Partial Transcript of 60 Minutes Interview, broadcast 10/13/2018:
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes: “…what about the scientists who say [climate change is] worse than ever?”
President Donald Trump: “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Leslie.”
Lesley Stahl: “I can’t bring them in.”
President Donald Trump: “Look, scientists also have a political agenda.”
I agree that scientists have a “very big political agenda:” To save the human race from making an enormous, needless mistake.
Beyond that, it’s hard to imagine what Trump could possibly mean by his assertion that “scientists also have a political agenda.”
It’s unclear to which scientists Trump is referring, but the other recent time he wondered aloud about the identity of scientists was in reference to the authors of the recently released IPCC Special Report, in which it was concluded that limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will avoid significant risks our civilization will face if we only limit global warming to 2°C, and further that it will take substantial action by the world’s governments, the parties to the Paris Agreement of which have currently committed to voluntary actions that (assuming they are actually taken) may achieve the limitation of warming to around a much higher 3°C:
President Donald Trump: “It was given to me. It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew, you know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good.”
I am not a member of the President’s substantial White House staff, but it turns out I was able to rapidly identify the scientists Trump wants to know about. I used Google. Plus, I looked at the IPCC Special Report itself, which is publicly available. It took me about 10 minutes to discover a fairly detailed accounting of who the scientists are.
The IPCC Special Report was written by 91 scientists and government agents. Far from shrouding themselves in any sort of secrecy, many of them have been made available by the IPCC for public interviews; I suppose the President of the United States would likely be quite successful in availing himself of such an interview, if he can squeeze it into his existing schedule of other interviews with luminaries such as Kanye West. Of those lead authors, the greatest number (7) were Americans; the other 84 were from 43 other countries. The lead authors synthesized contributions from 133 contributing authors who drew scientific data and conclusions from over 6,000 cited references in the scientific literature, primarily peer reviewed scientific studies. Drafts of the report were reviewed by some 2,000 registered expert reviewers from 124 countries who generated 42,001 expert review comments that were considered during production of the final report.
So that’s the scientists, identified.
It’s hard to understand how such a diverse group of people could possibly have any common “political agenda,” as that phrase is usually understood to mean something like, “an attempt to achieve together a political outcome of mutual benefit,” unless that political agenda is simply reducing risks to the future of humanity based on knowledge. The scientists reside in over 40 nations, represent many tens of the world’s cultures, work for hundreds of separate institutions, and their work is financially supported by a tremendous number of independent sources. At least, the 84 of the lead authors who are not Americans are, by definition, not Democrats. The over 6,000 cited references from which the data were derived were each the result of an independent scientific study, most of them independently reviewed by any of thousands of combinations of other experts as part of the scientific peer review process. How could the scientists in question possibly mutually benefit in any financial or other way by perpetrating some sort of falsified set of conclusions? And how could such falsification possibly be achieved, even assuming the 91 lead authors wanted to do such a thing, given the scientific peer review process?
It’s just an absurd notion, and anyone who believes such a thing is willfully and outrageously ignorant.
Rather, I’ll submit that the scientists in question share precisely two things in common:
- A belief in the scientific method; and
- A love of children.
If that’s a “political agenda,” then I guess they’re guilty as charged.
As for President Donald Trump, I’ll further propose that he doesn’t like the scientists because:
- He has no interest in the scientific method but is greatly interested in political contributions from the fossil fuel industry; and
- He doesn’t love children.
We know the latter because:
- He has enthusiastically executed an overt policy of separating migrant children from their parents and locking them in cages as if they are animals; and
- He has no interest in how the realities of climate change might affect your children, your grandchildren, and future generations of your family.
#rescuethatfrog
Use your zip code to check this handy voting guide and see how your candidates stand on the climate!