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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump walk together during the G7 Summit in Taormina, Italy on Saturday, May 27, 2017. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)
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French President Emmanuel Macron arrives at the ancient Greek Theatre of Taormina during the Heads of State and of Government G7 summit, on May 26, 2017 in Sicily.
The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the US and Italy will be joined by representatives of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as teams from Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia during the summit from May 26 to 27, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Tiziana FABI (Photo credit should read TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images)
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(CNN) —
On Monday night, the New York Times published a draft copy of a report from 13 government agencies that affirms climate change is real and human actions are having an effect on the warming of the planet.
The Times story notes that “scientists say they fear that the Trump administration could change or suppress the report.” Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is an outspoken climate change skeptic, who does not believe carbon dioxide is a major factor in global warming.
Trump himself has been an aggressive critic of climate change for years. A search of the invaluable Trump Twitter Archive turns up 106 tweets in which Trump mentions “global warming” and 36 in which he used the phrase “climate change.”
All of those mentions express serious skepticism about the phenomenon. Trump has tweeted dozens of times about how it is so cold wherever he is and how that debunks the idea the climate is changing. He was also fixated for a time on the idea that scientists were changing the preferred nomenclature from “global warming” to “climate change.”
I mined through all of those tweets as well as a number of statements Trump has made about climate change. The 20 most dismissive are below in rough chronological order – starting in 2012 with his oldest comments.
1. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
2. “It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!”
3. “It’s freezing outside, where the hell is ‘global warming’??”
4. “I wonder if the Rutgers coach who had the audacity to yell at the player is a proponent of global warming?”
5. “We should be focused on magnificently clean and healthy air and not distracted by the expensive hoax that is global warming!”
6. “Wow, it’s snowing in Isreal and on the pyramids in Egypt. Are we still wasting billions on the global warming con? MAKE U.S. COMPETITIVE!”
7. “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”
8. “Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air - not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense.”
9. Obama said in his SOTU that ‘global warming is a fact.’ Sure, about as factual as ‘if you like your healthcare, you can keep it.’”
10. “When will our country stop wasting money on global warming and so many other truly “STUPID” things and begin to focus on lower taxes?”
11. “It’s late in July and it is really cold outside in New York. Where the hell is GLOBAL WARMING??? We need some fast! It’s now CLIMATE CHANGE”
12. “Just out - the POLAR ICE CAPS are at an all time high, the POLAR BEAR population has never been stronger. Where the hell is global warming?”
13. “It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!”
14. “Wow, 25 degrees below zero, record cold and snow spell. Global warming anyone?”
15. “Record low temperatures and massive amounts of snow. Where the hell is GLOBAL WARMING?”
16. “I believe in clean air. Immaculate air. But I don’t believe in climate change.”
17. “I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling…They thought the Earth was cooling. Now, it’s global warming…But the problem we have, and if you look at our energy costs, and all of the things that we’re doing to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists.”
18. “Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I’d be—received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business.”
19. “I’m not supposed to be using hair spray. But think of it. So Obama’s always talking about the global warming, that global warming is our biggest and most dangerous problem, OK?”
20. “I did not. I did not. I do not say that.” (see #1)
Correction: This post has been changed to correct the year in which Trump denied saying the Chinese created the concept of climate change.
