Government document ‘directly contradicts’ Trump on climate change, report says

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Rows of grapevines at Happy Canyon Vineyard during a drought on August 6, 2016, near Santa Ynez, California.

The average temperature in the United States has risen dramatically since 1980, according to an as-yet-unreleased federal report, the New York Times reported.

The climate change report is awaiting approval by the Trump administration for public release. A copy of the draft report was obtained by The New York Times, the publication said, adding that scientists were fearful that President Donald Trump’s administration could suppress the findings.

“How much more the climate will change depends on future emissions and the sensitivity of the climate system to those emissions,” the report said, according to the Times. The report found that temperatures could rise by an additional 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit within the next century if current trajectories of carbon emissions continued, the New York Times said.

And according to the publication, the document says it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the global average temperature rise since 1951 could be linked to humans. It also found that it was “possible to attribute some extreme weather to climate change,” the newspaper said.

The study “directly contradicts claims” from Trump and some in his cabinet, the Times wrote, because they “say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain and that the ability to predict the effects is limited.”

Read more about the as-yet-unpublished report on the New York Times.