Credit: Kevin Siers, McClatchy’s Charlotte Observer


– Story highlights
* While Trump focused on his Supreme Court fight, UN issued most dire climate report,
* America’s President said nothing,
* Mr. Trump dissents from an effort that has galvanized much of the world.


– Editor’s note:
While President Trump signed legislation last Thursday [Oct. 11] aimed at expanding clean-up efforts in the world’s oceans, the president dismissed the work of American climatologists and researchers studying increases in global temperatures that have impacted the planet and exacerbated natural disasters, telling CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl [Oct. 14] that ‘they have a very big political agenda’ and claimed that Earth’s climate ‘could very well go back.'”
Click here for the interview.


– “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040”
“A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

“The report, issued on Monday [Oct. 1] by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

“The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming,” by Coral Davenport, The New York Times.
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– “Dire Climate Warning Lands With a Thud on Trump’s Desk”
“A day after the United Nations issued its most urgent call to arms yet for the world to confront the threat of climate change, President Trump boarded Air Force One for Florida — a state that lies directly in the path of this coming calamity — and said nothing about it.”

“That bottom-up activism is a source of hope for those who have watched in despair since last year when Mr. Trump declared he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. But experts say it is no substitute for the world’s largest economy, and second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, turning its back on the fight,” By Mark Landler and Coral Davenport, The New York Times.
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