A new, yet-to-be-released report created by scientists from 13 different federal agencies says that the average temperatures in the United States have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years - and scientists are already concerned that the Trump administration could attempt to change or suppress the report, the New York Times reports.
According to the report, which was done as part of the National Climate Assessment mandated by congress every four years, temperatures have been rising at rapid rates since the 1980s. Even if humans were stop all greenhouse gas emissions right now, we'd still experience a rise in average temperatures across the globe by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. While this seems like a small change, it can have devastating effects across the globe, including longer heat waves, more intense rainstorms and faster loss of coral reefs. The report has also found that it is "extremely likely" that humans can be at least somewhat attributed to these increasing temperatures.
Of course, the Trump administration has been open about the fact that it doesn't believe that humans have contributed to climate change - and the report requires permission from the Trump administration in order to be officially released, the Times, which obtained the unreleased copy of the report, says.
"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," Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of Geosciences at Princeton, told the Times.
Meanwhile, considering that President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement earlier this year, and has made multiple attacks on the EPA, the Trump Administration doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to environmental issues - so we won't be holding our breath.
