May 4, 2016

Donald Trump Thinks Global Warming Is “Bullshit”

Sad!

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-318051209/stock-photo-september-donald-trump-republican-presidential-candidate-speaks-during-a-rally.html?src=ztJCCiuId5EgbYsCKVTL3w-1-20">Joseph Sohm</a>/Shutterstock


This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday, making it almost certain that Donald Trump will win the GOP nomination and face Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November. For those who’ve been in denial that this day could ever come, we figured a refresher course on the real estate developer’s musings about climate and energy might be in order.

On the basic science: “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change,” Trump told the Washington Post editorial board in March. “If you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming.”

A panel of scientists ranked all the then-presidential candidates’ public remarks on climate for the Associated Press last November. Trump got 15 points—out of 100.

On climate versus weather: When it was “really cold outside” last October, Trump tweeted that we “could use a big fat dose of global warming!”

On the kind of climate change he is worried about: “I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.” Interpretation: unclear.

On the Environmental Protection Agency: “We’re going to get rid of so many different things,” Trump said in a February debate. “Environmental protection—we waste all of this money. We’re going to bring that back to the states.” But only if he can figure out what the EPA is. Trump said he would eliminate some agency called “Department of Environmental. I mean, the DEP is killing us environmentally, it’s just killing our businesses.”

On clean energy:

On clean energy when campaigning in clean-energy-heavy states: Trump told an Iowa voter that he’s okay with wind subsidies. “It’s an amazing thing when you think—you know, where they can, out of nowhere, out of the wind, they make energy.”

On the Paris climate accord signed by 175 countries: “One of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in politics—in the history of politics as I know it.”

On his hair: “You have showers where I can’t wash my hair properly, it’s a disaster!” Thanks to the EPA, Trump told a crowd in December, showerheads “have restrictors put in. The problem is you stay under the shower for five times as long.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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