Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says the world is more at risk from nuclear weapons than climate change.
During an interview with the Washington Post editorial board Monday, Trump said weather changes but climate does not, at least because of human activity.
“I am not a great believer in manmade climate change. I’m not a great believer,” Trump said. “There is certainly a change in weather that goes — 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. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using ‘extreme weather’ I guess more than any other phrase.”
He added, “I am not — I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room — but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in manmade climate change.”
Trump has long held the belief that climate change is a hoax, as evidenced by many his many tweets on the subject. Many scientists believe the burning of fossil fuels and the subsequent release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere cause climate change.
There is a type of manmade climate change Trump worries about, though: Nuclear winter.
Trump said the thing that really concerns him is what happens when a nuclear bomb is dropped.
“Our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me — I know President Obama thought it was climate change — to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons,” he said. “That’s — that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now.
“We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.”
