Just the other day, as cold weather struck the Northeast, Donald Trump tweeted “Whatever happened to climate change?”
Then, no fewer than thirteen federal agencies issued their National Climate Assessment, as required by Congress.
The 1,656 page report concludes that climate change is real (not fake!) and that massive disruptions have been occurring for decades, as evidenced by Hurricane Sandy, increasingly dangerous forest fires, flooding, and so forth, and that severe damage to our economy is occurring as a result, and it will get much worse (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/23/us-climate-report-warns-of-dire-changes-by-2050-1012628). The Times covered the report exhaustively yesterday in an article by Carol Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis.
The Trump Administration was careful to release the report at 2 pm on Black Friday, as milions of Americans rushed to big box stores to buy many things (some of which they needed) at discount prices. The Administration hoped, by this sleight of hand, to attract minimal attention to the damning report.
Funding for federal agencies will end on Decemver 7 unless the still Republican-controlled Congress makes a deal — a compromise.
Donald Trump does not like to make compromises, and he is hell-bent on getting funding for Trump’s Wall (which he said Mexico would pay for). He’s threatened to shut down the government unless he gets what he wants.
Associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones was with Trump as he tweeted that because the report of thirteen federal agencies had made him look bad, he is, in a single tweet, abolishing all of them.
“Johanna,” Trump said, “that’s how I just proved that global warming never existed.”
“See how easy it is to Make America Great Again?"