The White House is moving forward with a plan to create a National Security Council committee to question the findings of recent federal climate science reports, according a Washington Post report.
Why it matters: The panel idea, first reported last week, represents a frontal assault on climate science reports at a time when public opinion is moving to support cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, per the Post, the report the panel is most likely to investigate is the National Climate Assessment.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) issued a statement on Friday after facing backlash over what she called a “spirited" Green New Deal discussion with students and activists of the Sunrise Movement, which went viral on Twitter.
"Unfortunately, it was a brief meeting but I want the children to know they were heard loud and clear. I have been and remain committed to doing everything I can to enact real, meaningful climate change legislation."
Kelly Knight Craft, the current U.S. ambassador to Canada and President Trump's nominee for ambassador to the UN, endorsed "both sides of the science" when asked about climate change in a 2017 interview with CBC Politics.
Why it matters: If confirmed by the Senate, Craft will represent U.S. interests at the UN, which recognizes climate change as a "potentially irreversible threat to human societies," per the Paris climate agreement. In October, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the effects of global warming are already evident worldwide, as did a U.S. panel in November. The vast majority of climate scientists have concluded that recent climate change is primarily driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Scientists have sequenced the human genome, thousands of microbes, plants and other animals. But the coffee plant remains a stubborn beast.
Why it matters: Coffee is under increasingly urgent risk from disease and climate change, which have devastated huge batches of crops and today threaten the livelihood of some 125 million people.But biologists, working on mapping and redesigning the plant, think that they are getting closer to saving coffee.
