'We should assume our worst fears will be realised': climate scientist on Donald Trump

Climate extremes, particularly at the hot
end, are already becoming more common.

Donald Trump's phone call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made front pages and news bulletins around Australia and the US, but it led news bulletins in Germany, too, where leading European climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf is based.

"We are all very worried here," Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says. "We should assume our worst fears will be realised."

Such undiplomatic outbursts were standard for Trump before he became US President, but they now carry a manifest menace for the scientific community given his well-chronicled doubts about climate change being real. Among the climate-change deniers he relies on for advice are Scott Pruitt, Trump's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rick Perry, his choice as energy secretary.

Some of the possible outcomes scientists fear include the US exiting the Paris global climate agreement that came into force just days before Trump's election win in November and demolishing former president Barack Obama's climate action plan that sought to curb new coal-fired power plants and accelerate the closure of existing ones.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'We should assume our worst fears will be realised': climate scientist on Donald Trump.”