Trump. Governor Brown, and Govenor-elect Nusum. Note Brown’s expression.

The Trump administration attempted to downplay the stark findings of its own climate change assessment, as Democrats sought to pressure the White House to avert looming economic and public health disaster.

The US National Climate change assessment, the work of 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies, was released on Friday afternoon. It found that wildfires, storms and heatwaves are already taking a major toll on Americans’ wellbeing, with climate change set to “disrupt many areas of life” in the future.

The voluminous report, which warns of hundreds of billions of dollars lost, crop failures, expanding wildfires, altered coastlines and multiplying health problems, represents the most comprehensive and sobering analysis yet of the dangers posed to the US by rising temperatures.

Climate change could slash up to a tenth of US GDP by the end of the century, the report found, with $1tn in coastal real estate threatened by rising sea levels and storms. Heatwaves are set to cause thousands of […]