Finding the right tune: The Climate Minute Podcast

Our current administration has been plagued by leaks; this past week there was a leak equivalent to the size of the runoff stream in the Greenland glacier. The New York Times made the unofficial release of the latest National Climate Assessment Report. As a bit of background, this is a series of reports that were congressionally mandated. It was the 1990 Global Change Research Act, which George H. W. Bush signed into law in November of 1990, back when Congress cared, and we had a president that was willing to acknowledge the issue of climate change. Every four years, thirteen government agencies have to prepare a comprehensive report on the impacts that climate change will have on the United States. This particular “leaked” report was originally posted on one of the internet archive sites, and the NYT later published a draft of this report. According to the NYT, the average temperature of the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since the 1980s. Recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1500 years, and there is no evidence that this is caused by anything other than the burning of fossil fuels. This will have a significant impact on the United States. The Boston Globe reports that it will have a very critical impact on the Northeast in particular and now there is a sort of “countdown” because the officials have to sign off on the report by August 18th. Reports such as this have been suppressed, most notably by the George W. Bush administration. David Roberts from Vox wrote that the “report’s conclusion is about as certain as anything gets in the physical sciences.” Roberts went on to say, “But this report is not going make Trump or the GOP do anything.”