Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe might have lost one of his biggest name supporters in the belief that climate change is a hoax.
President Donald Trump has backed off the claim telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night he isn’t sure climate change is manmade, saying the climate will “change back again.”
“I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s manmade. I will say this: I don’t want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.”
He told reporter Lesley Stahl he didn’t want to put the U.S. at a disadvantage in responding to climate change.
Six years ago when Sen. Inhofe released his book “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens your Future,” Trump agreed.
In November 2012, he tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” But he also later claimed he was only joking about the Chinese connection.
“I’m not denying climate change,” he said in the interview. “But it could very well go back. You know, we’re talking about over a … millions of years.”
President Trump was scheduled to visit areas of Georgia and Florida damaged by Hurricane Michael and expressed skepticism of findings by scientists that the changing climate is causing stronger hurricanes.
“They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael,” said Trump, who identified “they” as “people” after being pressed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl. She asked, “What about the scientists who say it’s worse than ever?” the president replied, “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda.”
