Scientists Fear Trump Will Never Publish Climate Change Report

Praised as one of the most comprehensive climate science reports to ever be published, the Federal Climate Change Report may be completely ignored by the Donald Trump Administration, scientists fear.

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The draft was completed in January and signed off by the National Academy of Sciences, however, authors continue to await the Trump administration’s approve the draft and for permission to release it to the public.

"It’s a fraught situation,” said Professor Michael Oppenheimer, who teaches Geoscience and International affairs at Princeton University. “This is the first case in which an analysis of climate change of this scope has come up in the Trump administration, and scientists will be watching very carefully to see how they handle it.

Given its official departure from the Paris Accord Saturday, scientists fear that the administration will suppress or change the report.

The segment which was included in this year’s National Climate Assessment, an analysis published quadrennially, drafted by scientists from 13 U.S. federal agencies concludes that the global effects of climate change are man-made and can already be felt with temperatures around the world rising above those recorded in the last 1,500 years.

“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” the report states, compiling notes from thousands of scientific experts on earth, land, sea and air.

The report explains that the number and severity of cold nights have decreased significantly since the 1960s, while the amount and level of warmer days rose. Additionally, scientists conclude that the number of cold spells across the United States have grown scarcer in the last 30 years., while mean temperature increases since 1951 worldwide are “extremely likely” to be caused by humans.

According to the study, even if the whole of humanity were to stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would still feel its effects for over a century in an increase of .5 degrees Fahrenheit of today’s temperatures, although researchers predict temperatures will increase between 5.0 and 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

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“It is very likely that the accelerated rate of Arctic warming will have a significant consequence for the United States due to accelerating land and sea ice melting that is driving changes in the ocean including sea level rise threatening our coastal communities,” the authors state.

The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency did not immediately respond to questions posed by the New York Times.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement Tuesday saying the administration would withhold comments on the draft report until the scheduled release date.

"It's either going to become an official U.S. government report, or it won't be, in which case we would have to find another outlet for it," an author of the report who asked not to be named told CNN, adding that its publication would shake the administration's claims on climate change.

Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris deal in June, despite the fact that the United States is the world's second-largest polluting nation in terms of carbon dioxide emissions after China, according to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.