Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt has once again aired thoughts that depart from mainstream climate science, according to The Guardian. In a recent interview with Nevada TV station News 3, Pruitt suggested global warming could be beneficial for people. He said, “Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? It’s fairly arrogant for us to think we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”
Pruitt said in an interview with News 3’s Gerard Ramahlo, “No one disputes the climate changes, is changing, that’s, we see that, that’s constant. We obviously contribute to it; we live in the climate, right?…Now measuring that with precision, Gerard, I think is more challenging than is let on at times but I think the bigger question is…is it an existential threat? Is it something that is unsustainable or what kind of effect or harm is this going to have? I mean, we know that humans have most flourished during times of what, warming trends. I mean, so, so, I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming that that necessarily is a bad thing.”
Related: Pruitt met with Dow Chemical CEO before denying pesticide ban
The EPA administrator echoed an idea that’s been raised in the past of a debate on climate change, to go over “what we do know and what we don’t know, so the American people can be informed and make decisions on their own.”
A snapshot of the EPA website on January 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump was sworn into office, was very clear that the impacts of climate change would threaten human health. They said people could be exposed to disease, be threatened by extreme weather events, or face food insecurity due to climate change impacts.
Via The Guardian and News 3
Images via Gage Skidmore on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons
