Trump and climate change
President Donald Trump seems to have been the unwelcome star of the G20 meeting of world leaders in Hamburg. Loud, showman-like, unconventional, boorish, he seems to have stolen the show and probably annoyed everyone all the more by declaring G20 a “wonderful success” and by praising Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who clearly loathes him, for having organised it all “beautifully”.
The irony was that Trump, who appeared to be an irrational man in a group of rational men and women, was actually the only rational one there on the issue that dominated the meeting: climate change.
Trump had a big success in Poland just before G20, where he gave a tub-thumping speech in praise of nationalism and Western values before a rapturous Polish crowd. He then went on to Hamburg to meet the leaders of Germany and Russia, the two countries who have most outraged Poland in the past.
Trump spent over two hours with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Trump, whose foreign policy seems chaotic, has both praised and criticised Putin. I hope their contact has improved relations between the two most powerful nuclear nations.
Trade and international relations were discussed. So was climate change, the greatest folly of the modern age. The notion that rising CO2 will cause dangerous climate change is unscientific nonsense. It will have very little effect on the climate but a marvellously beneficial effect on plants, which we can see already.
Global temperatures for June 2017, from accurate satellite measurements, have dropped markedly since the El Nino of 2016. Contrary to the climate models, there has been no significant rise in global temperatures in the past 20 years, while CO2 has risen considerably.
The 2015 Paris climate agreement was baloney and Trump was right to pull out of it.
Merkel is universally respected. Everyone likes her as a sort of sensible tannie. Politically, she is in complete contrast to Trump. But it was she who made the disastrous decision to phase out German nuclear power and replace it with wind and solar. This has resulted in soaring electricity prices, environmental blight and no reduction of CO2.
On these issues, Trump is more rational than Merkel.