On Fox Donald Trump Calls Climate Change A Hoax: In The 1920s They Were Talking About Global Freezing
Fox Business host Stuart Varney interviews Donald Trump on “Varney & Company”
Fox Business Network
In an exclusive interview Monday on Fox Business Networks Varney & Company Monday, Donald Trump told host Stuart Varney that climate change is a hoax. The former president said in my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up, and you go down, he said. If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about a global freezing, okay? In other words, the globe was going to freeze.
And then they go global warming, Trump continued. Then they couldnt use that because the temperatures were actually quite cool. And many different things. So now they just talk about climate change. The climates always been changing.
The suggestion that the earth was going to freeze in the early 20th Century is an oft-repeated claim, but one that isnt supported by science, writes Doug Struck in Scientific American. Struck noted that while its true that there had been a gradual decrease in global average temperatures from about 1940, the climates not always changing as Trump arguedat least, not naturally.
You think 2022 and 2024 are all about the 2020 election, really? Varney asked, pressing Trump, saying if we go into 2022, the elections, and 2024, youre still looking back to the election of 2020 saying that you really won, I dont know if thats very good for you or the Republican Party, Varney told Trump.
Trump Attacks Cnn’s Jim Acosta In Angry White House Press Conference
REUTERS
It predicted the countrys economy would see economic losses in the hundreds of billions by 2100, and stated there was no convincing alternative explanation for climate change besides human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases.
Dismissing the report, Mr Trump continued: Number two, if you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death , then its going to die of heat exhaustion.
There is movement in the atmosphere. Theres no question. As to whether or not its manmade and whether or not the effects that youre talking about are there, I dont see it not nearly like it is. Do we want clean water? Absolutely. Do we want clean air to breathe? Absolutely.
Mr Trump next moved unprompted on to Californias forest fires, again falsely blaming a lack of forest management and suggesting raking the earth could solve the issue. The president said earlier this month Finland prevented forest fires by raking, a claim that left many Fins bemused.
The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire, they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months, Mr Trump said. And its a massive problem in California.
What Did The Report Say
The Fourth National Climate Assessment outlines the potential impacts of climate change across every sector of American society.
“With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century – more than the current gross domestic product of many US states,” the report says.
“Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.”
The report notes that the effects of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country, including more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events.
But it says that projections of future catastrophe could change if society works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and “to adapt to the changes that will occur”.
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Trump: Im Not A Big Believer In Man
Give Donald Trump credit for consistency. The Republican presidential front-runner repeatedly has said he isnt a believer that humans have played a significant role in the Earths changing climate. He said as much in an interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt last year. He told Fox & Friends earlier this year that climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money.
In his own tweets, Trump has called the concept of global warming everything from a hoax to bulls to a scheme created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. .
Trumps stance on climate change, of course, puts him at odds with the vast majority of the worlds scientists, who agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are likely a result of human activity and are playing out in the form of rising seas, growing carbon dioxide emissions and melting glaciers.
Below is a transcript of the climate change exchange, which came toward the end of Trumps visit Monday to The Post:
You can listen to audio of Trumps full meeting with The Post below. The exchange about climate change begins at 1:02:15:
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Rolling Back Climate Regulations
Trumps belief that climate change may not be man-made should come as no surprise its reflected in many of the policies that have defined his first term. While it might be seen as progress that hes acknowledged its not a hoax, his belief that climate change will fix itself is clear from the way his administration has rolled back many Obama-era climate change directives.
Here are some of the controversial climate actions taken by the Trump administration:
- In 2017, Trump announced he would withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris agreement the landmark accord through which countries have pledged to reduce carbon emissions leaving the US as the only country in the world not signed on to the deal.
- In August, the administration announced plans to freeze Obama-era greenhouse gas emissions standards for automobiles. It also proposed withdrawing Californias Clean Air Act pre-emption waiver, which lets the state set its own emission standards. California and about a dozen states that follow its rules account for about a third of all the passenger vehicles sold in the United States.
- In September, the Environmental Protection Agency released a proposal that would relax requirements from the Obama-era on how energy companies monitor and repair methane leaks.
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Learning From The Past
I suspect that because of all these hurdles, climate change is not liable to be solved by democracies. Autocracies might do better like China, for example. Given the severity of its current air pollution a veritable airpocalypse Chinas government does not need to be prodded or persuaded to act the necessity is obvious, and urgent. And China has the ability to take dramatic measures on climate change and act quickly just what scientists are calling for dragging the people with them. This is, after all, the nation that lifted half a billion people into the middle class in a single generation.
But what about the U.S.?
In our democracy, I believe, if there is one thing that can be pressed upon the public to sway them with respect to climate change, it is how the U.S. has tackled immense environmental and geopolitical threats in the past, not entirely unlike climate change.
For example, the U.S. spearheaded the response to the ozone layer hole in the 1990s. When it was learned that chlorofluorocarbons emitted by air conditioning and refrigerants were creating a massive hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, exposing the Earth to dangerously high levels of UV rays, President George H. W. Bush led the way on a moratorium of CFCs that solved a dangerous problem in short order.
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How Years Compare With The 20th Century Average
2019
He has tweeted less about climate change in recent years – and, since being elected president, he has adopted an ambiguous, inconsistent stance in interviews and speeches.
But even when he acknowledges the significance of climate change, he tends to frame it in terms of clean air and water , or the cost to business:
- “I think there is some connectivity . There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” – NYT interview, November 2016.
- “I don’t think there’s a hoax. I do think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man-made… I don’t wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars.” – CBS interview, October 2018
- “Climate change is very important to me. I’ve done many environmental impact statements in my life, and I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear clean water and clean air.” – December 2019
- “Nothing’s a hoax about that. It’s a very serious subject… I want the cleanest air, I want the cleanest water. The environment is very important to me. I also want jobs. I don’t want to close up our industry because somebody said you have to go with wind.” – January 2020
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So What Does Trump Actually Believe
that Mr Trump tends to conflate climate change with environmentalism more generally.
“He doesn’t really understand what climate change is about,” says Professor Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at the University of Columbia.
Meanwhile, Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard’s Environmental Law Programme, argues that Mr Trump “believes nothing on climate change – he’s a climate nihilist”.
Mr Trump’s position is based on his need to appeal to “the part of the Republican establishment that rejects climate policy,” Mr Goffman, who previously worked as Democratic staff director on the Senate environmental committee, adds.
Joseph Pinion, a Republican strategist who has called for more action on climate change, also argues that Mr Trump looks at the issue from a political, rather than a moral perspective.
“He’s not going to win running on the environment,” Mr Pinion says. “In America, climate is not an issue, so the reason it is not an issue for President Trump is because he cares about winning. And the reason Democrats are OK with it not being a priority for them, is because they want to beat him.”
“Ultimately it doesn’t matter what President Trump believes, what matters is what he’s doing – we need to recognise climate change is not a priority of his administration.”
The Administration Faces Legal Challenges In Achieving Its Deregulatory Goals
The administrations rollbacks of environmental regulations have faced ongoing legal challenges. Changes in regulation cannot be challenged in court until they are finalized, but every one of the deregulatory actions described above that has reached that point is being challenged in the courts. This is not unusual environmental regulations are often contentious and require making decisions under uncertainty, conditions that make them ripe for challenge. Plaintiffs in these challenges include states, cities, and environmental and health organizations.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration has often cut corners, which has hurt it in court. Under the Administrative Procedures Act, federal agencies must notify the public, allow public comments, and justify their decisions to change regulation. The administration has sometimes skipped or shortened these steps to rescind or change rules more quickly, only to get sued.
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Air Water And Land Protection Laws Are Not Left Out
In addition to deregulatory actions that support the fossil fuel industry, our nations core environmental laws that ensure clean air and water and protect sensitive lands are also a focus of the administrations regulatory rollbacks. Some of these decisions have important consequences for human health, among them the refusal to strengthen National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particulate matter and ozone. NAAQS are a cornerstone of U.S. policy to reduce air pollution and must be reviewed by an independent science advisory committee every five years. The Clean Air Act allows consideration of human health and welfare, not cost of compliance, as these standards are reviewed. However, the administration worked to change the composition of the advisory committees to include more industry and anti-regulatory members, limit the scientific research that the committees could consider, and accelerate the process to limit the scope of the review. Another decision that affects human health is keeping the pesticide chlorpyrifos on the market, despite evidence of its risks.
How Americans View The Impact Of Climate Change Depends On Where They Live
Most Americans today say that climate change is affecting their local community either a great deal or some. That figure remains fairly steady from last year, when 59% reported at least some local effects of climate change.
The vast majority of this group says long periods of unusually hot weather represent a major local impact of climate change. They also say major effects include severe weather such as floods and intense storms , harm to animal wildlife and their habitats , damage to forests and plant life or droughts and water shortages . More frequent wildfires and rising sea levels that erode beaches and shorelines also are cited by equal percentages as major impacts to their local communities.
The degree to which Americans report experiencing effects of climate change in their local community varies by geographic region. Americans in Pacific states are most likely to see at least some local impacts of climate change . By comparison, 54% of those living in Mountain states say climate change is affecting their local area at least some.
Large shares of Americans nationwide who report at least some local impact of climate change cite long periods of unusually hot weather as occurring where they live. Other major effects of climate change, however, tend to vary by region.
A partisan lens also plays a role in these perceptions. Democrats and Democratic leaners are more likely than Republicans to report at least some effects of climate change on their local communities.1
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Trump Says ‘i Don’t Believe’ Federal Report’s Findings That Climate Change Will Hurt The Economy Here Are 5 Takeaways From That Report
Some 300 experts, including from 13 federal agencies, worked on the report.
President Donald Trump said he doesn’t “believe” a major report that includes the economic impact of climate change on the U.S. made public by his administration on Friday a holiday week release.
Trump on Monday said that he’s read some of the report and that “it’s fine,” but he doesn’t believe some of the analysis that predicts possible devastating effects on the economy.
Here are five things to know about the National Climate Assessment released last week.
