In the NewsCNNFebruary 13, 2019

New urgency on climate change comes to Congress

While President Donald Trump pokes fun at global warming on Twitter and expresses doubts about his own administration's scientific findings about climate change, Congress is approaching the issue with new urgency. Now in the majority in the House, Democrats held multiple committee hearings over the past two weeks to discuss climate science and hear the accounts of people who experienced climate change destruction. One of the scientists who testified was Robert Kopp, co-director of the Lab and a co-author of the National Climate Assessment released in November. At nearly 2,000 pages, it is a data-driven and peer-reviewed assessment of climate change and its predicted impact. "The process of drafting the fourth National Climate Assessment are painstaking and complex, but its fundamental findings are simple and urgent. First, climate change is real, it's happening now, and humans are responsible for it," testified Kopp, director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and a professor in Rutgers' Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "The planet is running a fever."