Trump warns of US “power the likes of which this world has never seen before”
Developments on Day 201 of the Trump Administration:
Trump Threatens Unprecedented Military Action
Donald Trump says he will unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangers the US.
Speaking to reporters at his New Jersey golf club, Trump said:
North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
[North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said, they will be met with fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.
Trump gave no details of what Norea Korean action might cross his line and bring a US military response.
Observers reacted with shock and scepticism:
No joke: I read Trump's statement on North Korea and thought it was a North Korean statement on Trump.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 8, 2017
#Trump threatened war with #DPRK if they make any more verbal threats. That is what #DPRK does. All. The. Time. #Trump is clueless
— Not a spy (@finriswolf) August 8, 2017
North Korea Responds Quickly
Several hours later, Pyongyang said it is considering a strike that will create “an enveloping fire” around Guam, the island in the western Pacific island where the US has a strategic airbase from where bombers have recently flown over the Korean Peninsula.
The North Korean Army said in a statement:
Will only the U.S. have option called “preventive war”?….It is a daydream for the U.S. to think that its mainland is an invulnerable Heavenly kingdom.
The U.S. should clearly face up to the fact that the ballistic rockets of the Strategic Force of the KPA [Korean People’s Army] are now on constant standby, facing the Pacific Ocean and paying deep attention to their azimuth angle for launch.
North Korea has stepped up its missile testing since Trump took office in January. Last month it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the continental United States. Officials revealed this week that
US intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea had miniaturized a nuclear warhead, an assessment shared by the Japanese Government.
However, experts say the North Koreans face the challenge of a warhead surviving the intense heat of re-entry as it returns through the atmosphere.
Last weekend the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new sanctions resolution against North Korea, the eighth since the country conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Significantly China supported the measure despite being North Korea’s main outlet for exports and imports.
Supporters of the resolution say the new sanctions will cut North Korea’s annual export revenue by about a third with the ban on purchases of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore, and seafood.
Will Trump Administration Accept Warning in Climate Change Report?
Scientists question if the Trump Administration, with its climate-change deniers, will accept the findings of a new report warning of rapid temperature change.
The draft report from specialists in 13 federal agencies says that, with the sharp increase in temperature since 1980, recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years.
“Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” says the report, uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but largely overlooked until publication in The New York Times this week.
The authors cite thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists: “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”
The report concludes that, even if humans immediately stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world will be at least an additional 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.3 degrees Celsius) warmer. Scientists say the projected actual rise may be as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).
The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the National Climate Assessment, congressionally mandated every four years, but the authors are awaiting permission from the Trump Administration to release it.
The Environmental Protection Agency is one of 13 agencies that must approve the report by August 18, but EPA head Scott Pruitt has said he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.