Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson engaged in another round of climate change denial while also veering off into remarks about evolution and gravity during a Sept. 30 appearance at the University of New Hampshire, the New Republic reported.
"The way the earth rotates on its axis, how far away it is from the sun. These are all very complex things," Carson said in response to a question from the audience. "Gravity, where did it come from? I mean, there are so many things. So I don't denigrate the people who say 'Eh, eh, whatever, somehow it happened.' I don't denigrate them. I just don't have that much faith."
As stated in Newton's law of universal gravitation, any two objects attract one another with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Footage of the encounter begins with the audience member telling the former neurosurgeon, "You don't believe in climate change or evolution, I believe. And I was just wondering, do you seriously not believe that climate change is happening?"
Carson -- who has called research concerning global warming "irrelevant" -- accused news outlets of distorting his remarks before launching into his answer.
"Is there climate change? Of course there's climate change," Carson said. "Any point in time temperatures are going up or temperatures are going down. When that stops happening, that's when we're in big trouble."
Though the audience can be heard applauding the response, what Carson was actually describing was weather. As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explained on Cosmos last year, "We can't observe climate directly; all we see is the weather."
Carson went on to state that there was "no reason" to make climate change a political issue, before sharing his thoughts on evolution.
"I do believe in micro-evolution, or natural selection," he said. "But I believe that God gave the creatures He made the ability to adapt to their surroundings. Because He's very smart. He didn't want to start over every 50 years."
Watch Carson's remarks, as posted online, below.
