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Open thread for night owls: Trump regime again proves its malignant stupidity on climate crisis
May 28, 2019 8:10pm PDT by Meteor Blades, Daily Kos Staff
Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—'Blatant Attempt to Politicize the Science': Trump Reportedly Moving to End Long-Term Studies of Climate Crisis:
In what environmental experts warned could be President Donald Trump's most dangerous assault on science yet, the White House is reportedly moving to end long-term assessments of the impacts of the climate crisis while pushing a polluter-friendly agenda that is making the planetary emergency worse.
As the New York Times reported late Monday, "the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously."
"As a result," according to the Times, "parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations' leading climate body—warned in a landmark report last October that if carbon emissions are not dramatically and rapidly reduced, catastrophic effects of the climate crisis could be felt across the world as early as 2040.
But, as the Times reported, scientists say that Trump administration's attempt to cut off government climate projections at that year "would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040."
