Donald Trump says he's got high levels of intelligence but not a climate change believer



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Donald Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office during an interview with the Washington Post Tuesday

Washington:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday rejected a landmark report written by 13 federal agencies detailing the damage caused by global warming. He is intensifying throughout the country, saying that he is not one of the "believers" who see climate change as an urgent problem.

The comments revealed to the President the widest reasons why he did not agree with his own government's badysis that climate change was a problem. a serious threat to the health of Americans, as well as to the infrastructure, the economy and the country's natural resources. The conclusions – unequivocal, urgent and alarming – go against the dismantling of the Trump administration's environmental regulations and the lack of any climate change policy.

"One of the issues that concerns many people, like me, is the intelligence, but we are not necessarily such believers," said Trump during a free 20-minute interview from the Oval Office with The Washington Post in which he was questioned about why he was skeptical about the terrible national climate badessment that his administration had released on Friday.

"As to whether it is artificial or not and if the effects you are talking about are there, I do not see it," he added.

Trump did not address the root cause of climate change. The President has made fun of the pollution in other parts of the world. He talked about waste in the oceans. He issued an opinion on forest management practices. But he said little about what scientists say is causing global warming – carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

"You look at our air and our water and the record of cleanliness is record, but when you look at China and look at parts of Asia and South America, and when we look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including many other places, the air is incredibly dirty, and speaking of atmosphere, the oceans are very small, said Trump, referring to pollution in the world. "And that's blowing and it's floating. I mean, we are removing all the time thousands of tons of waste from our beaches that come from Asia. They flow in the Pacific. They flow and we say, "Where does this come from?" And it takes a lot of people to start. "

Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist at Texas Tech University, said in a statement. e-mail Tuesday that the president's comments were likely to make the nation vulnerable to the growing impacts of a warming planet.

"We must not believe the facts to make them true – we treat them as faculties at our peril," said Hayhoe. "And if we are the president of the United States, we do it at the risk, not only of ourselves, but of the hundreds of millions of people we are responsible for."

Andrew Dessler, Professor of Atmospheric Science in Texas The A & M University has struggled to find a response to the President's comments.

"How can we react to that?" Dessler said by email that the president's comments were "silly" and that Trump's main motivation seemed to attack the Obama administration's environmental policies and criticize political opponents.

In his comments, Trump also seemed to invoke a theme that is common in the world of skepticism about climate change – the idea that not long ago scientists were worried about the cooling of the planet, rather than the current warming.

"If you go back and you look at items, they're on the global freeze," Trump said. "They talk at one point, the planet will die of cold, then it will die of exhaustion due to heat."

This may refer to a much-quoted 1975 Newsweek article "The Cooling World" or a 1974 article Time magazine article "Another Ice Age?" But the researchers who reviewed this period found that, even though such ideas were in effect at the time, there was "no scientific consensus in the 1970s" on a trend or a global cooling risk, as there is today on climate change caused by man. [19659004] In other words, the understanding that scientists have of the direction that the planet is taking and its consequences is far more developed today than it does. was in the 1970s.

At present, the Earth has warmed to about a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). above the pre-industrial levels of the late 19th century. Numerous badyzes have shown that without rapid emission reductions – far beyond what the world is currently undertaking – warming will continue and exceed key thresholds that scientists believe could lead to irreversible climate-related disasters, such as more extreme weather conditions, the death of coral reefs and losses of most of the planetary ice sheets.

On Tuesday, a UN report again underscored the extent to which the world has not made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report found that as global emissions increase further in 2017, it is unlikely that they will peak in 2020. Scientists have said that carbon emissions are expected to fall in the coming years for the world to have a chance to avoid the worst consequences of climate.

Trump also referred to the recent devastating wildfires in California, which, according to scientists, have been made more intense and deadly by climate change. But the president is rather focused on the management of burned forests. Earlier, he congratulated Finland for spending "a lot of time raking and cleaning" its forest soils – a notion that left the Finnish president distraught.

"The California fire, where I was, if you were looking down at the fire floor, they had fallen trees," Trump said. "They have not done any forest management, no forest maintenance and you can light – you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that object stays there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it's a huge problem in California. "

" You go to other places where they have denser trees, it's denser, where trees are more flammable, they do not have forest fires like this because they're staying, "he said," and it was very interesting to watch the firefighters raking the brush ….. it's on fire. They rake, work so much. If it had been done in the beginning, there would be nothing to take. fire. "

Tuesday, Trump was not the only responsible for the administration to continue to ignore the latest climate warnings from the federal government.On a television appearance in California, the secretary at the 39, Interior, Ryan Zinke, acknowledged that the fire seasons have been lengthening in the state, but added: "Climate change or not, that does not relieve you of your responsibility to manage the forest. "

Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, spoke about the findings of a climate report released by the government Friday in the press, at the White House.

" We think it's the most extreme and non-factual version, "said Sanders, says of the National Climate Assessment." This is not piloted by the data. We would like to see something that is more based on the data. It is based on modeling, which is extremely difficult to do when you talk about climate. Again, our goal is to make sure you have the safest and cleanest air and water. "

(With the exception of the title, this story has not been altered by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated thread.)

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