If I followed up every time Donald Trump opened his mouth on climate change with a blog post pointing out where he was wrong, I’d have no time left to do anything else – but this one is a bit more special. This week, Trump visited the U.K., and part of that visit involved a conversation with Prince Charles – an advocate of organic farming and fighting climate change. They couldn’t really have more opposing views, so what did POTUS have to say about climate change afterwards?
The following are quotes lifted from a BBC News article (as of 5 June 2019).
“I believe that there’s a change in weather and I think it changes both ways,” Mr Trump told Piers Morgan in an interview that aired on Wednesday.
This would make more sense if he said a “change in climate”, as weather changes all the time. This one sentence encapsulates the President’s inability to grasp the difference between weather and climate. He’s correct in what he says – weather changes both ways! Indeed, some places do have a cooling climate – e.g. the North Atlantic warming hole – whilst it’s possible that global warming may lead to all kinds of extreme weather including cold weather extremes due to changes to the jet stream.
What he should have said: “I accept that there is solid scientific evidence for climate change, which, whilst it doesn’t necessarily rule-out some short-term increase in cold weather extremes, indicates there will be a long-term shift to overall more warmer weather.”
“He wants to make sure future generations have climate that is good climate as opposed to a disaster and I agree.”
Ah yes, “good climate vs. disaster climate”. He says he agrees… but does he? The following quote suggests he considers creating “good” climate to have nothing to do with greenhouse gases…
What he should have said: “Prince Charles, like many, is fighting to ensure future generations, and all plants and animals, can thrive on this planet even more than we do now. I want to join him in that.”
But Mr Trump once again placed the blame on other countries, namely China, India and Russia, for worsening air and water quality while claiming the US has one of “the cleanest climates there are”.
This is a great example of Trump seemingly getting confused between air quality, climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions. No one refers to a “clean” climate. That doesn’t make sense. If this statement was about greenhouse gases, it’s wrong – with US emissions placed 2nd to China globally.
What he should have said: “The US is one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, and we need to do something about that.”
“Don’t forget, it used to be called global warming, that wasn’t working, then it was called climate change, now it’s actually called extreme weather because with extreme weather you can’t miss,” the president said.
[insert WRONG! Trump GIF]
This is a fallacy which Trump keeps repeating. Global warming (the rise in Earth’s average temperature) drives climate change, which is defined over long time periods. It is manifest in an increased frequency of extreme or record-breaking weather events. I actually believe Trump doesn’t understand that, rather than repeating the falsehood for other reasons.
What he should have said: “Global warming leads to climate change, and now we’re starting to see the effects of this with extreme weather events around the world.”
Mr Trump pointed to past examples of weather disasters to refute the idea that “extreme weather” is becoming more common due to climate change.
“I don’t remember tornados in the United States to this extent but then when you look back 40 years ago we had the worst tornado binge we ever had. In the 1890s we had our worst hurricanes.”
Some serious cherrypicking here. And what’s a tornado binge? There’s also some implication in these words that people have suggested the recent US tornado outbreak is due to climate change, and that they have said so purely because of short-term memory. That’s a load of garbage. Moreover, tornadoes and hurricanes are among the more contentious when it comes to the effect of global warming on their frequency. Tornadoes and hurricanes are also very US-centric, suggesting the President doesn’t care about increases in severe weather in other parts of the world…
What he should have said: “I took an Advanced Statistics class at college, and I know that, in order to see whether there is a long-term change occurring, I need to perform many forms of statistical analysis – including significance tests on linear regression and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, to determine if my data is showing climate change, and not to randomly pick outliers in the past to prove my agenda. I also need to account for changes in data acquisition and homogeneity over time before making any conclusions. And a good example of this is the catastrophic loss of Arctic sea-ice since the late 1970s, when reliable records began.”
Simon H. Lee 