I think it’s clear that [the climate is] changing and it’s clear that humans are a contributing factor. I think the real question though becomes: What do you do about it?’ Sasse explained on Fox News Sunday. ‘Right now, you don’t hear a lot of people who put climate as their number one issue. You don’t hear a lot of them offering constructive, innovative solutions for the future. It’s usually just a lot of alarmism. But I think the report is important, and it shows that the climate is changing,’ he continued. Sasse’s comments follow a White House report, the National Climate Assessment (NCA), that was published Friday. The NCA found that temperatures in the U.S. are 1.8 degrees higher than they were a century ago; sea levels are about nine inches higher; natural disasters such as hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires are worsening; and climate change could slash U.S. GDP by 10 percent at the end of the century.” [The Daily Caller, 11/26/18 (-)]

GOP Senator Calls For ‘Balance’ After Climate Change Report. According to The Hill, “Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Sunday called for ‘balance’ in responding to heightened concerns that the U.S. may face large-scale disasters due to climate change. Congress is scrambling to respond to a bombshell report on climate change that the Trump administration released over the holiday weekend. The congressionally mandated report recommends drastically reducing carbon emissions and predicts consequences, if the U.S. does not do so, that range from mass heat-related deaths to damaging weather that could eat up to a tenth of America’s gross domestic product by 2100. Democrats have promised to aggressively address climate change in the next Congress, where they will take over the majority. The report provides more ammunition for Democratic calls to action. But Republicans are urging caution rather than a quick response. ‘Any time we are putting regulation out, we need to consider impact to American industry and jobs,’ Ernst said Sunday on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ ‘We want to make sure that it makes sense going forward. There is a balance that can be struck there.’ She pointed to her own state as an example. ‘Again, in Iowa, as a state, we have set that standard. And it hasn’t been by mandating. It has been by incentivizing,’ she said. ‘The rest of the states can do the same.’” [The Hill, 11/25/18 (=)]

Sen. Mike Lee Gives A Perfectly Ridiculous Reason To Ignore Climate Change. According to Think Progress, “Sen. Mike Lee told Chuck Todd on Sunday’s Meet the Press that addressing climate change will actually hurt the U.S. economy. That’s a direct contradiction of what his own government has found, a conclusion based on scientific data and careful research: that worsening climate change will in fact cost the country a fortune. In fact, climate change poses a potentially catastrophic threat to the economy. The government report, made public Friday, determined that climate change is likely to cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars annually, or as much as 10 percent of the GDP by the end of the century. Sen. Lee has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign money from the oil and gas industry and supports President Donald Trump’s agenda more than 80 percent of the time.” [Think Progress, 11/25/18 (+)]

What They're Saying: The Climate Report. According to Axios, “Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democratic who may test the waters, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ that ‘we have to make this a major issue going into next year.’ ‘This is exactly what NASA and our military have predicted for years, and it’s time to act on it.’ ‘So the administration can’t on one hand issue this devastating report showing the facts and then on the other do nothing. It’s time to act.’ Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who is weighing another bid, said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ . . . ‘What Congress has got to do is take Trump on, take the fossil fuel industry on, and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, to energy efficiency and sustainable energies like solar and wind. ‘ Over on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Iowa Republican Joni Ernst signaled skepticism of the overwhelming scientific consensus that current global warming is caused almost wholly by human activities. ‘[W]e know that our climate is changing. Our climate always changes. And we see those ebb and flows through time,’ she said. However, Ernst also talked up Iowa’s substantial renewable power industry. Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse called the report ‘important,’ but declined to endorse the dominant scientific view that’s shared by federal agency experts, instead calling humans a ‘contributing factor’ to climate change. Speaking on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ he said ‘I think the real question, though, becomes what do you do about it? Because you can’t legislate or regulate your way into the past. We have to innovate our way into the future.’” [Axios, 11/26/18 (=)]

Sanders On 'Alarming' Climate Change Report: 'We’ve Got To Wake Up And Address These Issues'. According to The Hill, “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday called a governmental report on climate change that paints a bleak picture of its effects on the U.S. moving forward ‘very alarming,’ and slammed the Trump administration for what he called its refusal to address the issue. ‘What Congress has got to do is take Trump on, take the fossil fuel industry on and transform our system to sustainable energy,’ Sanders said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation.’ ‘When we do that, we are going to lead the world in saving the planet, and we are going to create millions of decent paying jobs,’ he continued. ‘This is a very alarming report and we’ve got to wake up and address these issues,’ Sanders continued. … ‘It is amazing to me that we have an administration right now that still considers climate change to be a hoax. Who is not sure about whether it is man made,’ Sanders said. ‘But this is not an issue where we can debate,’ he added. ‘The reality is real, the scientific community has made it 100 percent clear that this is a major crisis.’ Sanders and other progressive lawmakers have pushed for the U.S. to end its reliance on fossil fuels and take other steps to protect the environment. Rep-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has supported a ‘Green New Deal,’ which consists of ambitious goals like getting 100 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable energy sources.” [The Hill, 11/25/18 (=)]

Ocasio-Cortez On Climate Change Report: People Will Die If We Don't Act Now. According to The Hill, “Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on the U.S. to act ‘urgent[ly]’ after a report from the federal government found that climate change is expected to have an enormous impact on the country in the near future. In a Twitter post, the New York Democrat reissued her call for a special House caucus on climate change, a demand that some progressive activists have called for following Democrats’ takeover of the House. ‘People are going to die if we don’t start addressing climate change ASAP,’ wrote Ocasio-Cortez on Friday following the report’s release. ‘It’s not enough to think it’s ‘important.’ We must make it urgent.’ ‘That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, & why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy,’ she added. … The move rankled some veteran lawmakers who have privately worried that the young progressive’s style of politics will clash with longtime members of the Democratic caucus. Her comments Saturday came hours after the U.S. Global Change Research Program issued its fourth annual climate report detailing the expected effects of climate change. ‘Climate change threatens to exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities that result in higher exposure and sensitivity to extreme weather and climate-related events and other changes,’ the report reads.” [The Hill, 11/23/18 (=)]

Cabinet Member Reactions

Trump's EPA Chief Said There Was 'No Political Review' Of Climate Report. According to The Washington Post, “By all accounts, the Trump administration took a hands-off approach in crafting a recent major climate report that outlined the dire economic effects to come from climate change in the United States. Next time around, that may not be the case. In an interview at an Energy 202 event at The Washington Post on Wednesday, Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, suggested that Trump administration officials should be more involved in preparing the next version of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment. At the same time, he acknowledged the potential political perils of doing so. ‘If we had intervened and made changes to the report, we’d have been accused of manipulating the scientific recommendations of the career staff,’ Wheeler told The Post’s Juliet Eilperin. Wheeler admitted he didn’t read the report before it was published by his agency and 12 others in the federal government. The acting head explained he was still reviewing its contents, which included warnings of climate change posing ‘a severe threat to Americans’ health and pocketbooks,’ according to my colleagues Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney. Wheeler confirmed there was ‘no political review by this administration’ of the report, but said the Trump administration will have more discretion over the direction of the next one. ‘Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that’s used for the next assessment,’ Wheeler said.” [The Washington Post, 11/29/18 (+)]

The EPA Is Now Relying On The Daily Caller To Lie About The National Climate Assessment. According to Earther, “The Environmental Protection Agency press shop was an abomination under Scott Pruitt. And it’s not much better under Andrew Wheeler. On Wednesday, the EPA put out a press release attempting to smear the National Climate Assessment, the landmark federal report that clearly lays out the choices the U.S. faces when it comes to climate change. It all started in the morning, when Wheeler trotted out a lie that’s become now standard in the Trump administration’s inept assault on the report. Speaking with the Washington Post Live, here’s what he had to say: ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors to take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’ This is statement falls in line with talking points from the administration that have attempted to cast the report as only considering one scenario, something that is demonstrably false. Wheeler’s remark was widely covered (as was his inability to name three environmental accomplishments under Trump). In an effort to back up the off-base claim, the EPA blasted out a press release ‘fact checking’ the acting administrator’s statement, using not scientific literature or planning documents to back up its claim. It went to an article by the Daily Caller News Foundation, a right-wing news site founded by Tucker Carlson and foundation largely funded by the Koch brothers. It’s a well Trump’s EPA has visited before.” [Earther, 11/29/18 (+)]

State Propaganda: EPA Cites Koch-Funded Article To Attack Climate Report. According to Sludge, “While still in college, Daily Caller energy editor Michael Bastasch began a career heavily financed by the billionaire Charles Koch, CEO of the fossil fuels, chemicals and materials conglomerate Koch Industries. Several years later, Koch’s investments appear to be paying off: In a Wednesday press release, the Environmental Protection Agency attacked the Trump administration’s own grave climate assessment by citing a Bastasch article published that day. This Daily Caller piece amplified EPA Acting Director Andrew Wheeler’s inaccurate speculation that former President Barack Obama directed climate scientists at the White House National Science and Technology Council to focus its National Climate Assessment on worst-case scenarios. The recently released National Climate Assessment, the product of more than four years of work by hundreds of scientists from 13 government agencies, predicts a deadly and costly climate catastrophe unless the United States takes drastic measures immediately. How the government reacts to this assessment will likely impact Koch Industries’ bottom line, since any meaningful greenhouse gas reduction plan will involve a significant decrease in fossil fuel production. The EPA’s press release, billed as a ‘fact check,’ quotes and links to the Daily Caller piece. Instead of consulting outside experts to fact check its own administration’s climate report, the EPA relied on one Koch-funded journalist.” [Sludge, 11/29/18 (+)]

Perry: U.S. Won't Hang Its Head On Climate Policy. According to E&E News, “Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the U.S. owes the rest of the world no apologies for President Trump’s renunciation of the Paris climate agreement because of the nation’s success in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from its power sector. ‘I think there’s a great story to be told out there in the face of people [saying] the U.S. stepped away and is not committed to the environment. We are. I suggest there is nobody in the world doing as much as the U.S. is,’ Perry said. ‘We don’t have anything to be apologizing to people for,’ he said yesterday at a conference sponsored by the Consumer Energy Alliance. The reduction in CO2 emissions from power plants was one of the few bright spots in a dire forecast of climate-related impacts spelled out in the fourth National Climate Assessment issued last week by administration scientists. … Perry hailed the U.S. shale gas bonanza as key to the reduction in U.S. carbon emissions from the power sector, as gas generation forced the shutdown of older, inefficient coal plants, which have twice the carbon output per megawatt of power as gas plants. That part of the energy success story isn’t a staple of Trump speeches, given his pledge to revive the coal industry. But Perry did pick up the Trump ‘energy dominance’ banner again yesterday, describing himself as a global salesman for U.S. liquefied natural gas shipments — gas that can reduce oil and coal consumption outside the U.S. and protect U.S. allies from dependence on Russian natural gas. ‘My job is to sell LNG around the world,’ he said.” [E&E News, 11/30/18 (=)]

EPA Chief: Trump Administration May Intervene In Next Climate Study. According to Politico, “Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of tilting last week’s federal climate change report to focus on the worst-case outcomes — and indicated that the Trump administration could seek to shape the next big study of the issue. ‘Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that’s used for the next assessment,’ Wheeler said at an event hosted by The Washington Post. … ‘The drafting of this report was drafted at the direction of the Obama administration,’ Wheeler said. ‘And I don’t know this for a fact — I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors to take a look at the worst case scenario for this report,’ added Wheeler, who said he had not discussed the report with Trump. But the Obama White House official who initiated the assessment flatly denied Wheeler’s contention. ‘Mr. Wheeler’s insinuation is absolutely false,’ John Holdren, who served as Obama’s science adviser, told POLITICO in an email. Holdren says he called on the U.S. Global Change Research Program to conduct a thorough study, and that he had no role in selecting the report’s authors. ‘My only instruction was that the USGCRP should continue the distinguished tradition of the first three by drawing on the most current peer-reviewed science to illuminate what climate change is doing and is projected to do across the geographic regions and economic and ecological underpinnings of well-being in the United States,’ he said.” [Politico, 11/28/18 (=)]

Trump Administration May Reshape Next Federal Climate Report: Epa Chief. According to HuffPost, “Environmental Protection Agency acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wednesday that the Trump administration may step in to change the way the government drafts its next National Climate Assessment. The suggestion that politicians might influence a report from more 300 federal scientists at 13 agencies came at an event in Washington, where reporters pressed the agency chief on the authors’ dire projections about devastating climate change. Speaking at a Washington Post Live event, Wheeler accused former President Barack Obama of telling ‘the report’s authors to take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’ ‘Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that’s used for the next assessment,’ Wheeler said. It’s an audacious set of statements from the acting EPA administrator, who until last year served as a top coal lobbyist and espouses the industry’s scientifically unsound stance that the link between fossil fuels and climate change remains dubious. The remarks follow a clear, cynical pattern among those who deny climate science, accusing scientists and researchers of bias.” [HuffPost, 11/28/18 (+)]

Wheeler: 'I Have Some Questions' About Climate Report. According to E&E News, “Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is working his way through a massive climate change report that has roiled the Trump administration. The latest National Climate Assessment — mandated by Congress to be prepared by scientists in 13 federal agencies and released every four years — offers dire predictions for the planet’s future, due to the rise of carbon emissions. The new report was released on Black Friday last week and has been blasted by President Trump and other senior administration officials. Wheeler, speaking this morning at an event hosted by The Washington Post, piled on to efforts to downplay the study. ‘I think a lot of the criticism that you’re seeing from the Trump administration on the report is the emphasis from the media on the ‘worst case’ scenario,’ Wheeler said, adding that the report downplayed innovation that has helped reduce carbon emissions. Climate change could be devastating for the United States, according to the report, shrinking the economy by 10 percent by the end of this century as wildfires and flooding increase (Climatewire, Nov. 23). Trump and others have sought to downplay those worries. ‘I have some questions about the assumptions. I want to know more about what they used and how they looked at some of the assumptions,’ Wheeler said. ‘I think we will need to take a hard look at where the markets are going, where the technology is going, where innovation is going and what has driven the reduction in CO2 and give credit for that reduction in CO2.’” [E&E News, 11/28/18 (=)]

EPA Chief Criticizes Climate Report Over ‘Worst-Case Scenario.’ According to The Hill, “Acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler joined others in the Trump administration Wednesday in criticizing last week’s major climate change report for describing a ‘worst-case scenario.’ At a Washington Post event, Wheeler said the report ‘was written in 2016, and was at the direction of the previous administration,’ speculating that the Obama administration ‘told the report’s authors to take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report.’ ‘I think a lot of the worst-case scenario information in that assessment is what’s concerning a lot of people in this administration,’ he said. Wheeler said the latest National Climate Assessment, released last week by the federal government, largely ignored the likelihood that innovations in the future would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, instead assuming that emissions will remain steady. ‘I don’t think the assessment really took into account the innovation that we’ve seen and the technological advancement that we’ve seen in recent years. It basically freezes technology going forward,’ he said. The assessment forecast that by 2100, climate change could cause billions of dollars in economic losses — as much as a 10 percent loss of gross domestic product (GDP) — and kill thousands of people, among other impacts.” [The Hill, 11/28/18 (=)]

Acting EPA Administrator Says Administration Deserves Credit For Decline In Carbon Emissions In Wake Of Climate Report. According to CNN, “Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler did not voice alarm Wednesday about the dire predictions in the government’s recent climate report, and instead said the Trump administration deserves credit for a decline in carbon emissions in his first remarks since the government released a devastating report Friday on the growing impacts of climate change. ‘In the first year of the Trump administration, we’ve seen a 2.7% reduction in CO2 from 2016 to 2017,’ Wheeler told an audience at a Washington Post event. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, released by the administration the day after Thanksgiving, concluded the effects of rising temperatures will devastate the US economy, result in thousands of premature deaths and lead to severe weather events. Wheeler, who is the acting administrator of the EPA and Trump’s pick to lead the agency, said he had not finished reading the report and had not yet discussed it with President Donald Trump, a clear sign of the priority the administration is giving the report. ‘I’m not aware of a formal process within the administration’ to incorporate it into decision-making, Wheeler said. He also noted ‘a 14% reduction in CO2 emissions in the United States since 2005,’ a time period that includes the Obama administration, which implemented strict environmental policies Wheeler and the Trump administration have sought to reverse, amend or eliminate.” [CNN, 11/28/18 (+)]

EPA Chief Offers Some Praise For Climate Report Trump Dismissed. According to Bloomberg, “President Donald Trump has blasted a U.S. government report warning about devastating economic costs from climate change. But EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler is striking a different tone. On Wednesday, he praised the work that went into developing the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment and said it presented ‘interesting’ findings that merit follow-up. ‘There’s a lot of interesting things we need to follow up on and ask more questions about,’ Wheeler said. ‘Certainly a lot of hard work went into it.’ Wheeler, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, faulted the report for downplaying technological innovations that could help combat climate change and check greenhouse gas emissions that are driving it. And he said the assessment didn’t give enough credit to a 14 percent reduction in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions since 2005, a trend partly driven by increasing use of natural gas in lieu of coal to generate electricity. … ‘We need to take a look at the modeling that is used for the next assessment’ and its assumptions about technology, Wheeler said at an energy event hosted by the Washington Post on Wednesday. The analysis shouldn’t assume technological innovation will be frozen in time, Wheeler stressed. … Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also has insisted that the U.S. Geological Survey -- which helped write the government’s climate report -- has concerns with it. Zinke told an NBC affiliate in Sacramento, California, that it appears government scientists ‘took the worst-case scenarios and they built predictions upon that.’” [Bloomberg, 11/28/18 (=)]

EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler Can't Name 3 Things The Agency Is Doing To Fight Pollution. According to The Week, “Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who President Trump said he’d nominate to lead the agency full time, appeared at a Washington Post live event on Wednesday. It was the perfect opportunity to grill Wheeler on a Trump administration report that showed the U.S. isn’t going far enough to combat climate change — and an opportunity Wheeler took to question much of the report’s findings. Trump on Monday cast doubt on the environmental report, particularly saying he doesn’t ‘believe’ warming temperatures could cost America $400 billion per year in a worst-case scenario. Wheeler backed up Trump’s uncertainty, saying most of the report was written under the previous administration, so he can’t vouch for its scientifically calculated information. Wheeler added that he ‘did not see the report before it was released’ and still hasn’t ‘read the entire’ thing. Post reporter Juliet Eilperin also asked Wheeler to name three Trump administration policies that are combating air and water pollution, which Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday was ‘what matters most’ to the administration in addressing climate change. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to give three off the top of my head,’ Wheeler responded, before going on to mention but not exactly explain a few policies.” [The Week, 11/28/18 (+)]

EPA Chief Fumbles When Asked To List Trump Clean Air Policies. According to Think Progress, “Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), struggled to name Trump administration policies designed to decrease air pollution during a Wednesday event hosted by the Washington Post. Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin asked Wheeler to name three policies that the Trump administration is championing to reduce air pollution and three policies that are contributing to cleaner water. After naming a proposed EPA rule-making to cut nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel-powered heavy-duty trucks, Wheeler hesitated, saying, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to give three off the top of my head.’ Since the early days of his campaign, President Donald Trump has consistently stated he wants clean air and water. But instead of pointing to which of his policies will improve air and water quality, the president uses empty platitudes. ‘You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean,’ Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Tuesday. ‘Do we want clean water? Absolutely. Do we want clean air to breathe? Absolutely.’ At Wednesday’s event, Wheeler regained his footing, but his answers were not backed up by facts. He claimed the Trump administration’s replacement for the Clean Power Plan — the Affordable Clean Energy rule — will lead to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 35 percent by the time it’s fully implemented.” [Think Progress, 11/28/18 (+)]

Trump’s EPA Head Wants Nothing To Do With The Big New Climate Report. According to Mother Jones, “ ‘I have questions about the assumptions,’ Wheeler said, referring to the range of scenarios the report lays out for continuing business-as-usual on greenhouse gas pollution. ‘The majority of that report was written in 2016 and it was at the direction of the previous administration,’ Wheeler repeated more than once, implying that it is also a political document. At one point, he even connected Tom Steyer, an outspoken critic of Trump and prominent climate advocate, to the economic finding that climate change will have more than twice the impact by the turn of the century than the total hit from the 2008 Great Recession. Trump and the White House have been undermining the report since Friday. A White House spokesperson claimed the grim findings were ‘largely based on the most extreme scenario which contradicts long-established trends.’ Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke echoed the same line Tuesday. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and an author of one of the report’s chapters, tweeted, ‘What WH says is demonstrably false.’ She explained that the scientists considered a range of scenarios from aggressive action, where the US actually releases negative carbon pollution by the end of the century to a business-as-usual scenario where emissions still climb—and right now, the worst-case scenarios seem more likely.” [Mother Jones, 11/28/18 (+)]

EPA’s Andrew Wheeler Suggests The Obama Administration Put Its Thumb On The Scale Of The Latest Us Climate Report. According to The Daily Caller, “Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested the Obama administration told the authors of the latest National Climate Assessment (NCA) to emphasize ‘worst-case’ global warming predictions. ‘And I don’t know this for a fact — I wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration told the report’s authors to take a look at the worst-case scenario for this report,’ Wheeler told The Washington Post in an interview Wednesday. Wheeler isn’t the first to criticize the NCA’s focus on ‘worst-case’ global warming predictions, but his comments sparked backlash from former President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser. John Holdren, Obama’s former science czar, told Politico that’s ‘absolutely false.’ Holdren said the report considered a wide range of scenarios, and that he had no role in selecting the fourth NCA’s authors. … ‘My only instruction was that the USGCRP should continue the distinguished tradition of the first three by drawing on the most current peer-reviewed science to illuminate what climate change is doing and is projected to do across the geographic regions and economic and ecological underpinnings of well-being in the United States,’ Holdren said. However, Wheeler does have a point. Holdren did not mention a May 2015 memo from the Subcommittee on Global Change Research’s (SGCR) environment committee, which is part of the White House National Science and Technology Council.” [The Daily Caller, 11/28/18 (-)]

UN Contradicts Wheeler's Claim That US On Track To Meet Paris GHG Goal. According to Inside EPA, “Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the United States is on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Paris Agreement even as it prepares to withdraw from the international climate deal, though a new United Nations report contradicts that claim, finding the U.S. to be far from its reduction pledges. Wheeler claimed that unlike most other industrialized nations, the U.S. is ‘on target’ to meet its Paris pledge -- known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC) -- to cut emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 26-28 percent by 2025. ‘We are meeting our Paris reductions, but we are going to withdraw from the treaty,’ he said during a Nov. 28 Washington Post live event. However, his claims are strongly contradicted by a Nov. 27 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report that lists the U.S. as one of seven countries far from meeting its goals. Other experts also have long said the country would miss the Obama administration’s targets, largely due to the Trump administration’s suite of climate policy rollbacks. Wheeler’s claim may be limited to the 2020 target, since he repeatedly touted a 14 percent reduction from 2005 levels, including a 2.7 percent cut in 2017. However, he did not address a specific year when discussing targets. Also noteworthy about Wheeler’s remarks is the fact that he is using Obama-era targets as a general benchmark for measuring the country’s progress on GHGs, given that President Donald Trump has strongly criticized the prior administration’s approach to Paris as unfair and economically harmful, and said his administration would make no efforts to meet the NDC.” [Inside EPA, 11/28/18 (=)]

California’s Attorney General Clashes With Trump’s Acting EPA Chief Over Climate Change. According to Los Angeles Times, “The tension was on full display at an event hosted by the Washington Post on Wednesday morning, when Becerra took the stage as acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler exited it. ‘The majority of that report was written in 2016, and it was at the direction of the previous administration,’ Wheeler said. ‘It had no political review by this administration. We did not review it. I did not see the report until it was released.’ Becerra called the climate report ‘a scathing indictment of what this administration is trying to do.’ ‘I think I have read more of it than they have, and I haven’t read very much. It is kind of disturbing when they are in charge of trying to protect the nation’s environment for them not to read a report issued by their own folks,’ he added. ‘You would hope that driving their policy is the work done by the experts.’ … Becerra scoffed that Wheeler was, in part, claiming credit for actions that courts have ordered the administration to take. ‘It is interesting to hear the acting administrator take credit for some of the reductions in CO2 and so forth when they’ve been trying to backslide on those requirements,’ Becerra said, pointing to court action by California and other states that have blunted some of the administration’s rollbacks of climate action. ‘It is pretty bold to take credit for losses in court that have required them to move forward and do what they have tried to stop doing.’” [Los Angeles Times, 11/28/18 (+)]

Media Reactions

Bernie Sanders Is Right: TV Networks Need To Do A Much Better Job Of Covering Climate Change. According to Media Matters For America, “Bernie Sanders thinks there’s a problem with TV news coverage of climate change. ‘This is an issue of huge consequence and you would think that ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox would be talking about this every day, having the debate, ‘What do we do? Where do we go?’ he recently told HuffPost. ‘Clearly you aren’t seeing that debate.’ Bernie Sanders is right. The Vermont senator and former presidential candidate is expected to highlight the media’s shortcomings during a national town hall on climate change solutions that will be live-streamed on December 3 at 7 p.m. ET. As HuffPost’s Alexander Kaufman explained in an article about the town hall, Sanders may ‘challenge TV networks to cover a rapidly worsening crisis they’ve long ignored.’ Ignore it they have. Media Matters closely tracks TV coverage of climate change and consistently finds it lacking, both in quantity and in quality. Check out some of our findings from this year: CNN, NBC, and of course Fox all featured climate deniers in their coverage of the recent National Climate Assessment report. ABC, CBS, and NBC mentioned climate change in less than 4 percent of their coverage of the recent California wildfires, and in only 2 percent of their coverage of wildfires over the summer.” [Media Matters For America, 11/30/18 (+)]

'Fact Has Become A Political Issue.' According to E&E News, “Climate scientist Robert Kopp’s phone has been ringing off the hook this week. A professor at Rutgers University who studies rising seas and other effects of global climate change, Kopp has been fielding interview requests to defend the latest volume of the National Climate Assessment, a federal 1,700-page climate report President Trump has publicly dismissed. ‘It’s really unfortunate fact has become a political issue,’ Kopp said during an interview this week. ‘What attacking the National Climate Assessment does is really undermine, particularly for places that don’t have as many resources, what should be a reliable, trustworthy fact.’ Kopp, who directs Rutgers’ Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, was the lead author of the first volume of the National Climate Assessment, released last year. He focused on the section on sea-level rise and potential surprises. This week, the 37-year-old Maryland native has been fielding calls about the second volume of the report, which the Trump administration quietly released last week on Black Friday. The congressionally mandated study found that the lives and safety of Americans are already being hurt by climate change, and consumption of fossil fuels will increase the risks in the coming decades. Authors also warned that the United States could face hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses each year if the nation doesn’t move to adapt. Kopp said the administration’s efforts to bury the document — a massive collaboration scrutinized by hundreds of authors that underwent an extensive review from the National Academy of Sciences — undermine top policymakers’ abilities to make good decisions.” [E&E News, 11/30/18 (=)]

A Major National Climate Report Came Out. Then The Deniers Got On TV. According to The Weather Channel, “But many of the talking heads featured on TV over the weekend contradicted not just the report’s findings, but even the well-established, widely agreed upon basics of climate science. The first sentence of the nearly 2,000 page report reads: ‘Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.’ Even that was up for debate. NBC’s Meet the Press, for instance, invited Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, to share her opinions on the report on Sunday. (AEI, which is known for sowing doubt about climate change, has received millions of dollars in donations from Exxon Mobil and the Koch Foundation.) ‘I’m not a scientist,’ Pletka said (truthfully), before saying: ‘We need to … recognize we just had two of the coldest years, biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last 100 years. We don’t talk about that because it’s not part of the agenda.’ This is not true. ‘Of the 10 coldest years on record since 1880 in NOAA’s database, none of those occurred after 1913,’ said Jonathan Erdman, senior meteorologist at weather.com. ‘While some regions have had a few cooler years recently,’ he added, ‘when considering global temperatures as a whole, the data clearly shows warming has dominated and accelerated since the 1980s.’” [The Weather Channel, 11/29/18 (+)]

CNN's Scuitto On Climate Change: 'We Don’t Want To Be Slowly Burned To Death.' According to The Hill, “CNN anchor Jim Scuitto issued a stark warning on Wednesday morning against the effects of climate change, stating that ‘we don’t want to be slowly burned to death’ during a newscast. ‘I just want to ask the question for folks at home, folks like us. We got kids. We don’t want to be slowly burned to death on our own planet here,’ said Scuitto, who served in the Obama State Department prior to coming to CNN. ‘Is the human race running — in the simplest terms running out of time to take the measures necessary to rein in this rise in global temperatures?’ The question from Scuitto comes following a comprehensive 1,600-page National Climate Assessment released last week that details the damaging effects of global warming on the United States, including on agriculture, infrastructure, human health and the overall economy. President Trump has pushed back on the report’s findings, stating on Monday he ‘doesn’t believe it’ while asking, ‘Whatever happened to global warming?’ in a tweet as a cold blast hit many parts of the country. ‘Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?’ the president tweeted to his more than 55 million followers.” [The Hill, 11/28/18 (=)]

Stop Letting Republicans Lie On TV About Climate Science. According to The New Republic, “Pletka and others on Sunday also went unchallenged in spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the 300 federal government scientists who wrote the new climate report. Pletka did this by wholly rejecting their findings while subsequently citing ‘the agenda’ to explain her reasoning. Twice-failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum also accused scientists of having ulterior motives on CNN’s State Of The Union. ‘Look, if there was no climate change, we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work,’ he said. ‘The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money that they receive.’ The idea that climate scientists need climate change to exist in order to get paid is an old talking point, and a false one. The climate affects every living thing on earth. ‘What happens when you emit a lot of carbon dioxide’ isn’t the only thing climate scientists can, or do, study. Republicans who say climate scientists are getting rich off their research have never had evidence to support their claim. Their claim also strongly suggests they have never met any climate scientists, who as a group are hardly making global warming-related money hand over fist. No one should feel comfortable making any of these baseless arguments on national televised news programs. But Republicans have learned over the years that they can—and that no one will refute them. Perhaps that’s because political journalists on television simply haven’t learned enough about climate change; they haven’t been covering it that often, after all. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: If television hosts really can’t be bothered to read the latest climate science in order to moderate informed discussions, book more people who can. I, for one, am available all week.” [The New Republic, 11/27/18 (+)]

Anderson Cooper Suggests Trump Visit NASA Kids' Site To Learn About Climate Vs. Weather. According to USA Today, “CNN host Anderson Cooper tore into President Donald Trump on Monday night for his unconcerned response to his administration’s dire report on climate change and suggested the president visit NASA’s website for children to learn about the difference between climate and weather. Cooper first went after Trump for saying he read the 1,600-page report and concluded it’s ‘fine’ while also saying he doesn’t believe the report’s conclusions on the potential economic costs of climate change. Next, he hit Trump’s statements in the recent past (2014 and late 2015) calling climate change ‘nonsense’ and a ‘hoax.’ And then he slammed Trump for ‘denying that he denies it,’ cutting to a clip of Trump saying on ‘60 Minutes’ that the climate could ‘go back.’ ‘I’m not sure he has a robust understanding of the issues or even the most basic grasp of the issues,’ Cooper said. He then showed Trump’s tweets casting doubt on climate change because of cold weather, including one from last week where the president said, ‘Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to global warming?’ ‘The president of the United States seems to be honestly believing that global warming means it never gets colds anywhere. NASA has a good explanation of the difference between weather and climate on its website – its website for children,’ Cooper said. ‘So, we’re just suggesting, Mr. President, if you don’t want to believe science, or the 1,600-page report your team tried to slip [ast the American public on Friday, maybe just start with climatekids.nasa.gov. It’s a pretty easy read. It’s fun. There are pictures. But we’re not going to hold our breath because, unlike the climate, some things never actually change,’ he said.” [USA Today, 11/27/18 (=)]

Meet The Press Booking A Denier To Discuss Climate Change Is A Portrait Of Our Dangerously Dumb Times. According to Esquire, “Rarely do you get news of an ongoing catastrophe and, within a couple of days, a perfect example of why we’ve done nothing about that exact problem. But Chuck Todd and Meet The Press were happy to oblige this Thanksgiving weekend. On Friday, the Trump administration attempted to bury a harrowing U.S. government climate-change report by releasing it on Black Friday, a notorious dumping ground for bad news. Normally, though, the bad news is just for the current administration—not the whole world. On Sunday, Todd hosted Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute on his teevee show. Her performance—and it was a performance—was a shining example of how the ruling class has successfully hemmed and hawed for decades, with the full support of the feckless Beltway media, slowing any kind of action and safeguarding big-business profits while experts in the field have known full well that human civilization as we know it is in clear and escalating peril. As Pletka so happily volunteered, she is not a scientist. So why was she invited on one of the nation’s Premier Political Talk Shows to spread disinformation about a scientific issue? That two years since 1980 have been cold does not have any bearing on the scientific consensus that climate change is real and man-made. This member of the conservative intelligentsia—the American Enterprise Institute, for which Pletka works, is a right-wing ‘think tank’—is actually just making the more polite version of President Good Brain’s argument on Wednesday:” [Esquire, 11/26/18 (+)]

Other Reactions

Local Lawmakers Weigh In On Trump Administration's Dire Climate Report. According to Cincinnati Enquirer, “Sen. Rob Portman Portman, Ohio’s Republican junior senator, thinks the report needs to be taken seriously. ‘I thought it was a pretty powerful report,’ Portman told reporters in response to a question from The Enquirer. ‘We should pay attention to it.’ When asked what Congress should do about it, he touted the energy efficiency legislation he and Sen. Jeanne Sheehan, D-NH, introduced to encourage businesses to reduce emissions. ‘I think the warnings about what is going on, we should take it seriously, but we should take measures that don’t shoot ourselves in the foot.’ … Sen. Sherrod Brown Brown, a Democrat, believes climate change is real and rejects the idea that Ohio must choose between combatting it and generating good-paying jobs. ‘We can do both, and Ohio must lead the way in developing and using new technologies that put Ohioans to work and are better for the future of our planet,’ Brown told The Enquirer. … Rep. Brad Wenstrup Wenstrup, a Republican from Columbia Tusculum, said history has shown climate changes exist, and humans have played a role in affecting the environment, ‘as evidenced by toxins, pollution, smog, and litter.’ ‘The United States has had success in reducing our environmental footprint,’ Wenstrup said. ‘We are global leaders of clean water and clean air, and in 2017 the U.S. had the largest decline in CO2 emissions in the world.’” [Cincinnati Enquirer, 11/30/18 (=)]

Al Gore Calls Trump ‘The Principal Global Face Of Climate Denial.’ According to The Washington Post, “In an alternate universe, Al Gore might have won the 2000 presidential election and made the United States the face of global efforts to stop Earth from warming further. In the universe we inhabit, Gore lost. He went on to make a career out of advocating for environmental changes as an influential but relatively powerless private citizen. Eighteen years later, climate projections are as dire as they’ve ever been, and the 45th U.S. president is a man who thinks a particularly cold winter in a single country is evidence against decades of recorded global warming. ‘We are treating the atmosphere as an open sewer,’ Gore told Trevor Noah on ‘The Daily Show’ on Wednesday night, as he promoted his latest documentary series on the planet’s looming catastrophes. ‘That’s why the temperatures are going up, the water cycle’s being disrupted, and the fires! Look at the fires in California.’ He meant the Camp Fire this month, which The Washington Post’s Cleve R. Wootson reported was the most destructive in California’s history, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes. Noah tried to cut the gloom with gallows humors. He cited a contrary opinion from ‘a very famous scientist who lives in the White House,’ reading verbatim from President Trump’s recent interview with The Post, in which the president said he disbelieved his own administration’s report predicting that climate change will have catastrophic economic costs. ‘A lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers,’ Trump had said. He also called the oceans ‘very small’ and said the air and water quality in the United States are ‘at a record clean.’” [The Washington Post, 11/29/18 (=)]

Al Gore Labels Trump 'The Face Of Climate Denial'. According to E&E News, “Former Vice President Al Gore last night publicly criticized President Trump for rejecting recent warnings, including those from his own government, about the dangers of climate change. During an appearance on ‘The Daily Show,’ Gore criticized the president for downplaying recent federal reports outlining the threats of climate change, even as 110 million tons of man-made greenhouse gases are dumped into the atmosphere. The former Democratic presidential contender also promoted his latest documentary series on climate change, which he called a ‘global health crisis.’ ‘We are treating the atmosphere as an open sewer. It’s a very thin shell around the planet, and we’re changing it dramatically,’ Gore said. ‘That’s why the temperatures are going up, the water cycle’s being disrupted with these huge rain bombs, the flooding gets worse ... and the fires. Look at the fires in California.’ ‘Daily Show’ host Trevor Noah ridiculed the president for telling The Washington Post that he and others like him ‘have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers’ (Greenwire, Nov. 28). ‘There’s a very famous scientist who lives in the White House,’ Noah said. Gore said Democrats’ takeover of the House this month is in part due to a reaction to Trump’s stance on climate science. ‘Donald J. Trump is really the face of climate denial. His voice is the voice of climate denial,’ Gore said. ‘When he’s the principal global face of climate denial, I think that’s acute.’” [E&E News, 11/29/18 (=)]

Scientists Behind Climate Report Warn Against Political Pushback. According to ABC News, “‘The easiest way to deflect science is to put doubt on the data that it is based on,’ said Paul Chinowsky, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado with a decade of experience working on climate impacts. ‘I can tell you this was one of the most thorough data justification exercises that I’ve ever been involved in, in all the years I’ve been working on this, and it really comes down to a question of, are you going to believe the international community and scientists and engineers involved in putting the data together, or do you just want to dismiss it?’ Chinowsky said. The authors -- a combination of climate scientists, engineers, federal experts and local officials -- are acutely aware of the timeline they’re working with -- both in the U.S. and globally. ‘The window of making emissions less is within this next decade, what we all do around the world is really going to matter,’ said Brenda Ekwurzel, an author of the report’s section on mitigation efforts. Ekwurzel is a senior climate scientist with the Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan nonprofit called the Union of Concerned Scientists, and has worked on government reports in the past.” [ABC News, 11/28/18 (=)]

The Baseless Claim That Climate Scientists Are ‘Driven’ By Money. According to The New York Times, “WHAT WAS SAID ‘The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money that they receive. And, of course, they don’t receive money from corporations and Exxon and the like.’ — Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, in remarks on CNN on Sunday ‘The report is nothing more than a rehash of age-old 10- to 20-year assumptions made by scientists that get paid to further the politics of global warming.’ — Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas who was the former House majority leader, in remarks on CNN on Monday THE FACTS This lacks evidence. The federal government’s most recent climate change report, released last week, warned that global warming could cause substantial damage to the American economy, human health and the environment. The report has prompted some critics to dismiss climate scientists as corrupted by money, a common but baseless attack. ‘We were paid zero dollars to produce the national assessment,’ Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the report, said in an interview. ‘In fact, there was a reverse financial motive.’ Researchers working in climate change do not receive atypically large paychecks, nor do they strike it rich from grants. The claim also ignores that internal research from oil companies affirms the scientific consensus on climate change.” [The New York Times, 11/28/18 (+)]

Bill Gates: It Would Be Tragic If U.S. Doesn't Lead In Innovation For Cutting Emissions. According to CNBC, “Bill Gates said it would be unfortunate to see the U.S. miss out on the economic opportunity related to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is among the world’s most prominent climate advocates, in addition to his work around the world preventing infectious diseases. He shared some of his thoughts on global warming in an interview that aired Sunday on Axios on HBO. ‘It’s very American to invent things to help the entire world. We’re always on the front of new science and new product development. So it would be tragic if this was the first time the U.S. didn’t play that role,’ Gates told Axios journalists Ina Fried and Amy Harder. The interview aired two days after the Trump administration released a government report that said damage from global warming could slash as much as 10 percent off the nation’s economy by the end of the century. The administration, which has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, was criticized for releasing the report on the Friday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, when many people are not paying attention to the news. Certainly there is some industry activity that could make a difference. Harder said renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and electric car companies like Tesla, generate headlines. Gates pointed out that electricity is just one of a few things that create emissions.” [CNBC, 11/25/18 (=)]

As Trump Questions Global Warming, UN Says: US Gov’t Won’t. According to The Washington Post, “A top U.N. scientist on Thursday shrugged off an online quip from U.S. President Donald Trump that questioned global warming, saying a U.S. government report will show the ‘fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent.’ Officials at the World Meteorological Organization also said environmentally minded efforts by the state of California, in parts of the financial sector, among grassroots activists and others will have more of an impact to help the fight against climate change than ‘political disturbance’ and ‘discourse’ will impede it. The science, they said, will have the last word. Some of that science comes Friday in a new U.S. federal climate change assessment report, from agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy. ‘It’s very interesting what you will see tomorrow,’ said Pavel Kabat, WMO’s chief scientist. ‘That is a major report coming supported by all agencies ... under the administration of President Trump ranging from NOAA to NASA, from NASA to DOE, showing the fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent.’ … The findings come ahead of next month’s meeting of world leaders in Katowice, Poland, for the annual global climate summit where they hope to find ways to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord that aims to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.” [The Washington Post, 11/22/18 (=)]

Senate Committee To Address Climate Change In Pittsburgh Hearing. According to Pittsburgh Tribune Review, “State and local officials, along with environmental advocates, are expected to testify Wednesday before the state Senate Democratic Policy Committee in a Pittsburgh hearing focusing on local and state efforts to address climate change. The session, requested by Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa of Forest Hills, is set for 10 a.m. in the atrium of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 5, at 5 Hot Metal St. Among those expected to participate in the hearing are: George Hartenstein, deputy secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection; Grant Ervin, the City of Pittsburgh’s chief resiliency officer; Dr. Deborah Gentile, a pediatric allergy physician; Rachel Gleason, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance; Mandy Warner of the Environmental Defense Fund; Tom Schuster of the Sierra Club; Marcel Minutolo, associate professor of business management at Robert Morris University. Costa and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto were among officials who criticized President Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. ‘We need to maintain efforts to keep Pennsylvania on track to combat climate change,’ Costa said.” [Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 11/22/18 (=)]

Maine Delegation Calls For Action After Climate Change Report's Release. According to WGME, “Maine’s congressional delegation is reacting strongly after Friday’s release of a report on climate change’s impact on the state, the region and the country. US Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins along with US Rep. Chellie Pingree are urging action in the wake of the report, whose release on the day after Thanksgiving prompted climate change activists to accuse The Trump administration of trying to bury it. The National Climate Assessment says the last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the U.S., costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. ‘Warmer and drier conditions have contributed to an increase in large forest fires in the western United States and interior Alaska,’ according to the report. ‘Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us,’ the report says. The federal report was written long before the deadly fires in California this month and Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warming-charged extremes ‘have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.’ Saturday morning, King tweeted the report shows ‘clear: climate change is already making an impact on our lives, with many more obvious consequences coming in the near future. If we don’t act now, we will be grossly failing ourselves and our children.’” [WGME, 11/24/18 (=)]

Impacts & Report Details

Climate Change Clobbers Colorado And The West, Unfurling Fire, Drought, Insects And Heat. According to The Denver Post, “Fires burn more frequently and uncontrollably, ravaging the West’s pines, firs and spruces, destroying lives and buildings. Multiplying insects feast: Colorado’s forester last week said the state over two decades has lost a fifth of its forests to bugs, and a recent survey estimated one in 14 standing trees is dead. Shrinking Rocky Mountain snowpack is forcing farmers out of business, jeopardizing skiing, and compelling utilities to consider super-costly new sources of water, including recycled waste. And rising heat waves hurt people — especially children, the elderly, low-income outdoor workers and anybody who can’t afford air conditioning. These impacts of global warming, intensifying across Colorado and the West with costs in the billions, have happened precisely as scientists have been predicting. The latest National Climate Assessment — released by the Trump administration on the day after Thanksgiving — now drives home this scientific consensus that Colorado and its western neighbors will face worsening, potentially ruinous environmental upheaval as average temperatures that increased 2 degrees over the past 30 years keep rising. World leaders at a United Nations-backed forum in Poland this week will rally nations to try to minimize ecological harm after 2050, and while American scientists will be there, the U.S. government isn’t participating.” [The Denver Post, 12/1/18 (=)]

Climate Change Is More Extensive And Worse Than Once Thought. According to Associated Press, “International negotiators meet next week in Poland to discuss how to ratchet up the fight against climate change in what’s called the Conference of Parties . The world’s understanding of global warming has changed dramatically since the first conference in March 1995. Since then the globe on average has warmed nearly three-quarters of a degree (0.41 degrees Celsius) but that’s not even half the story. That global annual temperature increase is slightly lower than some early 1990s forecasts. Yet more than a dozen climate scientists told The Associated Press that without the data currently available and today’s improved understanding of the climate, researchers decades ago were too conservative and couldn’t come close to realizing how global warming would affect daily lives. One scientific study this month counted up the ways — both direct and indirect — that warming has already changed Earth and society. The total was 467 . ‘I don’t think any of us imagined that it would be as bad as it’s already gotten,’ said University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles, a co-author of the recent U.S. National Climate Assessment . ‘For example, the intensity of severe weather. We didn’t know any of that back then. And those things are pretty scary.’” [Associated Press, 11/29/18 (=)]

Trump Climate Report Can Strengthen Lawsuits Against Govt. According to E&E News, “Even a decade ago, climate scientists were hesitant to connect climbing greenhouse gas levels to particular damages, such as sea-level rise or a hurricane. Oil companies and the government took advantage of that uncertainty. In Juliana v. United States and separate nuisance lawsuits, defendants have argued that their actions can’t be tied to a specific event. The climate assessment cuts through that argument. Plaintiffs can now establish the link between climate change and pinpoint events, like flooding or a storm, according to Ann Carlson, co-director of UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. ‘This report, I think, completely undermines that,’ Carlson said by phone. ‘You have the federal government acknowledging real, actual injuries across the country.’ … ‘This is a pretty powerful report in establishing harm and connection,’ Carlson said. ‘It certainly seems to undermine the credibility of arguments that we need to weaken regulation.’ Government lawyers on the Juliana case have maintained that the plaintiffs — 21 children and young adults — lack the legal standing to sue, in part because they can’t connect actions of the U.S. government to what has happened in their own lives. Oil companies and the manufacturing industry have made similar arguments in court. In a column, Carlson said the climate assessment provides ‘evidence’ connecting ‘specific injuries to regions of the country’ from climate change. Still, there is the matter of tying emissions from specific companies to specific damages. ‘One looming question in these cases is whether the harms for which the plaintiff[s] ... are seeking compensation, including damages from sea level rise, droughts, wildfires and so forth, are actually caused by the oil company emissions,’ Carlson writes.” [E&E News, 11/30/18 (=)]

We Broke Down What Climate Change Will Do, Region By Region. According to Grist, “Look, at this point, even the most stubborn among us know that climate change is coming for our asses. We really don’t have much time until the climate plagues we’re already getting previews of — mega-wildfires, rising sea-levels, superstorm after superstorm — start increasing in frequency. The 4th National Climate Assessment says all that and much more is on its way. Here’s the thing: Not all regions in the U.S. are going to experience climate change in the same way. Your backyard might suffer different climate consequences than my backyard. And, let’s be honest, we need to know what’s happening in our respective spaces so we can be prepared. I’m not saying it’s time to start prepping your bunker, but I would like to know if my family should consider moving to higher ground or stock up on maple syrup. Luckily, that new report — which Trump tried to bury on Black Friday — breaks down climate change’s likely impacts on 10 specific regions. Unluckily, the chapters are super dense. Silver lining: We at Grist divvied up the chapters and translated them into news you can actually use.” [Grist, 11/29/18 (+)]

The Origin Of A Hyped Climate Statistic. According to Axios, “By the end of the century, global warming could cost the U.S. 10% of its gross domestic product. Why it matters: This figure has been used to indicate that global warming will inflict massive economic costs on the U.S. if dramatic actions to adapt to climate change and curtail emissions are not taken in the next decade. Critics, including the White House, have seized upon the statistic to paint the report as ‘radical’ and ‘extreme.’ The White House and EPA are attacking the figure and say billionaire activists and research funders Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg are behind it. Andrew spent part of this week tracking down the origins of that frightening statistic. What he found... The stat can be traced to a 2017 study, published in the journal Science, that quantified the economic costs to the U.S. for various amounts of climate change. Amir Jina, an economist at the University of Chicago and a co-author of that study, told Axios he was not surprised the 10% statistic was used in the NCA4, but he has been ‘a little disappointed’ at how the media focused on it. ‘I still obviously stand by the work that we did, and that number does come from this paper, but I think it needs more nuance in the way that it’s presented,’ Jina told Axios.” [Axios, 11/30/18 (+)]

Dem Report Warns Of 'Dire Consequences' From Warming. According to E&E News, “Climate change already has hurt the U.S. economy and is expected to do even more damage in the years ahead unless American policymakers join the world in trying to mitigate its worst effects, according to a new congressional report. The findings by the Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee are neither new nor surprising, but they do add another voice to the chorus that has spelled out in ever-increasing detail the dangers of a warmer planet. ‘These changes will cost lives, force waves of human migration across the globe, upend insurance markets, and have dire consequences for the American economy,’ noted the authors of the 10-page report. ‘The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond projects that climate change could reduce annual economic growth in the United States by one third over the next century.’ The reasons run the gamut, from the expected rise of disaster recovery costs to a decline in property values, especially in coastal regions. Citing analysis from the White House Office of Management and Budget, the report projected that climate change could increase the average annual cost of hurricane relief by $50 billion within 60 years. There are other hidden costs, too. ‘One year after Hurricane Harvey, for example, thousands of children remained stranded in shelters, motels, campgrounds, and cars while their homes remained in disrepair, resulting in a significant emotional and educational toll for these students,’ noted the report.” [E&E News, 11/29/18 (=)]

The 12 Takeaways Of Climate Report. According to Politico, “The congressionally mandated Fourth National Climate Assessment, which was released by the White House on Black Friday, foresees hundreds of billions of dollars in annual damage to the economy by the end of the century unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly and significantly reduced. Working under a 60-member federal advisory committee, the report was prepared by 300 scientists and reviewed by 13 agencies, including NASA and Defense, and the National Academy of Sciences. The assessment claims that climate is changing much faster than it would from any natural variation, with overwhelming evidence pointing to human activities as the cause — particularly emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. When asked by reporters about the projected massive economic losses from climate change, President Donald Trump rejected the estimate. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘No, no, I don’t believe it.’” [Politico, 11/29/18 (+)]

The Sea-Level Threat To Energy Infrastructure. According to Axios, “One of the dire and costly damage scenarios in the Fourth National Climate Assessment — the report the Trump administration released on Black Friday — stems from rising sea levels that are already affecting coastal cities, Axios’ Andrew Freedman writes. Why it matters: The report says the U.S. will have to ratchet up actions to adapt to global warming-related impacts at the same time that cuts to greenhouse gases are made. But the climate is a complex system that’s tough to turn around on a dime, a certain amount of warming and sea-level rise is baked into the next few decades. Quick take: Some of those risks involve power and fuels infrastructure, according to the chapter of the report about energy, including... Nationally, a sea-level rise of 3.3 feet (and the charts above show it could be much higher) could ‘expose dozens of power plants that are currently out of reach to the risks of a 100-year flood.’ ‘This would put an additional cumulative total of 25 gigawatts (GW) of operating or proposed power capacities at risk,’ it states. There will likely be a big increase in flooding risk for Gulf Coast refineries. A sea-level rise of less than 1.6 feet would greatly increase the number of refineries in Texas and Louisiana vulnerable to flooding in even a Category 1 hurricane.” [Axios, 11/29/18 (+)]

A Political Blockade Is Colliding With The Evidence On Climate Change. According to CNN, “In rapid succession, the results of this month’s election and the release of blockbuster new scientific studies are widening the distance between the politics and science of climate change. The massive new study released by federal scientists Friday, like another landmark analysis in October from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, identified an accelerating convergence of risks from a changing climate. Those threats range from heavier rainfall and deadlier heat waves to increased coastal flooding, transformed agricultural growing patterns and potentially severe reductions in economic growth. In just the past few months, historically deadly wildfires in California and unusually powerful hurricanes in the Southeast have punctuated the message that climate change is shifting from something that will disrupt American life to something that already is doing so. Yet the results in this month’s election underscored the political standoff that has blocked a federal response to the gathering threat.” [CNN, 11/27/18 (+)]

Fire-Resistant Homes Don't Have To Cost A Fortune, Report Says. According to Bloomberg, “Homes in wildfire-prone areas around the U.S. could be built to better withstand blazes without increasing the cost of construction, according to a new report. The research released Tuesday was sponsored in part by the insurance industry and marks the first attempt to quantify the expenses associated with building residences that meet stringent flame-resistant criteria. Few states have adopted such codes, often citing housing costs, but the new findings suggest fire-plagued communities could curb damage and save lives with minimal effect on home buyers. ‘It’s a proven method,’ Kelly Pohl, a research and policy analyst at the Montana-based wildfire policy consulting firm Headwaters Economics, who co-authored the report with the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety on the report. ‘We now know that it’s also a cost-effective method.’ The findings come days after a sweeping report from scientists for 13 federal agencies, who say that climate change will cause more devastating, costly and deadly fires, and that communities haven’t done enough to prepare. Insurers, safety advocates and disaster policy experts have urged state and local governments to toughen building codes -- a move that’s often opposed by home builders over concerns it will increase housing costs, putting them out of reach of more potential buyers.” [Bloomberg, 11/27/18 (+)]

Climate Change Will Take A Bite Out Of Our Economy. Here's What Indianapolis Wants To Do About It. According to Indianapolis Star, “Just days after a federal report detailed environmental destruction and economic upheaval expected from intensifying climate change, Indianapolis released a draft plan detailing the city’s response to the phenomenon. The plan, dubbed Thrive Indianapolis, lays out an ambitious set of 16 goals and more than 60 actions aimed at making Indianapolis carbon neutral and more resilient in the face of a changing climate. ‘This is an exciting moment for Indianapolis,’ said Katie Robinson, director of the Office of Sustainability. The plan’s aspirations include: Boosting green jobs with a training program and job incubator. Providing a universal curbside recycling program and offering a compost subscription plan by 2025. Increasing the number of electric vehicles in the city through ownership incentives, increased EV parking spaces, and the conversion of the remaining IndyGo fleet to electricity by 2031. Nearly doubling per capita spending on parks and recreation.” [Indianapolis Star, 11/27/18 (+)]

Farmer In Iowa City Notices Similar Changes Outlined In Federal Climate Change Report. According to KCRG, “An Iowa farmer said changes in climate have forced her to adjust. And she’s worried about what next year will bring. Kate Edwards owns Wild Woods Farm, and her observation mirrors a federal climate change report released Friday. The report mentions Iowa specifically and outlines how wetter springs, dryer summers, and overall higher temperatures will hurt crops. President Trump says he doesn’t believe some of the analysis from his own administration. Edwards just wrapped up her growing season at Wild Woods Farms. She started her own organic vegetable farm, just outside of Iowa City, about nine years ago. ‘I produce 80 acres of vegetables, and this is where I deal with it all before I get it to the customers,’ Edwards said. While science has consensus on climate change, politicians obviously do not. But Edwards sees that something is happening, and the evidence was in this year’s onion crop. ‘I have never had to irrigate onions. This year I had to irrigate onions,’ Edwards said. The National Climate Assessment report says dryer summers are in Iowa’s future because of temperature increases tied to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But it’s complicated, because the changing climate also says heavy rains that cause flooding are likely to increase.So instead of steady precipitation and periods of dryness, the report claims Iowa will experience more intense rainfall that could increase erosion, decrease yields, and let fungus and pests thrive.” [KCRG, 11/28/18 (=)]

A Dozen Sobering Numbers For Oregon In The New Federal Report On Climate Change. According to Willamette Week, “The day after Thanksgiving, the White House released a massive federal assessment of the damage climate change is poised to unleash on the U.S. economy. The study is dense. It’s also alarming. (The president, for his part, said on Nov. 26 he didn’t believe it was true.) The forecast for the nation is dire: Floods will become more frequent as sea levels rise, threatening to displace millions along Southeastern coastal cities, U.S. wildfires are likely to burn six times more forest area per year and national agriculture yields could drop to 1980s levels by 2050. But all politics—even global warming—is local. What is this going to mean for us in Portland? Chapter 24 of the 1,656-page assessment is dedicated to the Pacific Northwest: Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It paints a picture of rising sea waters, warming temperatures and wildlife going extinct. Vivek Shandas, Portland State University’s professor of urban studies and planning, calls the report ‘sobering’ but says it doesn’t offer much in the way of practical advice. It’s more of an encyclopedia of panic. ‘While national reports can be helpful to identify trends,’ he says, ‘relying on those to identify specific risks to the Pacific Northwest is limited.’ Still, the specificity of the details about Oregon’s future inspires some urgency.” [Willamette Week, 11/28/18 (+)]

Climate Change Is Fueling Wildfires Nationwide, New Report Warns. According to The New York Times, “A warmer world makes for a more combustible country. That’s the conclusion in the most comprehensive assessment of the effects of climate change on the United States, released by the Trump administration just weeks after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The report says the continued release of greenhouse gases from cars, factories and other sources will make fires more frequent, including very large fires that burn more than 12,400 acres. And wildfire risk in the United States won’t just be a Western problem. ‘One of the big warnings there is about the potential for increased fire in the southeast,’ said Andrew Light, a contributor to the report and a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.” [The New York Times, 11/27/18 (+)]

Mississippi Basin Faces 'Soaring' Costs From Climate Risks. According to E&E News, “Nearly 85 mayors along the Mississippi River corridor say the new National Climate Assessment highlights the immense risks and challenges that river communities face as droughts, floods and other weather extremes become more prevalent. The 2,350-mile-long Mississippi is the most critical inland waterway in North America, prized for its economic, social, cultural and historical importance. It is also the ecological ‘linchpin’ to the 31-state Mississippi River Basin and accounts for nearly $500 billion in annual revenue and 1.5 million jobs. Many are associated with the production and transport of agricultural products and other bulk commodities like oil, coal and gravel. ‘We just had one of the driest winters in recent history. If that trend continues, we’re going to see impacts not only to agricultural productivity but the movement of billions of dollars in freight and commodities,’ said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the St. Louis-based Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, a partnership committed to adaptation and resilience efforts along the Big Muddy. As recently as 2012, the region experienced its worst drought in a half-century, deflating corn and soybean production and threatening to cut off New Orleans, the Midwest’s most critical port, as barge traffic slowed under near-record low flows on the Lower Mississippi.” [E&E News, 11/28/18 (=)]

How Cities Are Affected By The Federal Climate Report — And How They're Fighting Back. According to Utility Dive, “A federal report on climate change this week painted an alarming picture of the future of the planet, but at the local level, city leaders are embracing their role as leaders on the environment and looking for ways to do more. Scientists from 13 different agencies wrote the Fourth National Climate Assessment, and the authors warned, while climate effects differ by location, ‘all regions will be affected by climate change.’ President Donald Trump told reporters, ‘I don’t believe it’ when asked for his response to the report’s findings, and insisted the country is the ‘cleanest we’ve ever been.’ Trump has also recently questioned the existence of global warming given cold temperatures over Thanksgiving. Given those comments and complementing actions such as Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said repeatedly that the federal government is ‘asleep at the wheel,’ so the onus is on cities to fight the effects of climate change, including extreme weather and the impacts on transportation and infrastructure. ‘There are cities and states stepping up and doing the job,’ Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a speech this month at the LA CoMotion Leadership Conference. ‘[We] don’t need the White House, we just need this house.’” [Utility Dive, 11/27/18 (+)]

Highlighting Disconnect, Trump Climate Study Cites Obama-Era SCC Tool. According to Inside EPA, “The Trump administration’s newly released assessment warning of significant economic damages from global warming also cites the social cost of carbon (SCC) metric the Obama administration used to estimate the benefits of emission cuts, even as the Trump EPA and other agencies are significantly curtailing use of the tool. A prominent environmental law expert says the report’s citation is fresh evidence of a disconnect between the growing understanding of climate risks and the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back climate rules, even as many observers predict the report will bolster political and legal arguments against such rollbacks. ‘This [report] will be part of the narrative for all of these cases,’ New York University law professor Richard Revesz tells InsideEPA/climate, referencing expected or pending litigation over the administration’s moves to rollback the Clean Power plan, vehicle GHG standards and oil and gas methane controls. The report’s discussion of the SCC ‘will come up’ as part of such battles, Revesz adds. The second volume of the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), released Nov. 23, includes 29 chapters on a variety of climate impacts that are already occurring and expected to worsen, with a focus on ‘human welfare, societal and environmental elements of climate change and variability.’” [Inside EPA, 11/27/18 (=)]

Report Details Security Impacts Of Warming. According to E&E News, “The latest installment of the National Climate Assessment released last week mentions national security in a dozen different chapters, including a new one that focuses on how global warming affects U.S. international interests. In a blog post, the Center for Climate and Security notes a ‘significant increase in the coverage of national security matters’ in the new report compared with the 2014 installment. The 2014 version listed national security as a topic for consideration in future assessments, adding that the Department of Defense had already recognized the potential impacts climate change would have on military facilities and missions. ‘Without question, the military and the Department of Defense have been leaders on dealing with climate change in the sense that they are focused on accomplishing their missions, and climate change has an impact on those missions, and so they are going to adapt to climate change,’ said John Conger, director of the Center for Climate and Security. ‘That mission-focused approach is inconsistent with the idea of burying your head in the sand,’ he said. More than 300 authors worked on the congressionally mandated report released the day after Thanksgiving.” [E&E News, 11/27/18 (=)]

'We're Not Responding Quickly Enough.' According to E&E News, “The United States has invested more money and resources in climate change adaptation since 2014 — elevating roads and bridges, hardening shorelines, expanding stormwater drainage systems, and building hurricane-proof buildings, among other actions. Yet most Americans remain woefully unprepared for what scientists believe will be dramatically different climate conditions by the second half of the 21st century, both along the coasts and in the interior of the country. That’s a core finding of the latest installment of the National Climate Assessment, released last Friday while much of the nation was enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday. ‘No, we’re not responding quickly enough,’ said Katherine Greig, co-author of the report’s chapter on adaptation. ‘But I’m optimistic that in terms of our movement on the adaptation wheel, our hand is eventually going to be forced. It’s a situation where, as the saying goes, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ Ironically, as the report was released, tens of millions were also bracing against record cold in the Northeast, digging out from a November blizzard in the Midwest or beginning to stitch their lives back together after the worst wildfires in California history. In other words, they were adapting to the realities associated with extreme weather and an increasingly volatile climate, scientists say.” [E&E News, 11/27/18 (=)]

15 Takeaways From The US Climate Change Report. According to CNN, “The report breaks down the possible impact of climate change by US region and looks at the effects climate change will have on health, economy and infrastructure. Here are some of its key predictions: 1. Crop production will decline. … 2. Cows could have it bad. … 3. Food sources from the sea will decline. … 4. Food- and waterborne illness will spread. … 5. Bugs will bug us more. … 6. It will be hard to breathe. … 7. Mental health will be challenged. … 8. More of us will die. … 9. We won’t be able to work as much. … 10. We won’t be able to get around as easily. … 11. Water infrastructure will be challenged. … 12. Floods will be more frequent. … 13. Wildfires will increase. … 14. History will be lost. … 15. There will be more snakes and other invaders.” [CNN, 11/27/18 (+)]

Here's How Climate Change Will Impact Your Part Of The Country. According to CNN, “The lengthy National Climate Assessment released on Friday includes detailed information about how specific regions of the US will be impacted. Here’s what else you need to know.” [CNN, 11/27/18 (+)]

The Energy Costs Of A Changing Climate. According to Axios, “The big new federal report on the effects of climate change (the one released on Black Friday) explores how global warming could eventually increase U.S. power costs by tens of billions of dollars annually. Why it matters: The energy chapter of the 1,656-page report lays out a suite of ways that higher temperatures and extreme weather affect power and fuel infrastructure and availability — and the financial toll. Threat level: On power bills specifically, even though buildings and appliances are getting more efficient, higher temperatures will generally come with higher electricity costs (check out the map above). Why? … By the numbers: By 2040, nationwide residential and commercial power expenditures are projected to rise by as much as 18% if carbon dioxide keeps piling up in the atmosphere unchecked (with lower projections if emissions are cut significantly). … The big picture: Higher energy costs are one of many potential outcomes in a warming world. More broadly, the report warns of ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ in annual losses to some economic sectors without scaled up actions to adapt to current changes and slash emissions to avoid future warming.” [Axios, 11/27/18 (+)]

Five Big Ways The United States Will Need To Adapt To Climate Change. According to The New York Times, “The federal government’s sweeping new National Climate Assessment is more than just a dire warning about current and future global warming effects across the United States. It’s also the most detailed guide yet to all the ways the country will have to adapt. Even if the nations of the world get their act together and slash fossil-fuel emissions rapidly, the United States will need to spend many billions of dollars to harden coastlines, rebuild sewer systems and overhaul farming practices to protect against floods, wildfires and heat waves that are already causing havoc nationwide. And the more that emissions rise, the more difficult and costly that task gets. The United States isn’t prepared. In the Midwest, the report notes, only four counties and cities have written climate change plans. This in a region where scientists are forecasting bigger crop failures and heavier floods that could cripple transportation networks. And at the federal level, the Trump administration is rolling back policies to take future sea-level rise into account when building new roads and railways. Below are five major steps the scientific report says the country will need to take in the decades ahead: 1. Rethink how we farm … 2. Build for the future, not the past … 3. Retreat from the coasts … 4. Enlist nature to help … 5. Expect the unexpected” [The New York Times, 11/26/18 (+)]

The Three Most Chilling Conclusions From The Climate Report. According to The Atlantic, “The document’s dire claims, backed by 13 federal agencies, come frequently into conflict with the aims of the administration that released it. Where the Trump administration has sought to loosen restrictions on car emissions, the report warns that vehicles are contributing to unhealthy ozone levels that affect nearly a third of Americans. Whereas the president has ensured that the United States will no longer meet the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement on climate change, the report says that ignoring Paris could accelerate coral bleaching in Hawaii by more than a decade. Here are the report’s three most chilling conclusions: 1. Extreme hot weather is getting more common, and cold weather more rare. … 2. Climate change has doubled the devastation from wildfires in the Southwest. … 3. Rising sea levels will necessitate mass migrations, and coastal cities aren’t doing enough.” [The Atlantic, 11/26/18 (+)]

Federal Climate Report: US Energy, Transportation Sectors Not Prepared For Warming. According to Utility Dive, “The U.S. energy and transportation sectors are unprepared for the impacts of climate change they are helping stoke, according to a new federal report that warns of ‘longer and more frequent power interruptions.’ U.S. infrastructure is threatened by higher temperatures, stronger storms, increased flooding and longer, more intense droughts, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment. While locational effects differ, ‘all regions will be affected by climate change,’ the authors conclude. The assessment is the first federal climate change report written wholly under the Trump administration and its release on Black Friday was widely viewed as a tactic to limit its circulation. Experts say humans have about a decade to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change and the U.S. is behind the necessary pace of emissions reductions to do so.” [Utility Dive, 11/25/18 (=)]

What The Trump Administration's Newest Climate Change Report Warns About Tennessee. According to Tennessean, “On Friday, the Trump administration released its large-scale report that highlights how the climate is changing nationwide, including Tennessee and the Southeast region. The 1,600-page report details the climate and economic impacts U.S. residents will see if drastic action is not taken to address climate change. It also specifically mentioned how climate change could directly impact Nashville and Tennessee. This is the fourth National Climate Assessment. It was mandated by Congress in the late 1980s and is prepared every four years by the nation’s top scientists from 13 agencies. It’s meant as a reference for the president, Congress and the public. Here’s what it says about Tennessee: Transportation… Health care” [Tennessean, 11/26/18 (+)]

3 Ways Climate Change Is Already Shaping The U.S. According to E&E News, “The much-anticipated second volume of the National Climate Assessment presents a stark warning about the country’s future if climate change progresses unchecked: dwindling water supplies, agricultural declines, infectious disease outbreaks, destructive sea-level rise, an increase in certain natural disasters and billions of dollars in economic losses, to name just a few consequences. But just as striking is the federal report’s description of the climate impacts that have already occurred in the United States. Observations from all around the nation clearly demonstrate that climate change isn’t just a problem for the future — it has already reshaped the country in profound ways. It’s a meaningful finding at a time when many key officials in the federal government, including President Trump, have expressed doubt that climate change is occurring at all (see related story). The report released Friday presents clear evidence that denying climate change would require denying not only scientists’ projections for the future, but also decades of unmistakable, real-life observations of the way the nation has already changed. Here are just a few of the significant ways the report found climate change has already molded the present-day United States: 1. Rising temperatures … 2. Disasters and extreme weather events … 3. Wildlife and ecosystems” [E&E News, 11/26/18 (=)]

Climate Report Warns Of Grim Economic Consequences, Worsening Weather Disasters In U.S. According to Fox News, “The White House on Friday released a federal report that found that the impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, and ‘extreme weather and climate-related events’ are going to worsen in the years to come -- with a significant impact on the economy. The National Climate Assessment finds that extreme weather disasters ‘have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration and have cost the the U.S. nearly $400 billion since 2015.’ The report is mandated every four years and is based on previous research. Its aim is to detail how climate change is affecting the U.S. and how it is impacting the economy. It is written by outside scientists and officials from 13 federal agencies. ‘Without more significant global greenhouse gas mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause substantial losses to infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century,’ the report says, arguing that sectors that require national resources and favorable climates -- such as agriculture, tourism and fishing, are particularly vulnerable. … However, David Reidmiller, the director of the assessment, said the timing was in order to have the report come out ahead of U.N. climate talks, which begin in Poland on December 2, according to Axios.” [Fox News, 11/24/18 (=)]

Federal Report: Climate Risks, Damage Rising Across U.S. According to E&E News, “The lives and safety of Americans are already being hurt by climate change, and consumption of fossil fuels will increase the risks in the coming decades, according to a major new summary of climate science released by the Trump administration today. The administration released the report — on the Friday of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, when politicians traditionally dump news they don’t want to be widely distributed — even as it has sought to downplay and cut funding for climate science across a number of federal agencies. The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which by congressional mandate must be prepared every four years by scientists from 13 federal agencies. The report makes clear that climate change will harm more Americans, cut into the economy and weaken the social fabric of American life. It was written by more than 300 authors, including federal researchers as well as those from state governments and the private sector. ‘The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country,’ the report says. ‘More frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.’ The report shows the burden and risks of climate change will disproportionately affect low-income and other vulnerable communities. Climate change will place additional strain on American infrastructure and will impede the rate of economic growth this century.” [E&E News, 11/23/18 (=)]

White House Admits Trump Climate Policies Will Cost Americans $500 Billion A Year. According to Think Progress, “The 1,000-page climate report released by the White House Friday quantifies the staggering cost of President Trump’s climate science denial. The congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) by hundreds of the country’s top scientists warns that a do-nothing climate policy will end up costing Americans more than a half-trillion dollars per year in increased sickness and death, coastal property damages, loss of worker productivity, and other damages. Building on a 600-page analysis of climate science from 2017, the NCA details just how dangerous Trump administration’s policy of climate inaction is to Americans. The White House oversaw the report’s review and clearance process — and tried to bury the findings by releasing it at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving. But the reality of climate change cannot be buried. Indeed the report concludes that ‘the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.’ The NCA projects a devastated America on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution—widespread Dust-Bowlification and 7°F to 8°F warming over the entire inland portion of the country, even as coastal America is slammed by sea levels rising a foot per decade, resulting in ever-worsening storm surges.” [Think Progress, 11/24/18 (+)]

Ominous U.S. Climate Report Offers Few Policy Solutions. According to Bloomberg, “A landmark U.S. climate change study by 13 federal agencies brings greater urgency to the question of what Americans can do to avoid an unprecedented shift in how they live in coming decades. What it doesn’t do is provide any answers. ‘The report does not make policy recommendations, but it is abundantly clear that there are strong policy implications,’ said Andrew Light, a co-author and a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. ‘Every single one of them is, unfortunately, not something that the U.S. is pursuing at the national level.’ … When it comes to offering solutions, however, the report is silent. The authors describe the benefits of avoiding worst-case scenarios, called mitigation, without suggesting which specific policies would achieve them. They suggest technological and behavioral changes that lead to significantly lower emissions can cut potential financial damage by half, but fail to offer up one as the best course of action. Unfortunately, it was outside the NCA’s remit to specify policies to pursue, or which existing, or yet-to-exist technologies, could work in time. Ominously, even if a better scenario were to occur by 2090, it would still leave Americans in a country where the government, and thus taxpayers, pay hundreds of billions of dollars more annually to address the fallout of accelerating climate change. A scenario with dramatically less pollution could slash projected losses by 48 percent ($75 billion) a year in labor costs, 58 percent ($80 billion) in heat-related deaths and 22 percent ($25 billion) in coastal real estate, according to the report. But that still leaves a 12-figure taxpayer burden every year. As far as money to build such solutions is concerned, current-day America faces a $21 trillion national debt fueled by corporate tax cuts, rising healthcare costs, defense spending and Social Security.” [Bloomberg, 11/26/18 (=)]

U.S. Climate Report Warns Of Damaged Environment And Shrinking Economy. According to The New York Times, “A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end. The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth. Mr. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, ‘Whatever happened to Global Warming?’ But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.” [The New York Times, 11/23/18 (+)]

Climate May Force Millions To Move And U.S. Isn’t Ready, Report Says. According to Bloomberg, “Global warming may push millions of Americans away from the coast, and the U.S. isn’t prepared for the consequences of such a mass migration, scientists from across the federal government warned on Friday. ‘Sea level rise might reshape the U.S. population distribution,’ the scientists wrote in a sweeping report on climate change. ‘The potential need for millions of people and billions of dollars of coastal infrastructure to be relocated in the future creates challenging legal, financial, and equity issues that have not yet been addressed.’ The warning comes in the latest edition of the National Climate Assessment, a compendium of research about the state of climate change released every four years by scientists and other experts from across federal agencies. The assessment finds that climate change continues to outpace efforts to combat it or to adapt to its effects. The report comes at a time of worsening natural disasters like hurricanes and fires in the U.S., which exceeded a record $300 billion in costs in 2017. Those incidents have highlighted the exposure of vulnerable communities; in October, Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, excoriated coastal communities and states for not doing more to protect their residents from hurricanes.” [Bloomberg, 11/23/18 (=)]

Americans Will Pay Billions More For Climate Change, And That’s The Best Case. According to Bloomberg, “The Trump administration just published a major report documenting the advance of climate change, weeks earlier than expected and on a day many Americans are occupied with family and holiday shopping. The news is predictably bad, but this time the tally comes with a pricetag—one significantly larger than you’ll find at the mall. The report catalogs the observed damage and accelerating financial losses projected for a climate now unmoored from a 12,000-year period of relative stability. The result is that much of what humans have built, and many of the things they are building now, are unsuited to the world as it exists. And as time goes on, the added cost of living in that world could total hundreds of billions of dollars—annually. ‘The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid,’ the authors write. President Donald Trump has rejected without evidence the global scientific consensus that humans are doing grave damage to the planet. The Republican has sought to roll back Obama-era initiatives to slow greenhouse gas pollution in favor of fossil fuel interests. In recent years, thousands of Americans have died during, or as a consequence of, extreme weather tied to climate change—from powerful hurricanes fueled by extremely warm seas to calamitous conflagrations stemming from drought.” [Bloomberg, 11/23/18 (+)]

Black Friday Climate Report Warns Of Dire Risks. According to Axios, “The Trump administration chose Black Friday for the release of a major new climate science report, warning of ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ in annual losses to some economic sectors without scaled up actions to adapt to current changes and slash emissions to avoid future warming. Why it matters: The report by scientists from 13 federal agencies concluded that lives and property are already at risk in the U.S. due to climate change. Details: It points out that the era of climate consequences for the U.S. is well underway, and only actions taken in the next few years can be effective in addressing the scope and severity of the problem. The authors warn that neither climate adaptation nor the pace of emissions cuts are keeping up with the severity and swiftness of the challenge. The report release comes as the death toll from historic California wildfires continue to rise, and it finds that climate change is expected to bring more frequent wildfires and poor air quality. The report finds that under a worst-case climate change scenario, in which emissions continue to climb at current rates, extreme heat would cause labor-related losses of an estimated $155 billion per year by 2090. At the same time, coastal property damage in the U.S. from sea level rise and storm surge flooding could reach nearly $120 billion per year.” [Axios, 11/26/18 (+)]

U.S. Impacts Of Climate Change Are Intensifying, Federal Report Says. According to USA Today, “A massive report issued by the Trump administration on Friday emphasizes the dire threat that human-caused global warming poses to the United States and its citizens. ‘Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,’ researchers say in the report, officially Volume II of the National Climate Assessment. (Volume I was released last year.) The 1,600-page report details the climate and economic impacts U.S. residents will see if drastic action is not taken to address climate change. ‘The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,’ the researchers say. The last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the United States, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. In a worst-case scenario, the researchers say, climate change could deliver a 10 percent hit to the nation’s GDP by the end of the century.” [USA Today, 11/23/18 (+)]

Major Trump Administration Climate Report Says Damage Is ‘Intensifying Across The Country’. According to The Washington Post, “The federal government on Friday released a long-awaited report with an unmistakable message: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening. The report’s authors, who represent numerous federal agencies, say they are more certain than ever that climate change poses a severe threat to Americans’ health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. And while it avoids policy recommendations, the report’s sense of urgency and alarm stands in stark contrast to the lack of any apparent plan from President Trump to tackle the problems, which, according to the government he runs, are increasingly dire. The congressionally mandated document — the first of its kind issued during the Trump administration — details how climate-fueled disasters and other types of worrisome changes are becoming more commonplace throughout the country and how much worse they could become in the absence of efforts to combat global warming. Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida and the United States’ Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever-larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country’s sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras.” [The Washington Post, 11/23/18 (+)]

Government Climate Report Warns Of Worsening US Disasters. According to Associated Press, “As California’s catastrophic wildfires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a massive new federal report warns that these types of disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. The White House report quietly issued Friday also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. The National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in California this month and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warming-charged extremes ‘have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.’ The report notes the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. The recent Northern California wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connection to those in Southern California, said co-author William Hohenstein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ‘A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years,’ he said at a press conference Friday. The report is mandated by law every few years and is based on more than 1,000 previous research studies. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the United States and how it impacts different sectors of the economy, including energy and agriculture.” [Associated Press, 11/24/18 (=)]

Clashing With Trump, U.S. Government Report Says Climate Change Will Batter Economy. According to Reuters, “Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a government report issued on Friday that the White House called inaccurate. The congressionally mandated report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, outlined the projected impact of global warming on every corner of American society in a dire warning that is at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil-fuels agenda. ‘With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century - more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states,’ the report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II, said. Global warming would disproportionately hurt the poor, broadly undermine human health, damage infrastructure, limit the availability of water, alter coastlines, and boost costs in industries from farming, to fisheries and energy production, the report said. But it added that projections of further damage could change if greenhouse gas” [Reuters, 11/26/18 (=)]

U.S. Impacts Of Climate Change Are Intensifying, Federal Report Says. According to USA Today, “A massive report issued by the Trump administration on Friday emphasizes the dire threat that human-caused global warming poses to the United States and its citizens. ‘Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,’ researchers say in the report, officially Volume II of the National Climate Assessment. (Volume I was released last year.) The 1,600-page report details the climate and economic impacts U.S. residents will see if drastic action is not taken to address climate change. ‘The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,’ the researchers say. The last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the United States, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. In a worst-case scenario, the researchers say, climate change could deliver a 10 percent hit to the nation’s GDP by the end of the century.” [USA Today, 11/23/18 (+)]

Climate Change Is Already Hurting U.S. Communities, Federal Report Says. According to NPR, “Climate change is already causing more frequent and severe weather across the U.S., and the country is poised to suffer massive damage to infrastructure, ecosystems, health and the economy if global warming is allowed to continue, according to the most comprehensive federal climate report to date. The fourth National Climate Assessment is the culmination of years of research and analysis by hundreds of top climate scientists in the country. The massive report details the many ways in which global climate change is already affecting American communities, from hurricanes to wildfires to floods to drought. ‘Climate change is already affecting every part of the United States, almost every sector of the United States, be it agriculture or forestry or energy, tourism,’ says George Mason University professor Andrew Light, who is one of the report’s editors. ‘It’s going to hurt cities, it’s going to hurt people in the countryside, and, as the world continues to warm, things are going to get worse.’ … The new report, mandated by Congress and published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the latest and most detailed confirmation that humans are driving climate change and that Americans are already adapting to and suffering from its effects. Climate change is ‘an immediate threat, not a far-off possibility,’ it says. For example, large wildfires are getting more frequent because of climate change. The report notes that the area burned in wildfires nationwide each year has increased over the past 20 years, and ‘although projections vary by state and ecoregion, on average, the annual area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire is expected to increase by at least 30 percent by 2060.’” [NPR, 11/23/18 (=)]

Trump's Dire Climate Report Hands Ammunition To Democrats. According to Politico, “Federal scientists warned in a new report Friday that changes in the climate will disrupt the economies of every region in the country in the coming years, with costs threatening to reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually by the middle of this century. The message, echoing decades of sobering conclusions from the world’s leading climate scientists, is at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated scoffing at the idea of global warming. And the administration chose to release it on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day and one of the slowest news days of the year. But despite the timing, the report is bound to energize the new class of progressive Democrats set to take control of the House in January. Many of them, led by incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, are already pushing for an expansive ‘Green New Deal’ as one of the rallying cries the party would take into the 2020 campaign. Democrats wasted no time in pouncing on the report. ‘Rather than hiding the facts, President Trump should heed the message of our nation’s preeminent climate scientists and experts,’ said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, who is in line to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He added: ‘The days of denial and inaction in the House are over as House Democrats plan to aggressively address climate change and hold the Administration accountable for its backward policies that only make it worse.’” [Politico, 11/23/18 (=)]

Federal Report Sounds Alarm On Growing Impact Of Climate Change. According to The Hill, “A new climate report from the federal government released Friday warns that current global and regional efforts to stave off the devastating effects of climate change are insufficient. The report, the first of its kind released under the Trump administration, finds that climate change is expected to interrupt the way people live day-to-day as it ravages infrastructure, impacts human health, poses challenges to the global economy and threatens the world’s energy supply. The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the federal government release a report about global warming and climate change every four years. This report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), is the latest fulfillment of that mandate. It is the counterpart to the Climate Science Special Report, which was released last year. The damning report, which analyzes the effects of climate change by U.S. region, comes as President Trump has continued to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that global warming and climate change are caused by human activity. Trump on Wednesday seemed to scoff at the idea of global warming, tweeting: … Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?” [The Hill, 11/23/18 (=)]

Impacts Of Climate Change Pronounced In Northeast. According to Providence Journal, “By 2035, the Northeast is expected to be more than 3.6 degrees warmer on average than during the pre-industrial era, the largest increase in temperature in the contiguous United States, according to the newest installment of the National Climate Assessment released on Friday. The region — the most densely populated in the nation — will hit that warming milestone more than two decades before global average temperatures reach the same level, according to the comprehensive new report, citing research first published last year by climate scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Coupled with some of the highest rates of ocean warming and sea level rise in the nation, the Northeast is already experiencing changes to the environment and ecosystems that are increasing risks to its people, infrastructure and economy, the report says. The risks tied to climate change include inland flooding from more intense rain events, surges from more severe coastal storms, temperature extremes and episodes of poor air quality. ‘The changing climate of the Northeast threatens the health and well-being of residents through environmental changes that lead to health-related impacts and costs, including additional deaths, emergency-room visits and hospitalizations, higher risk of infectious diseases, lower quality of life, and increased costs associated with health-care utilization,’ the report says.” [Providence Journal, 11/24/18 (+)]

Changing Climate To Put Further Pressure On New England, Federal Report Predicts. According to Portland Press Herald, “New England’s forests, fisheries and cultural traditions are already experiencing significant disruptions from a changing climate and will face additional transformation over the coming decades, according to a federal report released Friday. Northeastern states are seeing some of the largest changes in the nation, yet conditions are shifting even faster in New England than the region as a whole, in some instances. Annual average temperatures in New England, for example, rose by roughly 3 degrees since the beginning of the last century compared to 1.8 degrees in the contiguous United States. Those temperature changes – combined with shifts in precipitation levels and rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine – will continue to impact the health, economy and aging infrastructure of the region.” [Portland Press Herald, 11/23/18 (+)]

Federal Climate Change Report Paints Grim Picture For Midwest. According to Chicago Tribune, “Rising temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity, with extreme heat wilting crops and posing a threat to livestock, according to a sweeping federal report on climate change released Friday. Midwest farmers will be increasingly challenged by warmer, wetter and more humid conditions from climate change, which also will lead to greater incidence of crop disease and more pests and will diminish the quality of stored grain. During the growing season, temperatures are projected to climb more in the Midwest than in any other region of the U.S., the report says. Without technological advances in agriculture, the onslaught of high-rainfall events and higher temperatures could reduce the Midwest agricultural economy to levels last seen during the economic downturn for farmers in the 1980s. Overall, yields from major U.S crops are expected to fall, the reports says. To adapt to the rising temperatures, substantial investments will be required, which will in turn will hurt farmers’ bottom lines. These are some of the findings of the report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 1,600-page report — vetted by 13 government agencies and written collectively with the help of 300 scientists — is perhaps the most authoritative and comprehensive statement on the risks of climate change, which has contributed to extreme weather that has cost the U.S. nearly $400 billion since 2015, the authors found. According to the report, the threat to Midwestern agriculture is just one potential blow to the region.” [Chicago Tribune, 11/23/18 (+)]

What’s New In The Latest U.S. Climate Assessment. According to The New York Times, “Global warming is now affecting the United States more than ever, and the risks of future disasters — from flooding along the coasts to crop failures in the Midwest — could pose a profound threat to Americans’ well-being. That’s the gist of Volume Two of the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,656-page report issued on Friday that explores both the current and future impacts of climate change. The scientific report, which comes out every four years as mandated by Congress, was produced by 13 federal agencies and released by the Trump administration. This year’s report contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. Temperatures are still going up, and the odds of dangers such as wildfires in the West continue to increase. But reflecting some of the impacts that have been felt across the country in the past four years, some of the report’s emphasis has changed.” [The New York Times, 11/23/18 (+)]

Five Major Takeaways From The Federal Climate Change Report. According to The Hill, “A new federal climate report released by the Trump administration a day after Thanksgiving issues a dire warning about climate change. The report’s message: Climate change is real, it is intensifying, and it will devastate the way human beings live day-to-day if U.S. leaders at all levels don’t take drastic action. The latest congressionally mandated report, dubbed the Fourth National Climate Assessment, finds that the effects of climate change are rippling out across the globe, negatively affecting people’s health and well-being. More than 300 federal and nonfederal scientists worked on the report, the first of its kind under the Trump administration, with its final draft reviewed by 13 federal agencies. Here are five things to know about the report’s findings. The report directly contradicts statements made by Trump … Its recommendations are at odds with Trump’s deregulatory agenda … Some claim the report’s Black Friday release was intended to bury its findings … Climate change could slash up to 1/10th of America’s GDP by 2100 … Climate change will have devastating impact on marginalized communities” [The Hill, 11/24/18 (+)]

Timing of Report

An Editor Of Climate Report Slams White House For Publishing It On 'Worst Possible' Day. According to The Hill, “One of the editors of a new climate report from the federal government criticized President Trump administration for releasing the assessment on Black Friday, comparing it to ‘burning it and burying it in the backyard.’ ‘They dropped the report on Black Friday, and you know it’s the press who calls releasing anything on a Friday afternoon ‘taking out the trash’ — this was burning it and burying it in the backyard, so it’s one of the worst possible days you could pick,’ Andrew Light, former climate change advisor under the Obama administration, told Hill.TV correspondent Jamal Simmons on Tuesday. ‘I’m not going to try to ascribe any kind of motivations to anyone in the administration for this but it’s just not the responsible thing to do when you’ve got a report that’s talking about the welfare of Americans,’ he continued. The scientific report was originally set to be released next month. But the National Centers for Environmental Information Technical Support Unit, David Easterling, said the report was moved up due to two upcoming conferences.” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (=)]

A Grave Climate Warning, Buried On Black Friday. According to The Atlantic, “On Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, the federal government published a massive and dire new report on climate change. The report warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the health of virtually every citizen. Most significantly, the National Climate Assessment—which is endorsed by nasa, noaa, the Department of Defense, and 10 other federal scientific agencies—contradicts nearly every position taken on the issue by President Donald Trump. Where the president has insisted that fighting global warming will harm the economy, the report responds: Climate change, if left unchecked, could eventually cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and kill thousands of Americans to boot. Where the president has said that the climate will ‘probably’ ‘change back,’ the report replies: Many consequences of climate change will last for millennia, and some (such as the extinction of plant and animal species) will be permanent. The report is a huge achievement for American science. It represents cumulative decades of work from more than 300 authors. Since 2015, scientists from across the U.S. government, state universities, and businesses have read thousands of studies, summarizing and collating them into this document. By law, a National Climate Assessment like this must be published every four years.” [The Atlantic, 11/23/18 (+)]

Trump Administration’s Strategy On Climate: Try To Bury Its Own Scientific Report. According to The New York Times, “The Trump White House, which has defined itself by a willingness to dismiss scientific findings and propose its own facts, on Friday issued a scientific report that directly contradicts its own climate-change policies. That sets the stage for a remarkable split-screen political reality in coming years. The administration is widely expected to discount or ignore the report’s detailed findings of the economic strain caused by climate change, even as it continues to cut environmental regulations, while opponents use it to mount legal attacks against the very administration that issued the report. ‘This report will be used in court in significant ways,’ said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. ‘I can imagine a lawyer for the Trump administration being asked by a federal judge, ‘How can the federal government acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, and then set aside the rules that protect the American people from the problem?’ And they might squirm around coming up with an answer.’ The 1,656-page National Climate Assessment, which is required by Congress, is the most comprehensive scientific study to date detailing the effects of global warming on the United States economy, public health, coastlines and infrastructure. It describes in precise detail how the warming planet will wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in coming decades.” [The New York Times, 11/25/18 (+)]

Trump Administration Criticized Over Timing Of Climate Change Report. According to The Hill, “Environmentalists, journalists and lawmakers are among those criticizing the Trump administration for releasing a dire federal climate change report the day after Thanksgiving, when fewer Americans are likely to read the news. The bombshell report, which warns of large-scale climate disasters if the U.S. continues down the track it’s headed, was released without much rollout midday Friday. Known as Black Friday, it’s a day in which people are likely more concerned with shopping than national affairs. Late Friday in general is famous in Washington for being a ‘news dump,’ in which an administration quietly releases less-than-optimal news. ‘Obviously, they timed the release to get the minimum visibility,’ Philip Duffy, an environmental scientist and president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told The Hill over the phone. He added that they likely calculated to ‘let [the report] fly under the radar as much as possible, take the heat and move on.’ Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the Senate’s most vocal critics of the president, in a tweet accused the administration of seeking to ‘bury a new report about the devastating consequences of climate change.’ ‘Why?’ Sanders said in the tweet. ‘Because Trump’s actions are actively making it worse.’” [The Hill, 11/23/18 (=)]

Buried? Feds To Release Major Climate Report Day After Thanksgiving. According to USA Today, “The federal government will release a major climate change report – Volume II of the National Climate Assessment – on Black Friday, typically one of the slowest news days of the year. ‘It’s an absolute disgrace to bury the truth about climate impacts in a year that saw hundreds of Americans die during devastating climate-fueled megafires, hurricanes, floods, and algal blooms,’ said National Wildlife Federation president Collin O’Mara in a statement. Volume II is expected to detail a range of current and future climate change impacts and again warn that the Earth is warming, humans are the cause, and the already serious impacts – such as the current California wildfires – are only going to get worse, Climate Central said. The new report should also have more of a regional focus, as demand rises for more local information on risks and consequences, said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central. The report is also slated to contain a new chapter focusing exclusively on the U.S. Caribbean territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. President Donald Trump, a repeated skeptic of climate change, took to Twitter on Wednesday night to again express his doubts, using the especially cold Thanksgiving forecast as an example. ‘Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?’ the president tweeted.” [USA Today, 11/21/18 (+)]

Al Gore Accuses Trump Officials Of Trying To 'Bury' Climate Report. According to The Hill, “Former Vice President Al Gore blasted the Trump administration on Friday for choosing to release a major climate change report on the day after Thanksgiving. ‘Unbelievably deadly and tragic wildfires rage in the west, hurricanes batter our coasts — and the Trump administration chooses the Friday after Thanksgiving to try and bury this critical U.S. assessment of the climate crisis,’ Gore said in a statement. ‘The President may try to hide the truth, but his own scientists and experts have made it as stark and clear as possible,’ the former vice president-turned climate change advocate added. … ‘It’s an absolute disgrace to bury the truth about climate impacts in a year that saw hundreds of Americans die during devastating climate-fueled megafires, hurricanes, floods, and algal blooms,’ National Wildlife Federation President Collin O’Mara said in a statement. David Easterling, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information Technical Support Unit, said the release date was moved up because the program responsible for it felt it ‘would be a topic of discussion’ at two international conferences coming up. ‘We wanted to get this out sufficiently in advance of those meetings to ensure that folks have a chance to review it,’ Easterling said during a phone call with reporters on Friday.” [The Hill, 11/24/18 (=)]

General Coverage

Global Carbon Emissions Rose In 2017, Dimming Hopes To Rein In Climate Change. According to USA Today, “Humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels shows few signs of letting up. After three years of decline, the amount of carbon dioxide humans emitted increased in 2017, the United Nations announced in a report issued Tuesday. Although ‘humanity is starting to tackle its fossil fuel addiction ... we’re not making the change (to renewable energy) nearly as quickly as we need to,’ said Joyce Msuya, the deputy executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, which released the report. More troublesome, it said any hope of keeping global carbon emission levels under control in the decades ahead – to try to rein in runaway climate change – seems to be dwindling. The U.N. warning comes four days after a massive report issued by the Trump administration – but disputed by the president himself – that emphasized the dire threat human-caused global warming poses to the USA and its citizens. Tuesday’s report concerns what scientists and policymakers call the ‘emissions gap,’ the difference between the amount of carbon dioxide emitted now and the drastically lower levels needed to slow or stop global warming. The U.N. report said that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century, emissions need to drop by a whopping 55 percent by 2030, compared with 2017 levels.” [USA Today, 11/27/18 (=)]

The World Needs To Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard? According to The New York Times, “Coal, the fuel that powered the industrial age, has led the planet to the brink of catastrophic climate change. Scientists have repeatedly warned of its looming dangers, most recently on Friday, when a major scientific report issued by 13 United States government agencies warned that the damage from climate change could knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in warming. An October report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on global warming found that avoiding the worst devastation would require a radical transformation of the world economy in just a few years. Central to that transformation: Getting out of coal, and fast. And yet, three years after the Paris agreement, when world leaders promised action, coal shows no sign of disappearing. While coal use looks certain to eventually wane worldwide, according to the latest assessment by the International Energy Agency, it is not on track to happen anywhere fast enough to avert the worst effects of climate change. Last year, in fact, global production and consumption increased after two years of decline.” [The New York Times, 11/24/18 (+)]

Trump Climate Report Lands. According to Politico, “Coming just days after President Donald Trump once again dismissed climate change, the report prompted Democratic Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tweet ‘People are going to die if we don’t start addressing climate change ASAP.’ And she pressed the case for reviving the defunct climate committee — and giving it the power to craft legislation. Rep. Frank Pallone, who would prefer to keep any climate legislation-writing at the House Energy and Commerce Committee he’s in line to lead, also weighed in saying that, ‘House Democrats plan to aggressively address climate change and hold the Administration accountable for its backward policies that only make it worse.’ On the other side of the aisle, Republicans grappled with their own next steps. Sen. Mike Lee told ‘Meet the Press’ that he was looking for ‘public policies that could be brought forward that would address the problem they’re addressing, without simultaneously devastating the U.S. economy.’ He told host Chuck Todd he was not open to a carbon tax, and that ‘if we’re going to move away from fossil fuels, it’s got to be done through innovation. And innovation can be choked out through excessive government regulation. We can’t let that happen.’ Fellow Republican Ben Sasse on Sunday also called for innovative ways to combat climate change, but said that he is not seeing any from lawmakers who have pushed climate change as their No. 1 issue.” [Politico, 11/26/18 (=)]

Opinion Pieces

Editorials

Editorial: All Must Take Urgent Action On Climate Change. According to Boulder Daily Camera, “The devastating effects of climate change are already upon us, humans are certainly to blame, and Americans must take urgent action, now, to avoid economic and health catastrophes by the end of the century. That was the message of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, produced by 13 federal departments and agencies and released the day after Thanksgiving. The report — whose authors include at least 10 from Colorado universities — is more than 1,600 pages long and replete with charts and graphs, yet it sustains a warning-lights-blinking-red tone from start to finish. ‘Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,’ Chapter One begins. ‘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.’ Global temperatures will continue to rise. It’s just a matter of how much. The assessment anticipates an increase by late this century of between 2.3 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit relative to the period 1986-2015. Many thousands of lives in America alone are at stake, as are significant swaths of the U.S. economy. In the largest U.S. cities, the report anticipates at least 3,900 more deaths each year by the end of the century due to changes in extreme hot and cold temperatures. There will also be adverse health effects from climate change-related floods, droughts, wildfires, foodborne diseases, infectious diseases, and worse air and water quality. As for the country’s economy, ‘The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century,’ the report says.” [Boulder Daily Camera, 12/1/18 (+)]

Editorial: Climate Change Is Real And It’s Going To Cost Us Billions. According to Philadelphia Inquirer, “The White House thought people wouldn’t notice a hair-raising climate-change report if it was released at 2 p.m. on Black Friday, when we were recovering from food hangovers. But it’s hard not to notice, since most people know that average air temperatures are higher than they’ve ever been, that there’s more flooding in the East, more wildfires in the West, and more droughts in the Midwest. And, they know that global warming has weaponized our weather. The problem is getting the fossil-fuel industry, a driver of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and other powerful forces, such as big agriculture, to stop causing lasting damage to the planet we inhabit, while unleashing brutal and damaging forces on the climate. If those who deny the facts — including President Trump — don’t care that thousands more people will meet premature deaths and countless others will suffer respiratory ailments, or that food supplies will be scarcer, that forests are shrinking, and coastlines are retreating, then they should consider the economic arguments.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/29/18 (+)]

Editorial: Why Is Climate Change So Hard To Tackle? According to The Economist, “It is more than a quarter of a century since the leaders of the world, gathered in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, committed their countries to avoiding ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system’ by signing the un convention on climate change. The case for living up to their words has only become stronger. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grows unremittingly. Average global temperatures have risen, too, to about 1°C above those of the pre-industrial era. The science that links the two is incontestable. Recent extreme-weather events, from floods in Hanoi to fires in California, were made more likely by the change that the climate has already undergone. Things will only get worse—perhaps catastrophically so. In a sense the world is already equipped for the task at hand. Wind and solar power have, after huge subsidies, joined nuclear reactors and dams as affordable ways of generating gigawatts of electricity without burning fossil fuels. As our Technology Quarterly this week shows, parts of the energy system not easily electrified—some forms of transport, industrial processes like making steel and cement, heating offices and homes—could also be decarbonised with coming technologies. And policymakers have tools to bring about change, including carbon taxes, regulation, subsidies and, if they choose, command and control. Yet when the parties to the convention on climate change meet again in Katowice, Poland, on December 2nd, it will be against a backdrop not just of rising temperatures but also of rising despair. The problem is obvious; the stakes are huge; solutions are within reach. So why is the response inadequate?” [The Economist, 11/29/18 (+)]

Editorial: NRA-Style Superlobby Is What America Needs To Fight Climate Change. According to USA Today, “Say what you will about the National Rifle Association’s take-no-prisoners approach to gun control, it has been ruthlessly successful. Despite a spate of mass shootings, the gun lobby has blocked any major federal restrictions on firearms since the now-lapsed assault weapons ban in 1994. Now it’s time for climate activists, businesses harmed by global warming, and everyone else who cares about the fate of the Earth and future generations to take a page from the NRA playbook. A climate superlobby is exactly what’s needed to convince a still-doubtful segment of the public, mobilize voters, strong-arm recalcitrant lawmakers — and, perhaps most important, raise the money necessary to make all of this happen. True, if this were easy, it would have happened already. It’s a heavy lift to hammer out cooperation among the nation’s Balkanized environmental groups and regulation-averse corporate interests. But what’s happening now isn’t working. And time is running out.” [USA Today, 11/28/18 (+)]

Editorial: Climate Change Is Affordable. According to The Wall Street Journal, “There’s a reason press coverage of the report was uniformly confused. Headlines proclaimed a doom that couldn’t be found in its pages. Journalists emphasized the non-germane, such as the Chicago Tribune belaboring the fact that the ‘1,600-page report’ was ‘vetted by 13 government agencies and written collectively with the help of 300 scientists.’ The authors of the government tract could have communicated their assumptions and findings succinctly and clearly. They didn’t. You have to do some research to figure out what’s going on, but the key is their estimate of future emissions. The report adopts the RCP 8.5 scenario -- for ‘representative concentration pathway.’ (Don’t ask.) As a widely cited 2011 paper puts it, RCP 8.5 is a ‘high emission’ scenario, in which global population grows faster than currently expected, technological change is minimal, improvement in energy efficiency is minimal. The scenario also requires the ‘extraction of large amounts of unconventional hydrocarbon resources well beyond presently extractable reserves.’ Yet the authors of the new U.S. assessment still arrive at a manageable $510 billion in estimated annual climate-related costs by 2090. This sum is overwhelmingly due to lost labor hours and higher mortality from extreme temperatures, which may not be estimated with much reliability. (Interestingly, wildfire costs actually decline from present levels, ‘owing to projected landscape-scale shifts to vegetation with longer fire return interval.’)” [The Wall Street Journal, 11/27/18 (+)]

Editorial: Maine Should Invest In Measures To Mitigate Looming Damage From Climate Change. According to Portland Press Herald, “The global challenge of climate change is usually framed as a debate between people who ‘believe’ that human activity is causing the Earth to get warmer and those who don’t – or, at least, who don’t want to respond to the scientific consensus in any way that interferes with economic growth. But on a local level, it’s a different question. Maine’s climate challenge will be living with the consequences of the world’s slow response to the well-founded warnings that have been signaled for decades. Heavier rains, rising sea levels and an acidifying ocean are just a few of the factors already affecting Maine’s businesses and environment, and vector-borne diseases are threatening the public’s well-being. It will cost billions of dollars to replace outmoded infrastructure that could mitigate the catastrophic loss of property and economic disruption caused by predictable storms and floods. And the time to start making those investments is now. The overarching message of the National Climate Assessment issued Friday by government scientists was consistent with other studies, especially the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted severe climate impacts in the next dozen years, even when taking current reduction measures into account. What’s different about the report issued last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Centers for Environmental Information was its specificity about direct and indirect effects of a warming climate, putting a firm price tag on inaction.” [Portland Press Herald, 11/27/18 (+)]

Editorial: Our Climate Reality Will Catch Up To Us, No Matter How Hard Trump Tries To Bury The Evidence. According to The Washington Post, “IF YOU did not hear about the major new federal climate change report, the Trump administration will be pleased. The report was released the day after Thanksgiving — when many people were distracted — probably because it contradicts practically everything President Trump has said and done on global warming. The Fourth National Climate Assessment is yet another reminder that reality will catch up to the United States, no matter how much the president tries to ignore and deny it. The world is heating up, and there are no ‘credible natural explanations for this amount of warming.’ U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions have decreased a bit lately. But they need to go down much further and faster to avoid dire consequences. Already, the nation is seeing ‘intensifying droughts, increasing heavy downpours, reducing snowpack,’ as well as ‘declines in surface water quality.’ Without a course change, increasingly depleted groundwater, rising seas and other effects will make it more difficult to farm and provide enough water for large cities.” [The Washington Post, 11/26/18 (+)]

Editorial: A Trump Win For The Environment? Maybe. According to The New York Times, “Into the bleak landscape that is the Trump administration’s environmental record comes a new report — from the government’s own analysts — that lays out in the grimmest terms yet the consequences of continued inaction on climate change. The National Climate Assessment, issued on Friday when most Americans’ attention was on shopping, football and leftovers, predicts devastating effects from a warming planet and stands in sharp contrast to President Trump’s blithe rejection of the basic science of climate change. The report details the environmental, human and economic costs of a changing climate in the United States, including worsening drought, more vicious wildfires, wider crop failures and accelerating property damage. The impacts could reduce domestic economic activity by as much as a tenth by 2100, the report says. The president shrugged it off — ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said Monday — as he has all previous studies on climate change, even as his administration pursues policies that will in all likelihood make the problem worse. In fact, the administration’s retrograde policies and its assault on President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda have been so broad that it’s become something of a game to ask which of Mr. Obama’s initiatives on climate change and the environment still have life. The news site Axios tried this exercise recently and came up with a rather short list, albeit one that might suggest some tactics to win at least modest protections for the environment even from this administration. It included a possible reprieve for a threatened bird that Mr. Obama had hoped to save, but none of his ambitious efforts to attack global warming. Mr. Trump is determined to weaken Mr. Obama’s rules restricting greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and power plants — the chief culprits in the warming climate.” [The New York Times, 11/26/18 (+)]

Editorial: Trump And Colorado GOP Point Out: Records Broken On Weather — And Climate Change Folly. According to Sentinel, “President Trump was unwittingly right this week while tweeting again about climate change, cold weather and ‘RECORDS BROKEN.’ The real record broken, however, was for Trump topping his own impressive dossier of ludicrous, maleficent and banal nonsense about what is arguably the greatest threat to the United States and most likely, all of mankind. ‘Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?’ — Trump said Wednesday in a tweet. That was only part of Trump’s banner week. The Trump Administration later in the week then worked to bury an annual climate change report from his own government, which refuted his fallacious weather conflation. It’s another move where Trump demonstrates what is either his ignorance of science or corrupt plot to refute it. Each year, the American government is required to make an annual assessment on global climate change. The Trump White House released the alarming report on Black Friday, a spurious effort to try and bury it. Even for Editorial: a president who excels at flaunting his incompetence, his cruelty, his corruption and his obstinacy, Trump truly has outdone himself this week by trying to hide an authoritative, unequivocal rebuke of those, like himself, who either deny or ignore the threat of global warming.” [Sentinel, 11/25/18 (+)]

Op-Eds and Q&As

Op-Ed: Five Myths About Climate Change. According to an op-ed by Katherine Hayhoe in The Washington Post, “The Fourth National Climate Assessment — the work of 13 federal agencies and more than 350 scientists, including me — is clear: The Earth is warming faster than at any time in human history, and we’re the ones causing it. Climate change is already affecting people, and the more carbon we produce, the more dangerous the effects over the coming century. Nevertheless, many people continue to believe and propagate some misleading myths. Here are the five I hear most frequently. MYTH NO. 1 Climate scientists are in it for the money. … MYTH NO. 2 The climate has changed before. It’s just a natural cycle. … MYTH NO. 3 Climate scientists are split on whether it’s real. … MYTH NO. 4 Climate change won’t affect me. … MYTH NO. 5 It’s cold outside — global warming can’t be real.” [The Washington Post, 11/30/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: 4 Bipartisan Ways To Keep National Climate Assessment Warnings From Coming True. According to an op-ed by Collin O’Mara in The Hill, “1. A bipartisan infrastructure package represents the best opportunity for progress. With both the White House and Democratic leadership talking about the importance of infrastructure, a well-crafted package could reduce current emissions by more than 30 percent and make communities across the nation more resilient. Through strategic investments nationwide in industrial and building efficiency; a cleaner power sector; transportation electrification and transit; and carbon sequestration, we can reduce emissions beyond our Paris commitments in a manner that supports well-paying jobs and domestic manufacturing. … 2. Another area of potential bipartisan agreement is reducing the one-quarter of domestic greenhouse gas emissions that originate from federal lands. Despite recent deregulatory efforts, there remain common-sense measures to reduce emissions leaking from oil, gas, and coal development and electricity generation, including next generation sequestration technologies, which could save taxpayers billions of dollars. … 3. As reduce emissions, we must also seek bipartisan solutions to improve the resilience of communities across America. Rather than spending billions of dollars after a fire, flood, or other disaster occurs, we must invest more in prevention that could mitigate much of the damage, saving lives and tax dollars. … 4. We must also reform the National Flood Insurance Program and Stafford Act to prioritize pre-disaster mitigation, actuarially-sound rates, up-to-date floodplain mapping, and greater market competition, which will make communities safer and reduce taxpayer liabilities.” [The Hill, 11/29/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Climate Studies Say Warming May Cost US $500 Billion A Year — It Will Cost Much More. According to an op-ed by Paul Bledsoe in The Hill, “Three stunningly dire climate change reports have emerged in the last month, including the UN ‘Emissions Gap’ report released this week and the U.S. National Climate Assessment released last Friday. Together, they ring an alarm bell of historic proportions, and must serve as an unprecedented wake-up call to the U.S. and global leaders meeting in Poland next week for key UN climate negotiations. Yet, even as exigent as they are, these studies still underestimate the risks of runaway, catastrophic climate change, which other reports have found. Simply put, the sum of the science finds that achieving near-term and deep emissions reductions has become manifestly urgent for the safety of nations around the world. The United Nation’s ‘Emissions Gap’ report out this week finds that the current emissions reduction pledges from all countries within the Paris Agreement, including the U.S., are far too weak to keep temperatures from increasing less than 2 degrees Celsius pre-industrial levels and provide even a modicum of climate protection. The report notes that the ‘original [global] level of ambition needs to be roughly tripled for the 2°C scenario and increased around fivefold for the 1.5°C scenario.’ The urgency of action is underscored by the study’s related finding that ‘Global GHG emissions in 2030 need to be approximately 25 percent and 55 percent lower than in 2017 to put the world on a least-cost pathway to limiting global warming to 2oC and 1.5oC, respectively.’” [The Hill, 11/29/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Climate Debate Comes Full Circle. According to an op-ed by Brian McKeon in The Hill, “The scene: Scientists issuing dire warnings about impacts of climate change. A Republican president intent on rolling back environmental and public health regulations put into place by his predecessor. A Congress unified under Republican control actively supporting this anti-regulatory agenda, either through formal action or tacit inaction. Federal courts, now led by Republican-appointed judges, affirming the strategy from the district court level all the way up to the Supreme Court. States, frustrated with deregulation and congressional inaction, stepping in to lead the way through legislative activity or seeking relief through the courts. Welcome to the early 2000s. While it often seems like the actions of the Trump administration are unprecedented, we can learn from the substantial similarities to the Bush administration’s moves to roll back environmental policies. Before President Trump abandoned the Paris Agreement 2017, President George W. Bush ditched the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. Before the United Nations’ IPCC released a climate report announcing the need for unprecedented global policy changes to avoid catastrophe, and the U.S. issued the alarming Fourth National Climate Assessment, in 2005, the UN Environment Program warned us about 50 million ‘climate refugees’ by 2010. And in both cases, state officials, dissatisfied with federal actions, took the reins on climate and environmental policies.” [The Hill, 11/29/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: The Ticking Bomb Of Climate Change Is America's Biggest Threat. According to an op-ed by Michael Fuchs in The Guardian, “Imagine that US leaders were told that hundreds of nuclear weapons were set on a timer to detonate across the planet, progressively and in increasing numbers, over the coming years and decades. The lives of millions would be upended, if not made nearly impossible to survive, by transformed weather patterns and resource scarcity. Tens of millions would become migrants as regions became uninhabitable. Millions would die, more and more as time went on. If this science fiction were reality, US leaders would lead an international effort to immediately disarm and dismantle the weapons. But this isn’t science fiction. Climate change is a ticking time bomb, literally threatening to end human life on earth over the coming centuries. As climate journalist Peter Brannen describes it, Earth faced a similar crisis hundreds of millions of years ago during the ‘Great Dying’ when volcanoes spewed so much carbon dioxide into the air – including magma that blanketed an area as large as the lower 48 US states, 1km deep – that it almost killed all life. Today, Brannen says, ‘we’re shooting carbon dioxide up into the atmosphere 10 times faster than the ancient volcanoes’.” [The Guardian, 11/29/18 (+)]

Q&A: What The Climate Change Report Means For Investors, According To Blackrock’s Brian Deese. According to Barron’s, “Barron’s: What do the California wildfires, weather disasters, and new reports about global warming mean for investors? Deese: All these data points reinforce a set of relatively clear trends. We are seeing greater physical manifestations of changes in the climate: more frequent and extreme weather events. We’re also seeing important accelerations in technological and regulatory trends. All of these are having real world impacts and real financial impacts. Investors have to increasingly understand how to measure these risks and factor them in. The awareness of risk posed by climate change isn’t uniform. The insurance industry is naturally ahead of the curve because of their need to do asset liability matching over long duration. There is now a more recent understanding [by other investors] that when you think about climate change, you have to think about physical and regulatory risk, and how to analyze and measure them. Over the last year, we’ve been working on a more sophisticated way of looking at how well individual companies are positioned for the transition to a low-carbon economy. It requires looking beyond today’s carbon footprint at forward-looking metrics like how much a company is investing in R&D, in clean energy technologies and how it’s managing energy, water, and waste. We recently launched a $750 million strategy in partnership with Wespath Benefits and Investments, which invests on behalf of the United Methodist pension, and other religious pension organizations.” [Barron’s, 11/29/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: We Can't Say We Weren't Warned About Climate Change: Three Grim New Reports Show We're Not Doing Enough. According to an op-ed by Scott Martelle in Los Angeles Times, “In the future, when the seas have risen along with global temperatures, and droughts, floods and heat waves have collapsed ecosystems and made sections of the Earth uninhabitable for humans, we won’t be able to say we didn’t see it coming. Even the Trump administration, in a report released (fittingly enough) on Black Friday, now admits that climate change is here. In fact, another report released the same day says nearly one-quarter of U.S. carbon missions can be traced to oil and gas leases on federal land, so the culpability goes beyond inaction and bad policies to, at least minimally, earning revenues from extracting fossil fuels. Phasing out those leases would go a long way toward meeting national emissions goals.” [Los Angeles Times, 11/28/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: All The Reasons America Needs An Anti-Oil Foreign Policy. It's Not Just About Climate. According to an op-ed by Sean Burns in USA Today, “As a new U.S. government report shows, climate change will have massive negative effects on our economy and cause significant displacement of Americans. Republicans responded by questioning the science of climate change, or like Sens. Mike Lee and Ben Sasse, claiming that a switch to renewable energy sources would hurt the nation. In fact, a transition to renewable energy is quite feasible. And, separate from its effects on the environment, it would advance long-term U.S. foreign policy interests by undermining the international influence of oil. Climate change is the global challenge of our time. Limiting its effects will require the rapid replacement of carbon-producing fossil fuels with battery-powered vehicles and renewable energy sources. But moving away from carbon-based fuels should not be thought of as a cost that America must pay to help the world. It is, rather, an opportunity to advance U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals. America should pursue an aggressive strategy of rapid decarbonization of the world economy for its own selfish interests.” [USA Today, 11/29/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: OK, We Have A Climate Problem — Now What? According to an op-ed by Richard Moss in The Hill, “The Fourth National Climate Assessment reports on what countless Americans are already enduring. Calamitous wildfires intensified by hotter, drier conditions; ‘nuisance flooding’ and record hurricane-related rainfalls exacerbated by sea level rise; new health threats such as Zika-carrying mosquitos; depressed agriculture and dairy production costing billions of dollars. And these are just a few of the big-ticket items. This is not a dramatic prediction of a distant future yet to come. It’s a snapshot of the early stages of climate change. The National Climate Assessment is the latest confirmation that we have a serious problem. The report was produced by hundreds of climate scientists around the country, released by 13 federal agencies, and published by the Trump administration last Friday. It’s a milestone, the president’s ‘I don’t believe it’ notwithstanding. The report answers the ‘so what’ question about climate change by detailing its consequences for Americans. It shows how we are already being forced to make tough decisions and how we’ll have to struggle to contain the damage. ‘Now what?’ is the question that many are asking. Reports such as the National Climate Assessment provide a foundation, but they cannot provide the nuance and detail that will be required for science-based decision making that takes account of local realities and values.” [The Hill, 11/28/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Conservatives' Climate Delusion: The GOP Must Snap Out Of Its Mindless Denialism So They Can Sit At The Table And Start Crafting Solutions. According to an op-ed by S.E. Cupp in New York Daily News, “In the wake of a comprehensive report on the projected effects of climate change nearly a century into the future — a report funded by the U.S. government and compiled by agencies within President Trump’s own administration — many on the right have banged their predictable drums in order to either legitimize Trump’s own kooky conspiracy theories or to delegitimize climate science as a purely political enterprise. Set Trump aside. Of the effects climate change may have on the U.S. economy, he says gruffly, ‘I don’t believe it.’ That’s his prerogative and an unsurprising one, and should be taken in the context of everything else he says: whatever is convenient for him. But for Republicans and conservatives, it’s both willfully ignorant and negligent not to acknowledge that there is in fact a scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and man is responsible for much of it. By all estimates, between 97% and 100% of scientists worldwide agree on these two facts. That’s about as compelling as it gets, and the longer the right refuses to accept this basic premise, the longer they’ll be locked out of taking part in a meaningful solution. Many of us on the right have long acknowledged climate change is real, only to be harangued by liberal absolutists who refused to entertain any questions about what, exactly, we should do about it besides becoming vegans, signing meaningless international treaties and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into solar sinkholes.” [New York Daily News, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Think The Snow Was A Headache In KC? Try Climate Change For 100 Years. According to an op-ed by Dave Helling in The Kansas City Star, “Snow removal is a fascinating political issue. Complainers jammed the City Hall phones in 2000 when a major ice and snow storm struck. People, it turns out, get quite angry when the streets go unplowed for days. At the same time, no one wants to spend millions of dollars on snow removal when it isn’t needed. A snowplow is only necessary a couple of times a year, Kansas City politicians know, even under the worst of circumstances. So local bigwigs walk a weird path when planning for snow and ice events: Be prepared, but not too prepared. In the years ahead, lawmakers may not have that luxury. The world’s climate is changing in life-altering ways. That’s clear when you read the just-released Fourth National Climate Assessment — the one foolishly rejected by President Donald Trump. ‘Future climate change is expected to further disrupt many areas of life,’ it says, ‘exacerbating existing challenges to prosperity posed by aging and deteriorating infrastructure, stressed ecosystems and economic inequality.’ Climate change isn’t about a few inconvenient snow storms. In fact, there may be much less snow in our future. In the northern Great Plains, ‘the fraction of total water in precipitation that falls as snow is expected to decline by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2100,’ the assessment says.” [The Kansas City Star, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Another Government Report Is Dead Wrong On Fragile State Of Our Planet. According to an op-ed by Stephen Moore in The Hill, “What is it with the modern left and the mainstream media that makes them so enamored with predictions of the coming apocalypse? Perhaps it is thanks to the old rule of journalism that bad news sells newspapers. The media has broadcast far and wide the latest primal scream by the federal government and hundreds of scientists that all life on earth by the end of the century could be severely threatened due to climate change. Chicago could turn into Phoenix and its desert conditions. Economic losses will eventually total trillions of dollars. Early death, food shortages, and pestilence will become the norm without ‘radical’ changes in the way we live and use energy. The alarmist report warns that climate change is already destroying the planet, as evidenced by the strange occurrence of natural disasters that have almost never happened in history, like forest fires in California, hurricanes in Florida, and floods in other nations. How could a government report prepared by hundreds of scientists and with the official imprimatur of the federal government be wrong? The obvious answer is that they have been consistently wrong for decades in predictions of environmental devastation. Anyone over the age of 50 knows that we have heard these sensational, false malthusian forecasts from the federal government, and that reality has contradicted them in almost every instance. Look at history and consider the track record.” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (-)]

Op-Ed: Trump Says Climate Change Isn’t Real. My Trip To The Top Of The World Proved Otherwise. According to an op-ed by Eric Scigliano in Politico, “The top of the world is now warming at twice the average global rate. You’ve likely seen the graphs and stats: Last winter, maximum sea-ice cover narrowly missed being the smallest ever recorded—a dubious honor that goes to the winter of 2016-17. The two previous winters’ ice packs were the next smallest. Since 1979, peak sea-ice coverage has fallen from about 6.5 million to 5.5 million square miles. At the dawn of the 20th century, it took the great polar explorer Roald Amundsen three years and three icebound winters to sail the fabled Northwest Passage at the top of the continent. Today ships steam right through, and forecasters predict that the entire Arctic Ocean may be ice-free in summer 2050. This is giddy news if you’re a shipper looking for a cheaper route from the factories of China to the malls of Atlantic America and the hypermarkets of Europe. Not so if you’re a narwhal or bowhead whale, two of the species that will likely suffer most from the snowpack’s decline and disappearance—thanks to both the loss of a food web based in the algae that grow under the ice and the arrival of predatory killer whales, which the ice now excludes. The changes that warming is bringing to the Arctic affect much more than a couple exotic whale species; they are transforming the region’s lands as well as waters. For creatures as various as majestic caribou, diminutive seabirds, and humans here and around the world, the results are dire. For these species, freezing means life, and new thaw—the along with the billions of tons of carbon that will be released when it comes—threatens disaster.” [Politico, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Here's What Is Actually In The Sobering National Climate Assessment. According to an op-ed by Lynn Scarlett in The Hill, “If there is any good news in all these reports, it is this -- we can make new choices and set a new path for ourselves, one that offers opportunity. By significantly increasing our use of renewable energy sources, we create more, cheaper, and better options to power our future. By changing land management practices, we can increase land productivity, reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and slow climate change. By investing in infrastructure, including natural infrastructure like coastal reefs or tree canopy in cities, we can create communities that are more resilient to the impacts of climate change and have more green spaces to enjoy. Critical moments like this demand we make good choices, based on good information. The Fourth National Climate Assessment offers a detailed account of the problems we’re up against, and they are serious. But these problems have solutions. If we implement them, we’ll create a better future for our children, one that offers a welcome alternative to what will result if we fail to act.” [The Hill, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: President Trump Overlooks An Investment Opportunity In Climate Change. According to an op-ed by Antony Currie in The New York Times, “Fighting climate change could be America’s new New Deal. The effects of global warming on virtually all aspects of American society could be devastating, according to a government report released on Friday. Rather than seize on its findings as a way to boost American innovation, economic output and jobs, President Trump’s administration pushed the report out late on Friday after Thanksgiving — and then played down its devastating findings. That’s a big missed opportunity. Unchecked, climate change could cut as much as a tenth off the nation’s gross domestic product by the end of the century, according to the authors of the 1,656-page assessment. That overall figure probably underestimates regional variances. The overall cost of the wildfires that hit California in 2017, for example, amounted to 6.5 percent of the state’s economic output, according to estimates by the weather forecasting company AccuWeather. Factor in everything from water scarcity to pollution to energy production to human health, and in some parts of the country the economic impact could be far worse. The cost in financial and human terms drops by up to 70 percent if greenhouse-gas emissions peak before the middle of the century and then drop, the report says. That requires investment, of course — which some Republicans, like Senator Mike Lee of Utah, deride as being harmful to the economy.” [The New York Times, 11/27/18 (=)]

Op-Ed: As A Warming World Wreaks Havoc, Trump Wages War On Climate Science. According to an op-ed by John Podesta in The Guardian, “The evidence of climate change is all around us, from melting Alaskan permafrost to wildfires in Sweden, from the brutal European heatwave to the devastating 2017 and 2018 hurricane seasons, which have claimed thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and North Carolina. In recent weeks, the worst wildfires in California history have wiped entire towns off the map and killed scores of people. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning of mass wildfires, superstorms, food shortages and dying coral reefs by 2040 was a cry for immediate action. But as climate change is happening in real time, the practice of climate science –collecting data, observing and analyzing the Earth’s systems and communicating those findings to decision-makers and the public – has never been at greater risk. That’s why I am in Brussels this week speaking to European Union parliamentarians on the unprecedented threats facing the global understanding of climate change as a result of the Trump administration’s hostility to climate science, and discussing what European countries can and should do in response. Even though the need for high-quality reliable scientific data on the causes and effects of climate change has never been higher, the politicization of climate science in the United States has reached regrettable new lows. The Trump administration has twice now issued budget proposals that sought to dramatically reduce funding for or outright eliminate the collection and analysis of data about Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and geological, biological and energy systems. All told, across all 13 US federal agencies that play a role in federal climate and energy data and science programs, the Trump administration’s budgets would have yielded cuts of 13.2 to 16.8%, according to an analysis released in June by the Center for American Progress.” [The Guardian, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: The Best Thing You Can Do To Stop Climate Change Is To Vote Against Republicans. According to an op-ed by Matthew Yglesias in Vox, “With the 2018 National Climate Assessment’s dire forecasts in the news, many people want to know what they personally can do to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and help the world get on a more sustainable footing. For any single American, the answer is to vote against Republicans. Vote against the incumbent Republican president who is implementing new, industry-friendly regulations that will increase climate pollution. Vote against the Republican president who has pulled out of global climate agreements and put necessary international climate cooperation out of reach. Vote against Republican senators who routinely agree to confirm regulators who are in the pockets of industry and who, if a future Democratic administration is put in place, will seek to stymie the confirmation of federal judges who believe in allowing regulators to enforce the law. Vote against House Republicans who seek to defund relevant regulatory agencies and who oppose green energy initiatives. Vote against Republican governors who veto renewable energy bills that pass Democratic-majority state legislatures. And, of course, vote against Republican state legislators who never pass such bills in the first place. Even further down the ballot, attorneys general matter too. Republican ones mercilessly fight Obama-era efforts to reduce climate pollution, and in the Trump era, Democratic ones have been fighting on the other side.” [Vox, 11/27/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Black Friday Climate Report: Trump Waves White Flag And Fails To Protect American People. According to an op-ed by Elizabeth Gore in The Hill, “What if the doctor said you had treatable cancer and then told you to ignore it? That’s essentially the Trump administration’s approach after the release of a devastating new federal report on climate change. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, a report mandated by Congress and produced by 13 federal agencies, says ‘the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country...how much they intensify will depend on actions taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.’ This study is a deeply researched account of the damaging effects of unchecked climate pollution on our water, agriculture, transportation, air quality, communities and health. Its findings were endorsed by NASA, the Department of Defense, and experts at 10 other federal agencies. The reaction of the Trump administration? Dump the news on Black Friday and continue to pursue policies that make the problem worse. President Trump and his EPA administrators have pushed to allow more carbon and other climate pollution from cars, trucks, oil and gas operations, and power plants. They’ve worked to cut funding for climate research and removed important information about climate change from government web sites. And they’ve made the United States into an international outcast as the only country seeking to leave the Paris climate agreement and avoid its responsibility to solve this problem. With Trump waving a white surrender flag and failing to protect the American people, the new Congress must act boldly. Effective, market-based solutions exist. We know that there are policies that would help solve this problem. As a start, the House should establish clear goals for reducing pollution and holding polluters accountable. Congress should also pursue 100 percent clean energy which would spur innovation and job growth.” [The Hill, 11/25/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: The Climate Won't Crash The Economy ; A Worst-Case Scenario Projects Annual GDP Growth Will Be Slower By 0.05 Percentage Point. According to an op-ed by Steve Koonin in The Wall Street Journal, “Headlines warned of economic doom after the U.S. government released its fourth National Climate Assessment last week. Yet a close reading of the report shows that the overall economic impact of human-caused climate change is expected to be quite small. Projecting human-caused changes in the global climate is a major scientific challenge; estimates of the temperature increases due to rising greenhouse-gas concentrations are uncertain by a factor of three. Trying to make projections for a particular region—such as the contiguous U.S., which comprises only 1.6% of the globe’s surface—compounds the uncertainty. Estimates of the economic impact are less certain still, in part because as-yet-unknown modes of adaptation will mitigate the effects. The report’s numbers, uncertain as they are, turn out not to be all that alarming. The final figure of the final chapter shows that an increase in global average temperatures of 9 degrees Fahrenheit (beyond the 1.4-degree rise already recorded since 1880) would directly reduce the U.S. gross domestic product in 2090 by 4%, plus or minus 2%—that is, the GDP would be about 4% less than it would have been absent human influences on the climate. That ‘worst-worst case’ estimate assumes the largest plausible temperature rise and only known modes of adaptation.” [The Wall Street Journal, 11/26/18 (-)]

Op-Ed: The Depravity Of Climate-Change Denial. According to an op-ed by Paul Krugman in The New York Times, “The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States. True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work. The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate change poses a major threat to the nation, and some of its adverse effects are already being felt. For example, the report, written before the latest California disaster, highlights the growing risks of wildfire in the Southwest; global warming, not failure to rake the leaves, is why the fires are getting ever bigger and more dangerous. But the Trump administration and its allies in Congress will, of course, ignore this analysis. Denying climate change, no matter what the evidence, has become a core Republican principle. And it’s worth trying to understand both how that happened and the sheer depravity involved in being a denialist at this point.” [The New York Times, 11/26/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Knowledge, Ignorance And Climate Change. According to an op-ed by Angel Pinillos in The New York Times, “No matter how smart or educated you are, what you don’t know far surpasses anything you may know. Socrates taught us the virtue of recognizing our limitations. Wisdom, he said, requires possessing a type of humility manifested in an awareness of one’s own ignorance. Since then, the value of being aware of our ignorance has been a recurring theme in Western thought: René Descartes said it’s necessary to doubt all things to build a solid foundation for science; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, reflecting on the limits of language, said that ‘the difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.’ Awareness of ignorance appears to be common in politics as well. In a recent ‘60 Minutes’ interview, President Trump said of global warming, ‘I don’t know that it’s man-made.’ The same sentiment was echoed by Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Perhaps Trump and Kudlow, confident in their ignorance on these important issues, are simply expressing philosophical humility and wisdom. Or perhaps not. Sometimes, when it appears that someone is expressing doubt, what he is really doing is recommending a course of action. For example, if I tell you that I don’t know whether there is milk in the fridge, I’m not exhibiting philosophical wisdom — I’m simply recommending that you check the fridge before you go shopping. From this perspective, what Trump is doing is telling us that governmental decisions should not assume that global warming is caused by humans.” [The New York Times, 11/26/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: I Was Wrong On Climate Change. Why Can’t Other Conservatives Admit It, Too? According to an op-ed by Max Boot in The Washington Post, “I admit it. I used to be a climate-change skeptic. I was one of those conservatives who thought that the science was inconclusive, that fears of global warming were as overblown as fears of a new ice age in the 1970s, that climate change was natural and cyclical, and that there was no need to incur any economic costs to deal with this speculative threat. I no longer think any of that, because the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, released Friday by the U.S. government, puts it starkly: ‘Observations collected around the world provide significant, clear, and compelling evidence that global average temperature is much higher, and is rising more rapidly, than anything modern civilization has experienced, with widespread and growing impacts.’ The report notes that ‘annual average temperatures have increased by 1.8°F across the contiguous United States since the beginning of the 20th century’ and that ‘annual median sea level along the U.S. coast . . . has increased by about 9 inches since the early 20th century as oceans have warmed and land ice has melted.’ The report attributes these changes to man-made greenhouse gases and warns: ‘High temperature extremes, heavy precipitation events, high tide flooding events along the U.S. coastline, ocean acidification and warming, and forest fires in the western United States and Alaska are all projected to continue to increase, while land and sea ice cover, snowpack, and surface soil moisture are expected to continue to decline in the coming decades.’” [The Washington Post, 11/26/18 (+)]

Op-Ed: Here’s The Good News In That Alarming Report On Climate Change. According to an op-ed by Tim Mullaney in Market Watch, “Of all the things we had to be thankful for last week, the climate-change report that the Trump administration tried to bury by releasing it on a Friday when no one was working wasn’t one of them — at least not on the surface. It paints a tale of a huge pending economic mess if we don’t get serious about slowing down carbon use and global warming. But here’s the good news: The report also makes the case quite clearly that the economic costs of climate change — beginning now — are much, much higher than the bill for the main moves we’re taking, and need to take, to curtail rising temperatures. Add in some knowledge of what else is going on in carbon-reducing technology like wind power and electric cars, and you can begin to see the solution taking shape. Better, you can see how a modestly skillful politician can turn this issue against Donald Trump and a set of policies that are courting disaster. Most of what it takes — and this is simplified slightly, but not too much — are electric cars and clean electricity like wind and solar, supplemented by natural gas and nuclear, and eliminating coal and its whole, entire, 10,750 jobs in ‘extraction.’ ‘We’re standing in front of the biggest disruption in energy we’ve ever had. What we thought was unsolvable and we had to live with is solvable,’ says electric-car pioneer Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker Inc. ‘I think we’re still timely enough to make the change.’” [Market Watch, 11/27/18(=)]

Other Opinions

California AG Pledges To 'Use Every Bit' Of Climate Study. According to Inside EPA, “California’s top litigator is sending a message to Trump administration officials: Anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law when it comes to their climate rule rollbacks, particularly when those statements come in the form of an authoritative inter-agency report outlining the increasingly severe risks from global warming. ‘Absolutely, we will use every bit of that report,’ said California Attorney General (AG) Xavier Becerra (D) during a Nov. 28 event hosted by the Washington Post, according to a McClatchy article. Becerra was referring to the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), a document the Trump administration quietly released the day after Thanksgiving but has nonetheless garnered major news coverage, both because of its eyebrow-raising warnings about climate damages and because it sharply contradicts the administration’s policy stance. ‘In this particular case, the facts speak dramatically, and it comes out of [President Donald Trump’s] own shop,’ he added. ‘For him to not read the report, to ignore what it says, it just confirms what disturbs so many people about the Oval Office.’” [Inside EPA, 11/29/18 (=)]

As Trump Dismisses Climate Change Report, California Plans To Use It Against Him. According to McClatchy, “The ominous climate change report the Trump administration released on Thanksgiving weekend could provide legal ammunition for states such as California, which are suing or threatening to sue the federal government over weakened regulations on fossil-fuel industries, automobiles and other contributors to a warming climate. ‘Absolutely, we will use every bit of that report,’ California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Wednesday in Washington, where he appeared with acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler. In line with the administration’s position, Wheeler downplayed the report, known as the Fourth National Climate Assessment, saying it was launched during the Obama administration, assembled by career federal employees and did not reflect Trump’s economic priorities. California has filed more than 20 environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration the last two years, joining other states in challenging rollbacks on methane emissions, hydraulic fracking and fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. More lawsuits are expected as the EPA finalizes rules to weaken the Clean Power Plan — an Obama-era rule aimed at reducing pollution from coal plants — and revoke California’s authority to set its own vehicle tailpipe standards.” [McClatchy, 11/28/18 (=)]

Bennet: Climate Report Confirms Danger. According to The Pueblo Chieftain, “The first sentence of the federal government’s latest National Climate Assessment report gets to the point — ‘Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activity.’ The analysis, compiled by experts at 13 federal agencies, has dire warnings of worsening storms and wildfires, rising oceans, and destabilizing increases in temperature. All of which threaten the nation’s ‘physical, social and economic well-being.’ It was the fourth time the federal government has issued a climate analysis and this was the first during President Donald Trump’s administration. He’s called called climate change a ‘hoax’ in the past and told reporters this week he doesn’t believe this latest report either. The report looks in detail at measurable changes in climate conditions throughout the U.S. and says the evidence of human-caused climate change is ‘overwhelming’ and will intensify. Worse, it says that U.S. actions alone cannot stop the worsening impact of worldwide greenhouse gases and other factors. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said the report only confirms what many Coloradans already knew. ‘From persistent drought to reduced snowpack, to raging wildfires, our state’s farms, mountain towns and cities all feel the effects of climate change,’ he said in a statement. ‘And those take a real toll on Colorado’s economy.’” [The Pueblo Chieftain, 11/29/18 (+)]

‘A Political Report Masquerading As Science’: The Truth About The New Climate Report. According to The Daily Signal, “Each time an end-of-the-world prophecy is delivered—whether by a self-deluded preacher, a group of politicians, or scientists—we are told that we must believe. Never mind how many of their prophecies have been wrong in the past, this time they mean it. The latest prophecy of doom and planetary extinction comes from a government report authored by people appointed during the Obama administration. This report, and others before it, concluded that Earth is warming, humans are responsible, and that we have only 10 years to fix it. But wait, haven’t there been earlier deadlines, which have passed, and aren’t we still here with weather patterns behaving much as they have before, to wit, hot summers, cold winters, fires, floods, and earthquakes? Paul Krugman, the notoriously wrong columnist for The New York Times (he predicted ‘a global recession, with no end in sight,’ if Donald Trump became president), has gone beyond science, labeling those who disagree with global warmists ‘depraved.’ When you resort to name-calling, you have lost the argument. Granted, people these days tend to listen only to information that ratifies beliefs they already hold. On this issue, the warmist cult promotes only information—whether it is from people masquerading as scientists, like Bill Nye ‘the science guy,’ who is not a scientist but a mechanical engineer, to others with credentials mostly outside of climatology. So, what is the truth and how can we know it?” [The Daily Signal, 11/29/18 (-)]

Trump Responds To Dire Predictions In The Latest US Climate Report. According to The Daily Signal, “President Donald Trump disagreed with the dire economic projections in the U.S. government’s latest climate report. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Trump said when asked by a reporter outside the White House on Monday if he agreed with the latest National Climate Assessment (NCA) report’s projections that global warming could hurt the U.S. economy. ‘And here’s the other thing—you’re going to have to have China, and Japan, and all of Asia, and all of these other countries—you know, it—it addresses our country,’ Trump said. ‘Right now, we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth on is dirty, that’s not so good,’ Trump said. ‘So I want clean air. I want clean water—very important.’ The Trump administration released the NCA Friday, launching a wave of media coverage on the report’s dire predictions. The report claims that ‘global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century,’ including a 10 percent hit to gross domestic product in one extreme scenario. Major media outlets, including The New York Times, highlighted the potential economic damages under the most extreme global warming scenario. ‘All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago,’ The New York Times reported of the NCA.” [The Daily Signal, 11/27/18 (-)]

4 Problems With The New Climate Change Report. According to The Daily Signal, “If you’re like me, you’re happy the White House released the latest version of the National Climate Assessment on Black Friday. Publishing the 1,700-page report the day after Thanksgiving saved me from unwanted dinner conversations about our planet’s impending climate doom. But if your aunt calls you up this week spouting claims of mass deaths, global food shortages, economic destruction, and national security risks resulting from climate change, here’s what you need to know about this report. 1. It wildly exaggerates economic costs. … 2. It assumes the most extreme (and least likely) climate scenario. … 3. It cherry-picks science on extreme weather and misrepresents timelines and causality. … 4. Energy taxes are a costly non-solution. … The Trump administration is coming under criticism for publishing the report on Black Friday. To the extent that was a conscious strategy, it certainly isn’t a new tactic. The Obama administration had frequent Friday night document dumps in responding to congressional inquiries about Solyndra and the Department of Energy’s taxpayer-funded failures in the loan portfolio. The Environmental Protection Agency even released its Tier 3 gas regulations, which increased the price at the pump, on Good Friday. No matter what party is in charge, the opposite party will complain about their burying the story. Regardless, the American public would be better served by enjoying the holiday season and shopping, rather than worrying about an alarmist report.” [The Daily Signal, 11/26/18 (-)]

Assessing The Fourth “National Assessment” Of Climate Change. According to CATO Institute, “The 1990 Global Change Research Act requires quadrennial ‘Assessments’ of the effects of global climate change on the U.S. The first was published in 2000, the second in 2009 (the G.W. Bush Administration chose to ignore the law), the third in 2014, and the fourth, last Black Friday. We contributed extensive public comments on the penultimate draft of the latest Assessment, which has changed very little between the review draft and the final copy. The final version contains the same fatal flaws we noted earlier this year. It’s based upon a family of climate models that are predicting far more warming than has been occurring in the all-important tropical atmosphere. It should have used the one model (out of the 102 available runs) that actually gets things right, the Russian INM-CM4, but it relied upon the average warming produced by all 102. INM-CM4 has the least warming of all of them, but doing the right thing—using the one that works—would have pretty much gutted climate change as a serious issue. These reports take several years to produce, and the current one was largely a product of the Obama Administration. If there’s a Trump Administration when the next one is scheduled (2022), it is likely to be very different. Why the current regime just didn’t do as Bush did and simply elide the 1990 law is probably so it will get another crack at it in 2022. Our lengthy technical comments still apply.” [CATO Institute, 11/27/18 (-)]