Donald Trump, in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board (March 21), was asked: “Do you think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?” Trump answered: “I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes — if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using ‘extreme weather’ I guess more than any other phrase. I am not — I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room — but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.”
This was not the first time Trump denied global warming and climate change. In November 2012, he stated the concept of global warming was a hoax created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive, a statement he later tried to back away from, saying he was joking.
In a September 2015 radio talk show hosted by Hugh Hewitt, Trump said “So I am not a believer, and I will, unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather. I believe there’s change.” And “I believe it goes up and it goes down.”
Trump’s answers reveal several things:
He didn’t say what he believes “goes up and it goes down” but from the context he seems to expect global warming will turn to global cooling, contradicting basic laws of physics and chemistry.
Stating he is “not a big believer” in climate change suggests he thinks climate change is a matter of faith instead of direct scientific observation. Multiple lines of hard evidence point to global warming and climate change including rising land and ocean temperatures, sea level rise, expanding drought and desertification, heavier precipitation and flooding, melting glaciers and ice caps, bleaching coral reefs, melting permafrost, accelerating species extinctions, and more.
He is confusing climate and weather. Weather is what happens day to day, climate is weather averaged over decades. Trump’s “I think there’s a change in weather” suggests short-term changes. If he bothered to look long-term, at weather over three decades or more, as climate scientists do, he would see climate change too.
Trump tries to dismiss current warming by reference to false predictions in the 1920s of a coming ice age. The most recent “global cooling” myth was based on a 1975 Newsweek article. This myth confuses mainstream media reports with scientific papers, which in the 1970s, as today, overwhelmingly pointed towards warming
His statement “unless somebody can prove something to me …” is interesting. What would he accept as proof? A recent study (Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming, April 13, 2016, Environmental Research Letters) states, “The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists …” Clearly no amount of scientific evidence will ever prove anything to Trump.
He doesn’t seem to have any clue what he’s talking about. His muddled responses don’t even try to make any coherent, evidence-based argument. Instead he just blathers.
Another question to Trump in the Washington Post interview: “Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?” Trump’s response: “Well, I just think we have much bigger risks…. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.”
Certainly nuclear weapons are a grave risk. The potential for destruction and loss of life from a nuclear state or terrorists is unimaginable. Equally unimaginable are the risks from global warming, and they are happening now. Our climate is absorbing prodigious amounts of solar heat due to atmospheric greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, from burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. When scientists add up all of the heat warming the oceans, land and atmosphere and melting the ice, they find our climate is accumulating four Hiroshima atomic bombs’ worth of heat every second.
Continuing to ignore this climate risk could lead to as great or greater destruction and loss of life as nuclear weapons. Small Island Nations are disappearing now. Within a few decades, major coastal cities around the world may be inundated. By century’s end, sea levels could be reshaping continents. Agricultural production is in sharp decline in many parts of the world due to heat, drought, water scarcity and flooding. Millions are being displaced, migration is destabilizing whole regions, and people are starving and dying, now.
Clearly, a Trump presidency would ignore all these existential threats, because he is “not a big believer.”
William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change. He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com