Major multi-agency climate report leaked before gov’t can censor it [corrected]

CORRECTION (08/09/17 @ 12:31 AM ET): The New York Times later amended their article to point out that the report was first published online by the Internet Archive in January; it was not leaked to them. I’ve corrected part of the post to reflect this. (via @BadAstronomer)

Scientists from 13 US federal agencies have drafted a nearly-700-page climate report that pulls no punches: The Earth is warming fast, the results will be catastrophic to our way of life if we don’t take serious action now, and it’s all our fault. And since they fear the Trump administration may well try to bastardize or censor their research, they went ahead and leaked it to The New York Times, which lays it all out published it online, where it was picked up by The New York Times:

The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration.

The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited.

“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” a draft of the report states. A copy of it was obtained by The New York Times.

The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they wrote.

To be published, the drafted report must be approved by all 13 participating federal agencies – including the EPA, currently led by noted EPA-hater and climate science denialist Scott Pruitt, who doesn’t even accept that CO₂ is a contributor to global warming (it’s one of the largest factors). Given the Trump government’s general opposition to science and reality, the report being suppressed is more than likely; it’s virtually inevitable.

Denialists are the ultimate ostriches^* – they stick their heads in the sand and they imagine inconvenient facts just go away. But as much as I’d love for that to be true, reality is irritatingly persistent. The only way to deal with real problems is to fight them head-on, not ignore them and let them fester.

Unfortunately, the latter approach is the one favored by the entire US government leadership at the moment.

* Not actually a thing, but dangit, the comparison works.