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A house burns during the Woolsey Fire on November 9, 2018 in Malibu, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
In a move environmentalists and journalists denounced as a blatant effort to bury facts that conflict with the president’s denialism and pro-fossil fuel agenda, the Trump administration used the Friday after Thanksgiving to quietly release Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), which warned “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization” and concluded that “greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the only factors that can account” for planet-threatening warming.
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels.”
--Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch
“The decision to release this damning report when families are beginning to celebrate the holidays and newsrooms are short-staffed is a brazen attempt to bury the truth from the public that we must act now to move off fossil fuels and stabilize the climate,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.
“Releasing this report when no one is looking, tweeting his annual nonsense about global warming and cold weather, and announcing that he’ll use the upcoming U.N. climate meetings as a fossil fuel tradeshow, Trump is doubling down on his climate denial for the holidays--as many families are still reeling from unnatural climate disasters across the country,” Hauter continued. “The science is way past in on climate change... We must prepare for our climate future in spite of Trump.”
From deadly wildfires to catastrophic hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the “impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,” notes the congressionally mandated report--the first of its kind released since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
Authored by officials from over a dozen federal agencies, the report warns that in the absence of aggressive action to quickly slash carbon emissions, the climate crisis will continue to have increasingly devastating effects on the environment, wildlife, and human health.
“It is very likely that some impacts, such as the effects of ice sheet disintegration on sea level rise and coastal development, will be irreversible for many thousands of years, and others, such as species extinction, will be permanent,” the report warns.
\u201cFederal scientists just warned that climate change could push millions from their homes -- and the U.S. is not ready. https://t.co/GOYqjFi4JN\u201d— Christopher Flavelle (@Christopher Flavelle) 1543001764
Using the hashtag #ClimateFriday, environmentalists worked to overcome the Trump administration’s attempt to hide the NCA4 amid the chaos of the holidays by highlighting the report’s findings and stressing its dire implications if ambitious and global climate action is not taken.
\u201cJUST IN: The U.S. National Climate Assessment is now public.\n\nThis is the report that the Trump Administration doesn\u2019t want you to see. Years in the making, released on the day after Thanksgiving. #ClimateFriday\n\nHere are some of the main highlights:\n\nhttps://t.co/fTqVopBccR\n/1\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201c\u201c\u2026 It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.\u201d\n\nThis can\u2019t be emphasized enough: We are currently on course to *permanently* damage our land, our water, our country, and ourselves.\n/7\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201cThe report also finds that a radical change in current policy and action is necessary to prevent future catastrophic warming.\n\n\u201cLarge reductions in present-day emissions\u2026are necessary to achieve **any** long-term objective of preventing warming of **any** desired magnitude.\u201d\n/9\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
“This report makes it clear that climate change is not some problem in the distant future,” Brenda Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement. “It’s happening right now in every part of the country.”
The Washington Post summarized the report’s key findings with regard to major regions of the U.S.:
Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida, and the U.S.‘s Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country’s sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has utterly upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras.
The federal report comes as climate activists and progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are pushing for the Democratic Party to combat the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda with ambitious climate action centered around a Green New Deal.
“It’s not enough to think it’s ‘important.’ We must make it urgent,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy.”
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy,” concluded Hauter of Food & Water Watch. “This transition is not only possible, but necessary for the health and prosperity of people and the planet.”
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In a move environmentalists and journalists denounced as a blatant effort to bury facts that conflict with the president’s denialism and pro-fossil fuel agenda, the Trump administration used the Friday after Thanksgiving to quietly release Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), which warned “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization” and concluded that “greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the only factors that can account” for planet-threatening warming.
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels.”
--Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch
“The decision to release this damning report when families are beginning to celebrate the holidays and newsrooms are short-staffed is a brazen attempt to bury the truth from the public that we must act now to move off fossil fuels and stabilize the climate,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.
“Releasing this report when no one is looking, tweeting his annual nonsense about global warming and cold weather, and announcing that he’ll use the upcoming U.N. climate meetings as a fossil fuel tradeshow, Trump is doubling down on his climate denial for the holidays--as many families are still reeling from unnatural climate disasters across the country,” Hauter continued. “The science is way past in on climate change... We must prepare for our climate future in spite of Trump.”
From deadly wildfires to catastrophic hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the “impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,” notes the congressionally mandated report--the first of its kind released since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
Authored by officials from over a dozen federal agencies, the report warns that in the absence of aggressive action to quickly slash carbon emissions, the climate crisis will continue to have increasingly devastating effects on the environment, wildlife, and human health.
“It is very likely that some impacts, such as the effects of ice sheet disintegration on sea level rise and coastal development, will be irreversible for many thousands of years, and others, such as species extinction, will be permanent,” the report warns.
\u201cFederal scientists just warned that climate change could push millions from their homes -- and the U.S. is not ready. https://t.co/GOYqjFi4JN\u201d— Christopher Flavelle (@Christopher Flavelle) 1543001764
Using the hashtag #ClimateFriday, environmentalists worked to overcome the Trump administration’s attempt to hide the NCA4 amid the chaos of the holidays by highlighting the report’s findings and stressing its dire implications if ambitious and global climate action is not taken.
\u201cJUST IN: The U.S. National Climate Assessment is now public.\n\nThis is the report that the Trump Administration doesn\u2019t want you to see. Years in the making, released on the day after Thanksgiving. #ClimateFriday\n\nHere are some of the main highlights:\n\nhttps://t.co/fTqVopBccR\n/1\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201c\u201c\u2026 It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.\u201d\n\nThis can\u2019t be emphasized enough: We are currently on course to *permanently* damage our land, our water, our country, and ourselves.\n/7\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201cThe report also finds that a radical change in current policy and action is necessary to prevent future catastrophic warming.\n\n\u201cLarge reductions in present-day emissions\u2026are necessary to achieve **any** long-term objective of preventing warming of **any** desired magnitude.\u201d\n/9\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
“This report makes it clear that climate change is not some problem in the distant future,” Brenda Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement. “It’s happening right now in every part of the country.”
The Washington Post summarized the report’s key findings with regard to major regions of the U.S.:
Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida, and the U.S.‘s Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country’s sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has utterly upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras.
The federal report comes as climate activists and progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are pushing for the Democratic Party to combat the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda with ambitious climate action centered around a Green New Deal.
“It’s not enough to think it’s ‘important.’ We must make it urgent,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy.”
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy,” concluded Hauter of Food & Water Watch. “This transition is not only possible, but necessary for the health and prosperity of people and the planet.”
In a move environmentalists and journalists denounced as a blatant effort to bury facts that conflict with the president’s denialism and pro-fossil fuel agenda, the Trump administration used the Friday after Thanksgiving to quietly release Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), which warned “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization” and concluded that “greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the only factors that can account” for planet-threatening warming.
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels.”
--Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch
“The decision to release this damning report when families are beginning to celebrate the holidays and newsrooms are short-staffed is a brazen attempt to bury the truth from the public that we must act now to move off fossil fuels and stabilize the climate,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.
“Releasing this report when no one is looking, tweeting his annual nonsense about global warming and cold weather, and announcing that he’ll use the upcoming U.N. climate meetings as a fossil fuel tradeshow, Trump is doubling down on his climate denial for the holidays--as many families are still reeling from unnatural climate disasters across the country,” Hauter continued. “The science is way past in on climate change... We must prepare for our climate future in spite of Trump.”
From deadly wildfires to catastrophic hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the “impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,” notes the congressionally mandated report--the first of its kind released since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
Authored by officials from over a dozen federal agencies, the report warns that in the absence of aggressive action to quickly slash carbon emissions, the climate crisis will continue to have increasingly devastating effects on the environment, wildlife, and human health.
“It is very likely that some impacts, such as the effects of ice sheet disintegration on sea level rise and coastal development, will be irreversible for many thousands of years, and others, such as species extinction, will be permanent,” the report warns.
\u201cFederal scientists just warned that climate change could push millions from their homes -- and the U.S. is not ready. https://t.co/GOYqjFi4JN\u201d— Christopher Flavelle (@Christopher Flavelle) 1543001764
Using the hashtag #ClimateFriday, environmentalists worked to overcome the Trump administration’s attempt to hide the NCA4 amid the chaos of the holidays by highlighting the report’s findings and stressing its dire implications if ambitious and global climate action is not taken.
\u201cJUST IN: The U.S. National Climate Assessment is now public.\n\nThis is the report that the Trump Administration doesn\u2019t want you to see. Years in the making, released on the day after Thanksgiving. #ClimateFriday\n\nHere are some of the main highlights:\n\nhttps://t.co/fTqVopBccR\n/1\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201c\u201c\u2026 It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.\u201d\n\nThis can\u2019t be emphasized enough: We are currently on course to *permanently* damage our land, our water, our country, and ourselves.\n/7\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
\u201cThe report also finds that a radical change in current policy and action is necessary to prevent future catastrophic warming.\n\n\u201cLarge reductions in present-day emissions\u2026are necessary to achieve **any** long-term objective of preventing warming of **any** desired magnitude.\u201d\n/9\u201d— Eric Holthaus (@Eric Holthaus) 1542999647
“This report makes it clear that climate change is not some problem in the distant future,” Brenda Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement. “It’s happening right now in every part of the country.”
The Washington Post summarized the report’s key findings with regard to major regions of the U.S.:
Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida, and the U.S.‘s Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country’s sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has utterly upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras.
The federal report comes as climate activists and progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are pushing for the Democratic Party to combat the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda with ambitious climate action centered around a Green New Deal.
“It’s not enough to think it’s ‘important.’ We must make it urgent,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy.”
“Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy,” concluded Hauter of Food & Water Watch. “This transition is not only possible, but necessary for the health and prosperity of people and the planet.”
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”