Press Promptly Spins Trump's Incomprehensible Remarks On Climate Into "Change Of Heart"

[hatrack]

When I first saw New York Times reporters tweet the news that Donald Trump claimed in an interview to have an “open mind” about climate change and the Paris climate agreement, I thought, Who cares? He is packing his administration with fossil fuel promoters, so his latest comments just suggest that he’s camouflaging his climate denial with doublespeak and pandering. Then I read the full transcript published Wednesday and was horrified by how these comments had been wildly misinterpreted by so many media outlets and commentators. A CNN subhead: “A new view on climate change?” An Associated Press lead sentence: “President-elect Donald Trump changed his tune on several topics — among them climate change and prosecuting Hillary Clinton — in statements Tuesday to The New York Times and on Twitter.”

They’re wrong. If you look at what he actually said in context, it’s clear that Trump hasn’t changed his mind on anything. Consider these six comments from his Times interview:

1. After Trump said “I have an open mind” on climate change, he went on to clarify that he’s open to the “other side,” which consists of people who don’t accept the scientific consensus on the issue.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, columnist: [A]re you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?

TRUMP: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue … [CNBC news anchor] Joe [Kernan] is one of them. But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully.

EDIT

3. Trump cited a random local temperature on a random date to suggest that the atmosphere isn’t getting hotter on average:

You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

This betrays a complete lack of understanding of climate change. Global warming means global average temperatures are on the rise. Climate deniers like to cherry-pick specific temperature readings, but those numbers don’t tell us anything about broader averages. The global data tell us that 16 of 17 hottest years on record have been recorded this century.

EDIT

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/trump-spun-his-climate-denial-to-the-new-york-times-and-lots-of-people-fell-for-it/

[MADem]

1. Let the normalization of a lunatic begin!

The emperor's clothes are of the finest silks!

[rgbecker]

2. It's worse than having our pussy grabbed. We are all fucked!

[SamKnause]

3. And not a single journalist had the courage to call him on it.

They could have asked him where he got his 'facts'.

They could have informed him his 'facts' were incorrect.

They could have offered to send him the correct information.

They could have had the information with them that pertained to

the question they knew they were going to ask.

Facts no longer matter in The United States.

Mission accomplished.

Welcome to the Corporate Controlled Christian Theocracy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Oh my god, that sounds like a man with Alzheimer's

(or drunk, but he doesn't drink). It gets worse - what he said about wind power:

Context does little to clear up Trump’s apparent animosity towards the regular movement of air. Times political reporter Michael Barbaro, in pressing him to expound on his plans to keep the office of the president separate from his business interests, alluded to a meeting between Trump and Nigel Farage about wind farms. Trump’s baffling response to the question:

Was I involved with the wind farms recently? Or, not that I know of. I mean, I have a problem with wind…
...
Oh, I see. I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean, the wind is a very deceiving thing. First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere. The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies.

So Trump thinks the manufacture of windmills puts steel into the atmosphere, for some reason. He hates that they kill birds, and he hates that they’re not made in America. Thomas Friedman was happy to point out, “(GE) has a big wind turbine factory in South Carolina. Just so you know.”

Trump ended his rant on the dangers posed by wind with the words, “I don’t care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country.” You’d think that this quote is some sort of error, since it doesn’t make sense, but according to the Times that’s what Trump said.

http://gizmodo.com/donald-trump-the-wind-is-a-very-deceiving-thing-1789306174

He makes Reagan or Dubya sound like science professors. That's a man who has never even tried to understand climate science - he just takes the opinion of someone who's got his ear (eg "renewables are bad for American business&quot and says things at random, basically saying "I don't understand it, so I assume it's not a problem".

[pscot]

5. Breitbart confirmed this

by quoting in detail from that interview and explaining what Trump really meant.