Pruitt asks whether global warming “is a bad thing”
As head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that rising levels of carbon dioxide from human-fueled activity are warming the planet.
He’s now taking a different approach: Even if climate change is occurring, as the vast majority of scientists say it is, a warmer atmosphere might not be so awful for human beings, according to Pruitt.
“We know humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends,” Pruitt said Tuesday during an interview on KSNV, an NBC affiliate in Las Vegas. “So I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? That’s fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”
Pruitt continued: “There are very important questions around the climate issue that folks really don’t get to. And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve talked about having an honest, open, transparent debate about what do we know, what don’t we know, so the American people can be informed and they can make decisions on their own with respect to these issues.”
Not long after taking office last February, T he road from California’s Highway 1 rises along the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, through vineyards and horse farms, to the steepening Empire Grade. A dirt-road turnoff dips into a dank twilight, sun filtering Pruitt seemed to reject the established through stands of trees that John Steinbeck science of climate change in a nationally called “ambassadors from another time.” televised interview — a move The coast redwoods, ancient and threatened, that outraged scientists, environmental mix with towering Douglas firs and advocates and his predecessors at the opportunistic tanoaks throughout this restoration EPA. project on a mountaintop just
“I think that measuring with precision miles from the sea. The redwoods here are human activity on the climate is something youthful, none probably more than a century very challenging to do and there’s and a half old. The massive stumps of tremendous disagreement about the degree their old-growth ancestors are encircled by of impact, so no, I would not agree the young, clusters known as “fairy rings.” that it’s a primary contributor to the As humans continue to harvest, the only global warming that we see,” Pruitt said coast redwoods on the planet are in peril. on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last March. Scientists believe a solution to preserve “We need to continue the debate and them is here, in forests like this one. continue the review and the analysis.” For the first time, scientists are mapping
At the time, his comments represented the coast redwood’s genome, a genetic a startling statement for an official so code 12 times larger than that of a human high in the U.S. government. They put being. By the end of the year, scientists him at odds not only with leaders hope to have mapped the complete genome around the world, but also with the of the coast redwood and of the giant EPA’s own official scientific findings. sequoia, a close cousin that also is among President Donald Trump has famously the tallest trees in the world, some reaching called the idea of human-driven climate hundreds of feet high. The genetic code change a hoax. Other Cabinet members, of a single 1,300-year-old redwood from a including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, stand just north of here and of a same-age have questioned the scientific basis for sequoia will serve as baselines and the first combating global warming. step in better understanding how to make
He now seems to have embraced an these forests more genetically diverse as a argument long held by other climatescience defense against rising man-made threats. skeptics: That a warmer atmosphere When the three-year project is complete, may in fact be better for humanity. scientists will have the genetic fingerprints “The climate is changing. That’s not of hundreds of redwoods, a sample large the debate. The debate is how do we enough to determine which trees have the know what the ideal surface temperature characteristics to best withstand increased is in 2100? ... I think the American moisture or drought, heat increases or people deserve an open honest transparent temperature drops. The results will be discussion about those things,” available as an open online resource, a Pruitt said last month. shared tool for those managing the forests.