Trump claims “nobody really knows” what climate scientists definitely know

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace sat down for an interview with President-elect Donald Trump that aired yesterday, touching on a number of recent topics surrounding the Trump Administration’s transition. One of those topics was climate change and Trump’s choice for EPA Administrator, who appears poised to roll back pollution regulations on fossil fuels.

Wallace noted that Trump told the New York Times staff during a recent sit-down that he was “open-minded” about climate change (despite a history of statements to the contrary) and asked, “So, where are you on the environment?”

Trump answered, “I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows. I’ve—look, I’m somebody that gets it. And nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast.” Wallace didn’t challenge this claim, but assuming that Trump is referring to climate change here (rather than environmental protection more broadly) the reality is, in fact, hard and fast.

The last IPCC report, prepared by hundreds of climate scientists, summarized the state of the science well. It concluded, first, that “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.” And the cause? The report assigned at least 95 percent statistical confidence to the fact that “human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

“Nobody really knows.” 🙄

He seems much more concerned about getting plants opened in the short term.

#trump #climatechange