The trick to burying the news is to release it on a holiday or later in the afternoon on a Friday.  So, what better day should TheDonald pick to release a long-awaited report discussing how America (and the world) is failing to tame the climate change issues than on the Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving?

This report is the not the authorship of a single agency.  Nope.  It’s a whole alphabet soup of federal agencies (13 of them), under the auspices of the US Global Change Research Program. (Oh, yeah, despite the claims that the PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare] was 1000 pages long- it wasn’t; this report exceeds that number and then some.)  And, this report is mandated by the US Congress- or you can bet that TheDonald would have buried this report and its findings- not on a Friday, but forever.

And, what does the report say?  A lot of things.  But, in a nutshell… We are going to hell in a rocket ship and TheDonald’s environmental and energy policies are simply accelerating the voyage.  Yes, I’m sugar-coating the report to a degree.

How about a direct quote?  Climate change is “transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.”  And, if we don’t fix this problem and fast, there is no way “to avoid substantial changes to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

How bad is it really?  Well, by now you’ve noticed that the Western mountains that extend from Washington State through California have been getting and retaining much less snow each and every year.  And, since that snow melts and thereby provides the water for the West Coast, you can see that drinking water supplies and agricultural water needs in the West are going to be running very short.  (I have been writing about our impending world-wide water shortages for years- here’s but one [and a sobering one, at that] post.)

The facts presented in the report also explains our ridiculous rate (and scope) of wildfires in the Western Forests.  The droughts are making our forest regions so dry that they literally explode with fire.

I’ve already told you how barley will be affected (using beer as an example).  But, it’s not just barley- it’s corn, wheat, soybeans, and more.   The crops of life.

The average temperatures across the US have been raised by 1.8 F (1 C) over the past 100 years.  And, by the time I could be 100 years old (don’t count on my knocking on your door),  that temperature rise will have more than doubled to about 4.1 F (2.3 C).

Our heat waves are worse and longer than they were since I was a teenager.  Oh, yeah, the sea has risen 23 cm (9 in) during that same time frame- which is why Norfolk and Miami are routinely flooded.   (You do recall that US Military recognizes that climate change is the biggest threat to their power and functionality.)

Of course, most of us (yes, that included me) forgot that changes in ambient temperature also affect our infrastructure.  Our roads crevice more easily, our bridges crumble quicker, our rails buckle and cause derailments, planes can’t land or take off because lift is affected, etc.  Those are issues that we’ve often missed when we consider climate change.

Which, of course, get compounded when we include the water rise of our rivers and seas.  Or the heavier precipitation.  (I don’t recall ever hearing of a derecho before experiencing one [leaving me bereft of power for more than 9 days] in 2012.)

And, here’s an example from Canada that proves the point.  When I was a lad, Alberta was timber country.  Even when my children were young, that was true.  But, now, folks are razing the timber in Alberta (even upper Alberta) to seed that land for corn.  While corn production in Iowa is decreasing.  As our temperatures rise over time.

All of these effects are probably why the report this time includes an accounting of the financial repercussions.  To the tune of $ 155 billion in productivity losses. (Folks- that’s not a total.  That’s an annual figure!)  Or coastal property damage of more than $ 110 billion a year.

You can bet that TheDonald will downplay these results the same way he denied the cold, hard facts about what the CIA discerned- that MBS is the mastermind behind the slaughter of an American resident, a columnist for the Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi.

And, that’s the problem.  Because there’s still time for us to fix this apocalyptic scenario.  We could cut the damages by more than half (58% is one suggestion).  But, not while TheDonald and his swampmates are in control.