WATCH: Trump Dismisses Science When California Official Objects to His Prediction the State Will ‘Start Getting Cooler’
President Donald Trump denied climate change and predicted that the wildfires will “start getting cooler” when he was briefed on California’s recording-breaking heat.
FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor thanked the team working to protect California amid the wildfires, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), noting that the wet season will be coming to the state soon.
Following Gaynor’s remarks, Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary for Natural Resources, urged the president to take climate change seriously in order to protect Californians in the future.
“As the governor said, we had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in death valley. 130 degrees, but even in greater L.A. 120 plus degrees,” Crowfoot said. “We are seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer but also our winters warmer as well. I think one area of mutual agreement, and priority is vegetation management, but I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forest, and actually work together with that science. That science is going to be key. If we ignore that science and put our head in the sand and think it’s all vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together in protecting Californians.”
Trump then promised that “It will start getting cooler,” prompting Crowfoot to add that the science does not agree with that claim.
“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump replied.
Earlier in the briefing, Newsom argued that climate change is real and has an effect on the current wildfires, urging Trump to respect their differing opinions on the matter:
Quite an interaction between President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom just now. pic.twitter.com/b0k0KPQmcm
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 14, 2020
“We obviously feel very strongly that the hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier. When we are having heat domes, the likes of which we have never seen in our history, the hottest August ever in the history of our state, the ferocity of these fires, the drought five-plus years, losing 163 million trees to that drought, something has happened to the plumbing of the world,” Newsom said to Trump. “We come from a perspective, humbly, where the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this, and so I think there is an area of, at least commonality, on vegetation and forest management, but please respect, and I know you do, the difference of opinion here as it relates to this fundamental issue on climate change.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
