The fourth National Climate Assessment ...

[Michael Grove]

   [IS] the culmination of years of research and analysis

   by hundreds of top climate scientists in the country.

   The massive report details the many ways in which

   global climate change is already affecting American

   communities, from hurricanes to wildfires to floods

   to drought.

   "Climate change is already affecting every part of the

    United States, almost every sector of the United States,

    be it agriculture or forestry or energy, tourism," says

    George Mason University professor Andrew Light, who

    is one of the report's editors. "It's going to hurt cities,

    it's going to hurt people in the countryside, and, as the

    world continues to warm, things are going to get worse."

   "I don't think there's a hoax. I do think there's probably

    a difference. But I don't know that it's man-made," the

    president said on CBS' 60 Minutes in October.

    In an August interview about deadly wildfires in

    California, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told television

    station KCRA Sacramento: "This has nothing to do with

    climate change. This has to do with active forest

    management."

The new report, mandated by Congress and published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the latest and most detailed confirmation that humans are driving climate change and that Americans are already adapting to and suffering from its effects.

Climate change [IS] "an immediate threat, not a far-off possibility," it says. For example, large wildfires are getting more frequent because of climate change. The
Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 report notes that the area burned in wildfires nationwide each year has increased over the past 20 years, and "although projections vary by state and ecoregion, on average, the annual area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire is expected to increase by at least 30 percent by 2060."

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