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Oxfam activists wearing oversized masks representing world leaders, including Donald Trump (CR).<\/span>Pablo Porciuncula\/AFP\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by<\/em> Guardian<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n In the past <\/span>decade at the forefront of US politics,\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading, or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a \u201choax\u201d.<\/p>\n This year has seen Trump ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it. In a year littered with lies and wild declarations, these are the five that stood out as the most startling.<\/p>\n Upon re-entering the White House in January, Trump revealed an unusual fixation would become an immediate priority for his administration\u2014the fate of an endangered, three-inch-long fish that lives in California. On his first day in office, Trump issued\u00a0an eye-catching executive order<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cPutting people over fish\u201d that demanded water be diverted from the smelt\u2019s habitat and towards needy people.<\/p>\n Experts were quick to\u00a0point out<\/a>\u00a0that water situated so far away would not aid the firefighting effort in LA, with the small amount of water provided to keep the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta ecosystem intact overshadowed by the much larger forces at play in California, such as the climate crisis, which has spurred monumental droughts in the region.<\/p>\n Continuing on the aquatic theme, Trump\u2019s first month in the most powerful office on the planet also included a bizarre\u00a0tirade<\/a>\u00a0against offshore wind energy for its supposed impact upon whales.<\/p>\n The president said that \u201cwindmills\u201d were \u201cdangerous,\u201d citing the example of whales being washed ashore in Massachusetts as proof that \u201cthe windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n While there was a spate of dead and sick whales becoming stranded ashore, Trump\u2019s own federal government scientists have rejected the idea that wind turbines placed in the ocean are to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths,\u201d the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration\u00a0states<\/a>. \u201cThere are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.\u201d<\/p>\n The main threats to whales continue to be entanglement in fishing nets, boat strikes, and altered prey behavior due to a rapidly heating ocean from the climate crisis, which is causing whales to have to forage closer to land, experts say.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t deterred Trump from enacting a long-held grudge against wind energy by halting planned projects and stating that \u201cwe don\u2019t allow the windmills and we don\u2019t want the solar panels\u201d\u00a0in August<\/a>. The president has also claimed that wind is \u201cthe most expensive energy there is\u201d\u2014a false claim: wind and solar are, in fact, among the\u00a0cheapest sources of power that have ever existed<\/a>.<\/p>\n In September, Trump delivered a remarkable, often\u00a0fact-free speech<\/a>\u00a0to the United Nations, in which he said that climate change is the \u201cgreatest con job ever perpetrated on the world\u201d, blaming \u201cstupid people\u201d for predictions that have hobbled countries with a costly \u201cgreen scam.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have a little standing order in the White House. Never use the word \u2018coal\u2019. Only use the words \u2018clean, beautiful coal\u2019. Sounds much better, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But perhaps the most unusual revelation in the speech was Trump outlining how he has sought to directly rebrand coal as a clean power source. \u201cI have a little standing order in the White House,\u201d he said. \u201cNever use the word \u2018coal\u2019. Only use the words \u2018clean, beautiful coal\u2019. Sounds much better, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n Coal is, in fact, far from clean. It is the\u00a0dirtiest<\/a>\u00a0of all fossil fuels in terms of the carbon it emits when burned, which then heats up the planet, and gives off air pollutants that routinely harm the heart and lung health of those who live near coal power plants.<\/p>\n Black lung disease, meanwhile, is an affliction many coal miners have suffered after directly inhaling coal dust. The Trump administration\u00a0axed<\/a>\u00a0a program that screened coal miners for the respiratory condition.<\/p>\n The federal government, across different administrations, has lavished funding for plans to install carbon capture facilities at coal plants to stop harmful emissions from escaping, but this has\u00a0yet to be implemented<\/a>\u00a0in any meaningful way in the US.<\/p>\n In the same speech to beleaguered-looking diplomats at the UN, Trump scoffed at the scientific reality of global heating, instead claiming that scientists had just changed their minds from the planet cooling down.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be global cooling,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said, global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world. But then it started getting cooler.\u201d<\/p>\n The world is not cooling down. It is heating up at the fastest rate in the history of humanity, due to the burning of fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, deforestation. Scientists are unequivocal about this, as can anyone able to grasp a simple\u00a0temperature graph<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the 1920s and 1930s, the field of climate science wasn\u2019t as developed as it is now, but even then there was an\u00a0understanding<\/a>\u00a0of the greenhouse effect, and few scientists in the decades since have expressed concerns about \u201cglobal cooling<\/a>\u201d\u00a0compared<\/a>\u00a0with those warning of planetary heating.<\/p>\n The Earth is thought to have been in\u00a0a long, gentle cooling pattern<\/a>\u00a0for thousands of years due to natural forces, but this was upended by the industrial revolution, with the vast amounts of heat-trapping gases emitted over the past 150 years setting us on a completely new and dangerous path. The world is now hotter\u00a0than at any previous point<\/a>\u00a0in human civilization.<\/p>\n Last month, Trump announced new investigations related to the climate crisis. Not to find more about the severity of global heating and its implications\u2014more to target those who have told the world about it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little conspiracy out there,\u201d the president\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0at a US-Saudi investment forum in Washington. \u201cWe have to investigate them immediately. They probably are being investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear who \u201cthey\u201d are\u2014scientists, Democratic politicians, the insurance companies pulling out of states because of the crushing cost of climate-driven disasters? But Trump pushed on.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir policies punish success, rewarded failure, and produced disaster, including the worst inflation in our country\u2019s history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While the Trump administration has fired scientists,\u00a0hauled down mentions<\/a>\u00a0of the climate crisis from government websites, and banned federal employees from uttering\u00a0verboten words<\/a>\u00a0such as \u201cemissions\u201d and \u201cgreen\u201d, the reality remains that the world is warming up, and past projections of this have\u00a0been generally accurate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some of the most accurate forecasts of global heating came from the fossil fuel industry, which knew of the dangers\u00a0from the 1950s onward<\/a>\u00a0and produced strikingly accurate projections\u00a0of future heat in the 1970s<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead of informing the world of this peril, however, oil and gas companies instead set about a decades-long campaign to\u00a0downplay and distort this science<\/a>\u00a0in order to maintain their lofty position in the global economy.<\/p>\n Trump has not called for an investigation of these companies, choosing instead to\u00a0openly solicit campaign donations from them<\/a>\u00a0in return for rollbacks of clean air protections once he became president\u2014a promise he has largely\u00a0fulfilled<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
The unassuming delta smelt, Trump said rather uncharitably, is \u201can essentially worthless fish\u201d which had been lavished with water flows that should instead go to nearby farmers or help fight the\u00a0devastating wildfires<\/a>\u00a0that were raging hundreds of miles south in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n