A Portrait of a Man Who Knows Nothing About Climate Change

Pointing to one historic hot day
becomes irrelevant when the record
shows steadily increasing temperatures.

In his interview with the New York Times, Donald Trump expressed more flexibility on climate change, which he has previously called a hoax created by China.

That is the good news. The bad news is that Trump’s lack of commitment to the cause of climate-science denial is rooted in a comprehensive failure to grasp the issue. The few snippets of concrete factual information he has to ground his beliefs are mostly false. His New York Times interview forced the president-elect to grapple with the issue in more depth than he did at any time during the campaign (the three debates had no questions on this issue, and climate-change policy in general received vanishingly little attention from the media). The portrait that comes out of the interview is one of almost complete ignorance.

Trump began by promising “an open mind.” Then he began to defend his denialist position:

You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

The hottest single day on record is not relevant to a problem centered on increased average temperatures.

Read the Daily Intelligency story - “A Portrait of a Man Who Knows Nothing About Climate Change.”