Here's everything President Trump has said publicly about climate change
Under President Trump, the US Environmental Protection Agency has frozen all new grants and contracts and barred its employees from talking about it with the press or public, according to reports from ProPublica and The Huffington Post as well as information passed anonymously from EPA staff to Business Insider.
Along with the EPA's core mission to protect Americans from poisons and other dangers in the environment, the agency maintains a page dedicated to disseminating knowledge and compiling scientific research about climate change, which Reuters recently reported has been threatened with removal.
While all this is going on, here's a reminder of everything President Trump has said about climate change:
1. Climate change is a Chinese Hoax
In November 2012, President Trump tweeted that global warming is a Chinese hoax which is part of a plot designed to bring down US business and manufacturing.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
Trump has since backed away from what he said, calling his words a "joke" and sometimes denying he said them altogether, as independent fact-checking website PolitiFact notes. However, over the years Trump hasn't shied away from his skepticism about climate change, and he has referred to it as a hoax many times. A lot of these claims are on his Twitter feed.
This tweet is from January 2014.
"NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"
A few days later:
"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!"
"Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air - not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense."
In reality there is irrefutable evidence that global warming is happening and has been worsened by humans. This is backed up by thousands of scientists and decades of research.
2. Climate change is bad for business
In the past, Trump has said he wants to dismantle the USA's involvement in the Paris Climate Agreement - a pledge between world leaders to stop the Earth heating up more than 2 degrees Celsius - because it is "bad for US business."
Last January he told Fox news show "Fox & Friends" that climate change was actually a very expensive form of tax, according to PolitiFact.
"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," he said. "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."
3. Wind farms (a form of renewable energy) are bad for people's health
Trump also said that wind farms are "disgusting looking" and claimed they are "bad for people's health" - a claim which has since been debunked.
"Not only are wind farms disgusting looking, but even worse they are bad for people's health."
The USA is the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, so Trump's decisions will undoubtedly have a large impact on the rest of the world.
Here are the facts:
- Between 1990 and 2010, worldwide emissions of all major greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and several fluorinated gases - increased.
- Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years.
- In 2013, carbon dioxide levels in the air surpassed 400 parts per million - the highest in human history.
- 2015 showed the hottest Earth surface temperature ever recorded.
- Over the past thirty years, sea surface temperature has been consistently higher than at any other time since records began in 1880.