If you stop drawing pencil lines on the wall marking your kid’s height after the age of nine, that means the kid will forever be that height. Such is surely the theory behind the latest climate-killing move from the Trump administration — if we stop measuring the climate, it stops changing.
Reported by the New York Times and others, the administration sent notices to hundreds of scientists “releasing” them from their role as authors of the next National Climate Assessment, the comprehensive and wide-ranging report covering the science and impacts of the warming world. The last one came out in 2023, and the next one was due in 2028.
Now, though, the “scope” of the report is supposedly “being re-evaluated.” That scope sure seems like it could be described as “non-existent,” given that it now has no authors to work on it, though apparently the notices did say there may be opportunities for authors to reengage at some point. The most likely reason they’re not just outright murdering the thing and bragging about doing so is that the assessments are required by Congress; the report is overseen by the Global Change Research Program — which Trump is also trying to kill.
The dismissal of the hundreds of authors follows shortly on the heels of the dissolution of another climate office, the State Department’s Office of Global Change. That’s the one that oversees US negotiations on the international stage, like those at the UN’s COP climate conferences. Whether this country will even participate in this year’s version in Brazil in November is an open question. The Oil Administration will continue in this vein, stifling every effort to study and publicize the harms that their aggressive energy policies are making much, much worse.
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