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By now, the world knows where President Donald Trump stands on the issue of global warming: He's a climate denier who has appointed the most staunchly anti-environment cabinet in modern American political history.
If fully enacted, his administration's policies would accelerate global warming, raising sea levels worldwide and wreaking havoc with extreme weather events, likely causing billions in damage to the U.S. alone.
Trump is the only climate denier at the helm of a G-20 nation (though Vladimir Putin has flirted with climate denial in the past). He makes the U.S. scientific establishment so furious that some researchers are ditching academia in favor of the campaign trail to oppose his policies from inside the government.
SEE ALSO:The Doomsday Clock is a gimmick, but why it just moved closer to midnight is deadly seriousBut rather than debunk another baseless thing Trump said about climate science, which others have already done, there's an overlooked, counterintuitive point to be made about Trump's refusal to accept scientific facts. His purposeful ignorance hurts his own agenda.
It's actually in Trump's best interest to form a coherent climate science position, even if it's outside of the scientific mainstream, because he is relying so much on executive action, rather than Congress, to undo previously enacted climate policies. Executive actions – including executive orders and federal regulations – are more vulnerable to judicial review than legislative actions are.
Courts have consistently struck down or halted federal regulations that skip mandated steps, lack scientific justification, or would cause undue harm to industry or the public when compared to the benefits. Policies implemented without the advice of professional scientists risk being overturned at a later date, potentially after Trump has left office.
A glacier in the Svalbard Islands, Spitsbergen Island, Norway.Credit: UIG via Getty ImagesThe legal difficulties have already started to affect the Environmental Protection Agency and its zealous administrator, Scott Pruitt. Pruitt has rushed headlong toward undoing every climate and clean air regulation put in place in the history of his agency, and courts are beginning to put the brakes on this.
Trump is the first president since President John F. Kennedy to fail to appoint a science advisor by this point in his first term, and he has barely staffed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP is charged with providing the Executive Branch with expert science and technology information in order to enable leaders like Trump and Pruitt to make informed decisions.
Right now, the administration is flying blind when it comes to devising policies on everything from artificial intelligence to nuclear weapons modernization to how long it may be before global warming puts Trump's own Mar a Lago club underwater (hint, it's sooner than you think).
A recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the Trump administration has been sidelining scientists across the government, from OSTP to agency advisory committees.
"The administration's one-year record shows an unprecedented level of stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts," the report found.
Instead of experts, Trump has instead been relying on Fox News for most of his scientific advice. This is the equivalent of eschewing a physician visit and instead watching episodes of Dr. Oz in order to treat your sick kid.
In short, it's bonkers. More importantly, it's hurting both Trump and the country at the same time.
In an interview between Trump and the British journalist Piers Morgan that aired over the weekend on ITV, Trump said a remarkably idiotic series of falsehoods about the changing planet. These are talking points regurgitated frequently on Fox News shows such as Fox & Friends, which the president is known to watch regularly.
Arctic sea ice trend during the month of December, since satellite observations began in 1979.Credit: nsidc.When Piers Morgan asked him, "Do you believe in climate change? Do you believe it exists?," Trump answered:
"There is a cooling and there's a heating -- I mean, look, it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming," Trump said.
"That wasn't working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt. They were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records, okay? They're at a record level," he said.
"There were so many thing[s] happening, Piers. I’ll tell you what I believe in. I believe in clear air. I believe in crystal clear beautiful water. I believe in just having good cleanliness in all."
The problem for Trump, however, is that the ice caps are at record lows, both in the Arctic and Antarctic, as is sea ice in both those regions. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest point in at least the past 1,400 years, according to recent research, and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at an increasing rate with each passing year. Just a few decades ago, they were thought to be relatively stable, particularly in Antarctica.
A record high is pure fantasy, like much of what airs on Fox News.
Here's a chart showing the current status of Arctic sea ice extent, which is at a record low, for example.
Arctic sea ice extent during 2018.Credit: NSIDC/Zack LabeIt should also be noted that Morgan's question was itself ridiculous, as climate change is not something to believe in, but rather scientific fact. It's not a religion. Scientists don't believe or disbelieve in it, rather they recognize it is occurring and proceed from there.
As the administration proceeds to roll back the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and replace it with a far more limited program to regulate pollutants from coal-fired power plants -- a move that is sure to be decided in the courts -- it's doing so with a leader who spouts flagrant lies about climate science. That could be a serious liability in a court case.
The Supreme Court has already stopped the EPA's attempt to delay the Obama administration's regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. Methane is a potent global warming pollutant, and the Trump administration was seeking to lower the regulatory burden on oil and gas producers.
Donald Trump listens as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, following Trump's announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement on June 1, 2017.Credit: AP/REX/ShutterstockFor the sake of Trump's own legacy, he would be wise to appoint a qualified science advisor who can then staff up the OSTP with other professionals. The result could provide scientific cover for the administration's policies, and prevent the president from relying instead on a cable TV network instead of his government's own experts.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Trump's climate and energy policies. I'm torn here, since it might be better to have the Trump administration do such a shoddy job that its damaging policies can just be readily reversed by the next president.
However, that would ultimately hurt the economy, for one, since industry craves policy certainty. Also, for anyone who cares about good government, bringing scientists into the room is the best thing to do at this point.
I have no illusion that a science advisor would turn Trump into a climate policy advocate or someone who knows what AI is. But I'd rather that the administration's ideas be fully thought out than be cribbed from a morning TV show. That's just being sloppy and reckless, and as a journalist, I can't abide such work.
Democrats will continue to fight Trump's proposals, and many of his policies will still wind up in court. But if there's a clearer rationale for their proposals, rooted in science (even if these are studies outside the mainstream journals), the administration would have a better shot at being able to at least explain them.
Otherwise we'll continue to have Trump talking points and government policy determined by Fox & Friends, which is a recipe for governance by pseudoscience. That's not a recipe for lasting changes of the sort that Trump advertised on the campaign trail.
