WASHINGTON — The effects of climate change driven by human
activity are spreading through the United States faster than has
been predicted, increasingly threatening infrastructure, water
supplies, crops and shorelines, according to a review of climate
science and its effects by a federal advisory committee. The
draft Third National Climate Assessment, issued every four
years, delivers a bracing picture of environmental changes and
natural disasters that mounting scientific evidence indicates is
fostered by climate change: heavier rains in the Northeast,
Midwest and Plains states that have overwhelmed storm drains and
led to flooding and erosion; sea level rise that has battered
coastal communities; drought that has turned much of the West
into a tinderbox. “Climate change, once considered an issue for
a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” the report
says. “Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers
are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer
than any living Amer