Climate Change Will Shrink US Economy and Kill Thousands, Government Report Warns

A new US government report delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating impacts, saying the economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars -- or, in the worst-case scenario, more than 10% of its GDP -- by the end of the century.

The federally mandated study was supposed to come out in December but was released by the Trump administration on Friday, at a time when many Americans are on a long holiday weekend, distracted by family and shopping.

David Easterling, director of the Technical Support Unit at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, emphasized that there was "no external interference in the report's development." He added that the climate change the Earth is experiencing is unlike any other. "The global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced, and this warming trend can only be explained by human activities," Easterling said.

Coming from the US Global Change Research Program, a team of 13 federal agencies, the Fourth National Climate Assessment was put together with the help of 1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists, roughly half from outside the government. Read More

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Climate change will bring multiple disasters at once, study warns

This year westernmost Kentucky had snow in November. We normally  do not have snow until sometime after Christmas. The warming of the earth's atmosphere is causing a change in the air currents in the upper atmosphere and this change is affecting our weather. We are experiencing colder and longer winters because these air currents are moving frigid air south from the Arctic while moving warmer air north--an effect of atmospheric warming.

Archaeological studies reveal that humans have always had an impact on their environment even when they were hunter-gatherers, roaming the earth in small groups. We are only beginning to understand the severity and extent of that impact. These studies also show that climate change has had an impact on the human race. Arable land became desert. Rising water levels turned once habitable land into swamp or submerged it entirely.

Climate change is going to confront Christians with new challenges whatever we may believe is the principal cause. Caring for God's creation and being good stewards of what God has entrusted to us entails making wise choices--thinking through how what we are doing now will affects the lives of future generations. Loving our neighbors means loving the neighbors whom we will never see because they have not yet been born. We may not live in the same time but we share the same world. May they remember us for not greedily wasting the earth's resources, polluting its air and water, and raising its atmosphere's temperature, and thereby causing untold misery; but for selflessly showing our love for the human race by our choices.