As NASA and NOAA warn of climate emergency, face last-minute denial from those named by Trump

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But at this point, says NASA climatologist Kate Marvel, the rankings are worthless. It is this horrible trend of an unmanageable level of global overheating.

“What really matters, and what I think is really significant and really concerning, is that the hottest seven years on record have been the last seven years,” Marvel told CNN.

His work is part of a global consensus among scientists – from the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe, Berkeley Earth and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – that the planet’s artificial fever shows no signs of breaking up and the land, sea and sky can all get hotter.

The seven-year stretch “almost hints at a slight acceleration in the rate of warming that we’re seeing around the world,” Russ Vose, NOAA’s chief climate officer, told CNN. “Each decade has been warmer than the decade before it in the past four or five decades.”

If the trend continues, it means it was also the coldest seven-year period for the rest of our lives, if not for the rest of recorded human history. And the scientists who wrote these latest reports all agree.

Mankind will determine exactly how bad it is.

“It’s not the sun. It’s not the natural variability of climate. It’s human actions, especially human emissions of greenhouse gases, dioxide and methane,” Marvel said emphatically. . “I’m a scientist. I hang out with scientists all the time. We don’t agree on anything. Scientists will fight for absolutely everything. So the fact that scientists agree that it is human activities that are causing the changes. climatic. seen, it’s really, really, really significant. ”

Trump appointees push for climate misinformation

But even as experts wrapped up their annual global climate assessments, climate skeptics appointed by President Donald Trump to senior science positions at NOAA last September, then temporarily assigned to the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House (OSTP), published upsetting pseudosciences. online.

“The Office of Science and Technology Policy is pleased to bring you these notes to deepen your understanding of climate change by learning from these scholarly scholars,” reads the introduction written by one of those Trump-appointed David Legates, professor at the University of Delaware, who supports the Heartland Institute, which denies the climate.

But the essays, now known as “climate change leaflets,” were written by longtime opponents and filled with theories belied by the peer-reviewed work of U.S. agency scientists, and even by the public recognition by major oil companies that the climate crisis is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Without permission, the Legates and his Trump-appointed colleague Ryan Maue posted the flyers on a website affiliated with great climate skeptic Willie Soon and bore the seal of the president’s executive office.

OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier “was outraged to learn of the documents that were not shared or approved by OSTP leaders,” spokeswoman Kristina Baum said in an email to the OSTP. Washington Post. “He first saw the documents when contacted by the press. As a result, Dr Droegemeier acted swiftly and those responsible were relieved of their duties at OSTP.”

The Legates and Maue completed their tenure in the White House this week and returned to NOAA, where the incident is under review, according to the Washington Post. CNN has contacted the Legates and Maue for comment, but has received no response.

“I’ve known David Legates from my graduate school years, but haven’t seen him for a long time and can’t explain the actions he and others have taken in this matter,” Vose told CNN. “I can’t speak for all of NOAA, but I can tell you that where we are, our morale is good,” he said. “I have been through four administrations. I have served them all with pleasure. I look forward to serving the next administration.”

A scientist hopes for less politics, more politics

Despite the politicization of science under Trump, Vose compares the role of NOAA scientists to that of Department of Labor statisticians in charge of labor reports: neutral distributors of precise numbers.

“We gladly do our work independently without interference,” he said. “And please hold us accountable if you ever feel this has happened.”

“I hope the long-term effects are almost nil,” Marvel said. “I think the fact that this stuff came out and most people said, ‘Well that’s kinda silly’ and then moved on gives me a lot of hope.”

With a new administration Joe Biden determined to turn the tide on US climate inaction, the conversation around this most difficult topic is bound to change. The question is how long before the debate turns into policy and action.

“My whole goal is to become completely irrelevant to the climate conversation,” Marvel said. “I don’t want scientists to wonder if this is happening or not or who is responsible for it. I think we’ve gone beyond that. I think we should have a much better fight. We should be debating politics. . We should be debating solutions. We should be debating the morality of climate change. None of these things fall within my particular area of ​​expertise. But I think we’re getting there. ”

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