01:12 Climate Change 101 What exactly is climate change? We break it down for you.

At a Glance Trump and other officials share a skepticism about climate change and try to suppress or debunk the consensus of scientists that climate change is real and human-caused.

The science overwhelmingly concludes that Earth is warming and will continue to do so, as shown in two new federal reports this week.

President Donald Trump is not the only official in the upper echelons of government to doubt human-caused climate change.

Others in his administration share his skepticism and freely try to debunk the consensus of scientists that climate change is real, is caused by humans and will continue to impact the planet.

This week two new reports again prove that Trump's team simply has it wrong.

The first report is a draft of the congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA), which was published online for public comment in January but came to the media's attention this week after scientists expressed fears to the New York Times that the Trump administration would ignore, alter or quash the information. The results were compiled and presented by 13 government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Separately, NOAA published its 2016 State of the Climate report, which highlights that 2016 was the warmest year in 137 years of recordkeeping. The conclusions of the report were based on contributions from nearly 500 scientists from more than 60 countries.

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt has mentioned several times that he wants to hold a red team/blue team exercise to conduct an "at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science."

“We’ve talked about having a red team/blue team exercise, where we bring red team scientists in, blue team in, ask the question: What do we know, what don’t we know about this issue,” Pruitt told North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen on Wednesday. “The American people deserve an honest, open, transparent discussion about this supposed threat to this country. And we need to advance that. Hopefully, sometime this fall, we’ll be able to actually get that going.”

THE FACTS: The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.



"Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities," according to NASA . "In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position."

These include scientists from Pruitt’s own agency.

Scientists from 16 professional groups led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science have sent a letter to Pruitt reminding him that there already are "debates that happen on a regular basis in every scientific discipline."

"Indeed, science is a multi-dimensional, competitive 'red team/blue team' process whereby scientists and scientific teams are constantly challenging one another's findings for robustness," the letter read. "The current scientific understanding of climate change is based on decades of such work, along with overarching, carefully evaluated assessments within the United States and internationally."

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: Pruitt says he does not believe carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change.

During an appearance on CBNC’s Squawk Box in March, Pruitt said : "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

THE FACTS: There is little evidence upon which Pruitt can base this claim. Pruitt's own agency, the EPA, says : "Greenhouse gases from human activities are the most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century" and "Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities," according to the EPA's website .

The NOAA report confirmed that 2016 was the hottest year on record and the third consecutive year of record global warmth. In addition, major greenhouse gases, including CO2 as the primary driver, rose to "new record high values."

Research conducted by scientists worldwide, including scientists from U.S. agencies NOAA , NASA and the EPA , have unequivocally linked CO2 to rising global temperatures. The draft federal report said pointedly that "we find no convincing evidence that natural variability can account for the amount of global warming observed over the industrial era."

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-carbon-dioxide-graph_0.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-carbon-dioxide-graph_0.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-carbon-dioxide-graph_0.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > The rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1980. (NOAA ) (NOAA )

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: Energy Secretary Rick Perry testified before the Senate Energy Committee in June and said he does not believe CO2 is the "primary knob" that changes the climate.

“I did not think that CO2 was the primary knob that changes it. I don’t," Perry said . "I think that there are some other naturally occurring events, the warming and the cooling of our ocean waters and some, you know, other activities that occur. I also said in the next breath that man’s impact does, in fact, have an impact on the climate.”

THE FACTS: The NCA report says "it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says confidence was "very high" that nearly three-quarters of the energy that was needed to warm the planet from pre-Industrial age levels come from carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities.

"The global annual average atmospheric CO2 concentration was 402.9 parts per million (ppm), which surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years. This was 3.5 ppm more than 2015, and it was the largest annual increase observed in the 58-year record."

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: To debunk global warming, Trump and others frequently cite unsubstantiated studies from the 1970s that claimed the earth was cooling. During a 2015 interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump acknowledged that he's "not a believer in man-made global warming."

"It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling,” he said, getting the era wrong in citing the studies.

THE FACTS: Scientists have disproven this theory. They studied peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979 and found just seven papers talking about global cooling. Twenty other papers were neutral on the topic and 44 pointed to global warming, according to a 2008 analysis in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: In a tweet, Trump said : “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

THE FACTS: A slew of agencies, including NASA , the EPA, the National Academy of Sciences, along with many other scientific organizations , say that is false. The American Institute of Physics created a timeline that shows that the first inklings of global warming date back to 1896.

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: Pruitt said at a White House press briefing in June that the rise in global temperatures is modest and went on to belittle climate computer simulations.

“I would say that there are climate exaggerators. In fact, many of you — I don’t know if you saw this article or not, but the Climate of Complete Certainty, by Bret Stephens, that was in the New York — the New York Times talked about – and I’ll just read a quote, because I think it’s a very important quote from this — from this article.

"'Anyone who’s read the 2014 report of the IPCC knows that, while the — while modest, 0.85 degrees Celsius, warming of the earth’ has occurred since 1880. ‘Much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated, but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. To say this isn’t to deny science. Isn’t to acknowledge it honestly.’”

THE FACTS: Pruitt misquoted Stephens and failed to mention that Stephens said global warming is “indisputable.”

While a 0.85 degree Celsius may seem modest, studies indicate that it is unprecedented in the history of the earth. On a global scale that "modest" amount of warming has resulted in extreme weather such as heat waves and giant downpours, melting glaciers, disappearing snow cover, shrinking sea ice, rising seas and increasing human health issues, according to the draft CNA report.

The agencies that compiled the report say they based their conclusions on "thousands of studies conducted by tens of thousands of scientists worldwide."

"Longer-term climate records over past centuries and millennia indicate that average temperatures in recent decades over much of the world have been much higher and have risen faster during this period than at any time in the past 1,700 years or more," according to the draft report. "Without major reductions in these emissions, the increase in average annual global temperatures relative to pre-industrial times could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit or more by the end of the century."

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-global-surface-temperature-map.png?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-global-surface-temperature-map.png?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/state-of-the-climate-2016-global-surface-temperature-map.png?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > Global Surface Temperature Highest on Record: aided by the strong El Niño early in the year, the 2016 annual global surface temperature observed record warmth for a third consecutive year, with the 2016 annual global surface temperature surpassing the previous record of 2015. (NOAA) (NOAA)

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during his confirmation hearing that he does not deny that greenhouse concentrations are affecting the atmosphere but believes "our ability to predict that effect is very limited." He also said he didn't see climate change "as the imminent national security threat that perhaps others do."

THE FACTS: Thousands of climate scientists disagree. Researchers have made significant progress in the models they use and "dramatic advances in their ability to track two key climate indicators—ocean heat content and Arctic sea ice seasonal cycles—and are confident that current models can reproduce surface temperature increases since 1870, including the rapid warming in the second half of the 20th century," according to the Union of Concerned Scientists .

The draft federal report notes in its executive summary that their projections that the climate will continue to warm even if emissions are curbed are "very likely," which is equivalent to a 90 to a 100-percent certainty that it will happen, according to the report.

TEAM TRUMP SAYS: Vice President Mike Pence said during an interview with Fox News in June that climate change "has emerged as a paramount issue for the left," which has put a "real burden on our economy and on our people."

THE FACTS: Pence’s remarks seem to indicate a short-term view of the situation and ignore the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists from both sides of the aisle that agree on the facts of carbon-driven global warming. Study after study warns of the economic burden unchecked, human-caused climate change will bring in the coming decades.

For example, a 2015 five-year, peer-reviewed analysis by the EPA titled Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action concluded that inaction on curbing greenhouse gases would cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.

"For nearly all sectors analyzed, global greenhouse gas mitigation is projected to prevent or substantially reduce adverse impacts in the U.S. this century compared to a future without emission reduc­tions. For many sectors, the projected benefits of mitigation are substantial; for example, in 2100 mitigation is projected to result in cost savings of $4.2-$7.4 billion associated with avoided road maintenance," the report notes.

'Decisions we make today can have long-term effects, and delaying action will likely increase the risks of significant and costly impacts in the future," the EPA said.