Trump: People With ‘Very High Levels Of Intelligence’ Like Myself Reject Scientists’ Climate Change Warnings

President Trump on Tuesday again disputed the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change, adding to his attempts on Monday to undermine the findings of his own administration’s climate report that warned of the impending consequences of climate change.

In an interview with The Washington Post, the president said “I don’t see” that climate change is man-made.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump told the Post on Tuesday. “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.”

“As to whether or not [global warming is] man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,” he added.

The comments come days after his administration published its first National Climate Assessment, which was produced with the consensus of scientists from 13 federal agencies and 300 leading scientists. The report concluded that climate change will interrupt the way people live day-to-day and result in “hundreds of billions of dollars” in annual losses to some economic sectors without radical actions taken to immediately curb global emissions.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Tuesday that the report is “not based on facts” and because the science behind climate modeling “is never exact.”

“We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,” Sanders told reporters at Tuesday’s White House press conference, the first in nearly a month. “It’s not data-driven. We’d like to see something that is more data-driven. It’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”

Asked on Monday about the devastating projections in his administration’s report, the president completely dismissed them.

“Yeah, I don’t believe it,” Trump told reporters about the report’s findings. “I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine.”

Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the bombshell report released on Friday, fired back at Sanders’ lies about the report, writing on Twitter: “First, a WH spokesperson said the report was based on the “most extreme” scenario. No: the report considered a very broad range of scenarios, from one where carbon emissions go negative to one where they continue to grow.”

First, a WH spokesperson said the report was based on the “most extreme” scenario. No: the report considered a very broad range of scenarios, from one where carbon emissions go negative to one where they continue to grow. Source: https://t.co/ibXllAEsxR pic.twitter.com/k6XoeNwGFr

— Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) November 27, 2018

She added, “Moreover, the scenarios chapter in Vol 1 discussed the scenarios in detail, and it concludes that ‘the observed increase in global carbon emissions over the past 15–20 years has been consistent with higher scenarios (very high confidence).’ ”

When it comes to a changing climate, the bottom line is this:

It’s real.

It’s us.

Scientists agree.

The impacts are already here and now.

But by acting now we can still avoid the most serious and even dangerous impacts.

Our future is in our hands.

— Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) November 27, 2018