Donald Trump says climate change not hoax, but takes aim at 'political agenda' of scientists

Donald Trump has questioned whether climate change is “man-made” and suggested that world temperatures could start falling in the future. 

The US president said during an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes show that he does not think climate change is a “hoax”, reversing his previous position. 

However Mr Trump claimed that some scientists have a “very big political agenda” and suggested there is no consensus about the cause of global warming. 

“I think something's happening. Something's changing and it'll change back again. I don't think it's a hoax, I think there's probably a difference,” Mr Trump said. 

“But I don't know that it's man-made. 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. I don't want to be put at a disadvantage.”

The comments come just days after the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] warned that the Earth’s temperature could rise 1.5C by as early as 2030. 

One IPCC board member said at the time that the world had “the slimmest of opportunities remaining to avoid unthinkable damage to the climate system that supports life as we know it”. 

Mr Trump, who has been a climate change sceptic for at least half a decade, announced last year that he would be pulling America out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions. 

He has also removed various emissions-reducing policies implemented by Barack Obama, his predecessor in the White House, and talked about the need to defend “beautiful, clean coal”. 

Over the past six years Mr Trump has frequently questioned the validity of climate change, calling it an “expensive hoax” and “nonsense”. 

He often joked on Twitter about global warming whenever the weather was cold, once tweeting in 2015:

During his 60 Minutes interview, Mr Trump walked back his claim that climate change was a hoax, but questioned the cause, saying “you don't know whether or not that would have happened with or without man”. 

Challenged over how scientists have said extreme weather conditions are getting worse, Mr Trump replied: “You'd have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda.”

Elsewhere during the interview, Mr Trump – who the interviewer said appeared more confident in the role of president than during their last chat shortly after the 2016 election - defended a string of his policies and public comments. 

Mr Trump insisted he had showed respect to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, despite mocking her failure to recall key details of the alleged incident during a rally speech. 

“You know what? I'm not going to get into it because we won. It doesn't matter.  We won,” Mr Trump said. Mr Kavanaugh denied the claim and has since taken up his seat on the Supreme Court. 

Mr Trump criticised Jim Mattis, his defence secretary, calling him “sort of a Democrat” and insisting that he knew more about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [Nato] than Mr Mattis. The comments fuelled speculation that Mr Mattis could leave his post.

The US president defended saying at a rally that he and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, “fell in love”, insisting it was “just a figure of speech”. 

Challenged that the words amounted to an embrace, Mr Trump replied: “Let it be an embrace. Let it be whatever it is to get the job done.”

Mr Trump also appeared to play down the seriousness of Russia’s disruptive actions abroad. Asked whether Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was “involved in assassinations” and “poisonings”, Mr Trump replied “probably he is, yeah”, but added: “It's not in our country.”

The remarks follow the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent, on British soil in March 2018, though the specific case was not explicitly mentioned during in the interview. 

And on politics and Washington, DC, Mr Trump said: “This is the most deceptive, vicious world. It is vicious, it's full of lies, deceit and deception.”