U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that "nobody really knows" whether global climate change is real and that he is weighing the country's options with regards to continuing to participate in global climate change reduction efforts.
The Washington Post said that Trump made the remarks in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, who the former reality TV star told that he is "studying" whether to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate treaty it signed a year ago because "other countries are eating our lunch."
“I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows,” Trump said regarding whether or not humans are causing the planet to get warmer. “Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast. I do know this: Other countries are eating our lunch.”
As the Post noted, this flies directly in the face of the overwhelming scientific consensus.
"In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is 'extremely likely' that, since the 1950s, humans and their greenhouse gas emissions have been the 'dominant cause' of the planet’s warming trend," wrote the Post's Juliet Eilperin. "The top 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998, and 2016 is expected to be the hottest year since formal record-keeping began in 1880."
In 2012, Trump called climate change a hoax tweeting that global warming is a myth "created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
