‘In The 1920’s They Were Talking About Global Freezing’

In an exclusive interview Monday on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company Monday, Donald Trump told host Stuart Varney that climate change is “a hoax.” The former president said “in my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up, and you go down,” he said. “If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about a global freezing, okay? In other words, the globe was going to freeze.”

“And then they go global warming,” Trump continued. “Then they couldn’t use that because the temperatures were actually quite cool. And many different things. So now they just talk about climate change. The climate’s always been changing.”

The suggestion that the earth was “going to freeze” in the early 20th Century is an oft-repeated claim, but one that isn’t supported by science, writes Doug Struck in Scientific American. Struck noted that while it’s true that “there had been a gradual decrease in global average temperatures from about 1940,” the climate’s not “always changing” as Trump argued—at least, not naturally.

Struck cites Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education based in Oakland, Calif., who says it’s precisely because of the human impact that the planet is warming, not cooling. “If it weren’t for the fact that humans had become a force of nature, we would be slipping back into an ice age, according to orbital cycles…the stories about global cooling ‘are convenient for people to trot out and wave around,’ McCaffrey explained, but they don’t support Trump’s argument that climate change is a hoax.

In the wide-ranging interview, Trump told Varney he believes the 2024 election—he has hinted, but not explicity said he would be a candidate—would be decided over the 2020 election. “I actually think it is good for me,” Trump said, “I think if we don’t put out all of the crooked things we know what they are, that you won’t win in ’22 and you won’t win in ’24 if we don’t get to it.”

“You think 2022 and 2024 are all about the 2020 election, really?” Varney asked, pressing Trump, saying “if we go into 2022, the elections, and 2024, you’re still looking back to the election of 2020 saying that you really won, I don’t know if that’s very good for you or the Republican Party,” Varney told Trump.

“I think if we don’t put out all of the crooked things we know what they are, that you won’t win in ’22 and you won’t win in ’24 if we don’t get to it,” Trump said.