Tucked away in a draft environmental statement issued in July is a projection that without a drastic cutback in greenhouse gas emissions, Earth’s temperatures will rise nearly 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The average tally of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by then would have soared to 789 parts per million compared with the current level of 410 ppm. To put it mildly, the impacts would be catastrophic.
Officials of the Trump regime effectively shrugged this off. Or rather, in their bottomless perversity, they claimed the disastrous temperature rise and all its accompanying effects are already baked into future climate change to bolster their rationale for freezing Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards. Quite the twist for a federal government brim full of climate science deniers to admit climate change is real.
The numbers are not something new from climate scientists. For the past six or seven years, a 3- to 4-degree rise or even worse is what many of them have viewed as likely if nothing is done to curb emissions. The Paris climate agreement is meant to do exactly that, holding the temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). But everyone agrees that existing pledges of emissions cutbacks under the agreement aren’t enough to meet that goal, much less the aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees C.
Juliet Eilperin , Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney scrutinized the draft statement in The Washington Post Friday:
But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed. [...]
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.
The Obama standards were finalized in 2012 after long negotiations with automakers. These mandated that by 2020, cars would have to average 41.7 miles per gallon and 54.5 mpg by 2025.
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