– These poor fools are talking about global warming – that's what the latest interview Donald Trump spoke out on climate change. And in a matter of a few dozen seconds, he uttered a whole series of false statements and manipulations. We checked them sentence by sentence.
1. “They don't call it global warming anymore, they call it climate change”
Trump refers to a myth often repeated by global warming deniers – it boils down to the fact that scientists used to talk only about “global warming”, and when it turned out that the Earth “was not warming at all”, they changed it to “climate change”.
First of all, there is no doubt that the Earth is getting warmer and it is caused by our activities – namely burning oil, coal and gas, and greenhouse gas emissions. We know this because we directly measure the Earth's temperature, compare it with what it was 100, 150 years ago – and in the same way we measure and compare the concentration of carbon dioxide and other gases. The very retention of heat on Earth by some gases in the atmosphere is the basis of physics and knowledge dating back to the 19th century.
And already in 2013 on a specialist portal naukaoklimacie.pl described the manipulation used by Trump. As we read, the term “climate change” appears in publications from the 1950s, and later in the 1970s and beyond. Both concepts have slightly different meanings, because Global warming refers to the increase in average temperature itself, and climate change refers to the broader changes of which the increase in temperature is a part. And climate change was used more often and earlier than global warming, not the other way around. There is no conspiracy here.
2. “Years ago they were talking about global cooling. They thought the planet would freeze, now they think it will burn”
It’s another staple of climate denialists. Like all the best lies, it has a grain of truth to it. It’s true that decades ago, some scientists predicted a drop in global temperatures, and the media picked up on the story.
But it was nowhere near the scientific consensus that exists today on global warming. Analysis of scientific publications from the 60s and 70s shows that The primary focus of climate scientists was global warming, and reports of the planet cooling were the exception.
It should also be added that the fact that someone made a mistake about “global cooling” a few decades ago does not mean that the same is true for global warming. Now we have clear evidence – the planet's temperature is constantly rising, and 2023 was the hottest year on record.
3. “These lunatics, who weren't even good students in school, told us we had 12 years left to live. That time is almost up.”
Trump is referring to the publication of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The IPCC is the world's foremost scientific authority on climate change, which analyzes the latest scientific knowledge and summarizes it in reports. In 2018, he issued a special report on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This number appears on the one hand in the global Paris Agreement, in which the world agreed that it will try to stop the temperature increase at the level of 1.5 degrees. On the other hand, science shows us that it is moderately safe limit global warming.
However, one of the report’s main conclusions was misinterpreted by some media outlets, giving rise to manipulations such as Trump’s statement. The 2018 report showed that to stop warming at this relatively safe level, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by about half by 2030. Some headlines stated that “we have 12 years to save the planet.”
But it was never about thatthat specifically in 2030 climate change will reach catastrophic proportions, or even more so that “we will all die” after these 12 years. The report says that without reducing emissions by the aforementioned 50 percent by 2030 We will not be able to avoid some of the consequences of warming in the future. So the mockery of the lack of an “end of the world” in 2030 is misplaced, because the consequences that scientists warn about will grow gradually – no one specific year will be the one in which climate change destroys the world. But without reducing emissions, the effects will get worse and here the predictions of scientists have not changed – and if they have, it is to our detriment.
4. “The problem is not that the ocean will rise a quarter of an inch in 500 years”
Just as Trump has previously ridiculed science by exaggerating, here he mocks the predictions by drastically underestimating them. First of all, since 1880, sea levels have already risen by 16-21 cm (or 6-8 inches). And the rate of increase is accelerating.
By the end of this century, at best – if we drastically reduce emissions and stop warming at around 1.5 degrees Celsius – by the end of this century, the sea level will rise by 30-55 centimetres. This is enough to threaten some islands and coastlines. In the worse, but currently more likely scenario of no action, it will rise by 44-76 cm, and in the worst – over a metre. However, the threat will be even greater in the future, because the melting of the ice sheets has a significant delay and over the next centuries the sea level will rise to 2, 3, or maybe 4-6 metres – depending on the level at which we stop climate change.
5. “The problem is nuclear warming, nuclear weapons”
It's impossible to tell what Trump means here.
6. “Fools think the planet is going to burn. It's the weather”
Difference between climate and weather is fundamental and usually translated in primary school. The climate change we are causing is making the weather more and more dangerous. – stronger hurricanesmore intense rains (like those that flooded several Polish cities in August), droughts, deadly heat and fires.
Trump is a threat to the climate
Donald Trump's climate change denial is nothing new – he's been doing it for years, including during his last election campaign. Back then, he said climate change was a “Chinese scam.”
But media statements are one thing, and the real power he can gain by winning the election is something else. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement (Joe Biden (he reversed that decision immediately after taking office.) The conservative justices he appointed to the Supreme Court made a decision that disadvantages, among others, the Environmental Protection Agency. His decisions translate into avoidable greenhouse gas emissions — estimated at as much as 1.8 billion tons of CO2 by 2035.
Now, right-wing organizations are behind it and want to go much further. and dismantle the environmental protection system, greenlight even more oil and gas extraction, and roll back climate policies created under President Biden.