The G20 Summit got started after the 2008 financial meltdown. The G20 Summit’s mission is to find solutions for global issues. The 20 countries that attended the summit are world leaders in terms of economic and financial growth. This year’s summit in Buenos Aires focused on climate sustainability, labor, financial stability, international commerce, and infrastructure development. But the agenda didn’t stop the concerns over Trump’s trade war with China and the Russian-Ukraine fiasco.
France, China, and the United Nations reconfirmed their support for the Paris Climate Accord at the G20 Summit. But the United States stood alone and denounced the impact of climate change. Nineteen countries thought the Paris Climate Accord is worth the effort. President Trump thought the accord wasn’t worth the effort. That’s not new news. Trump denied his own governments report on climate change. More than 300 scientists and thirteen government agencies contributed to the U.S. government climate change report. But Trump dismissed the report as a “worst-case scenario.”
The National Climate Assessment is the report Trump says is a worst-case scenario climate report. Trump said the report uses the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions as the basis for the results. Trump said the report used extreme measurements that are not realistic. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who pushes the development of fossil fuel on public land, used a nuclear war analogy to justify the administration position on climate change. His analogy didn’t make sense, according to some news reports.
But Andrew Wheeler, the acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator agreed with Zinke. Wheeler took the conversation to another level when he said the Obama administration probably told the authors of the report to use the worst-case scenario to construct the report. Wheeler said the Trump administration will look at the modeling for next climate assessment.
University of Pennsylvania’s climate scientist, Michael Mann, disagrees with the Trump administration. Mann said National Climate Assessment report scientists looked at several scenarios. Mr. Mann thinks Zinke and Wheeler are trying to make excuses to justify Trump’s position on the subject.
Trump believes climate change won’t have an impact on the U.S. economy. But the climate scientists who participated in the report say they considered a range of scenarios, and they underestimated the impact of those scenarios. In other words, scientists think the sea levels will rise faster, storms will be more destructive, and economic losses will be greater than the report describes.
