“[Climate change is] a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know…. they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the [Climategate] scientists…. Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind.”

– President-elect Donald Trump, “Donald Trump’s New York Times Interview: Full Transcript,” November 23, 2016. Quoted in Joe Romm, “Trump Fools the New York Times on Climate Change, ThinkProgress, November 23, 2016.

It has been seven years this month since the intellectual scandal erupted called Climategate. With President-elect Trump’s recent reference to the scandal, it is timely to recall some of the more salient quotations.…

“Science is science and facts are facts. My administration will ensure that there will be total transparency and accountability without political bias. The American people deserve this and I will make sure this is the culture of my administration.”

– Donald Trump, quoted in  “What Do the Presidential Candidates Know about Science?” Scientific American, September 13, 2016.

In the “Presidential Science Debate 2016,” a science literacy project with media partner Scientific American, candidate Donald Trump gave answers that continue to elucidate his views on energy and the environment. (Answers were also provided by Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson did not choose to participate in the questionnaire.)

Trump’s energy/climate policy views have been previously chronicled here:

• Trump on Energy: Promising Free Market Directions (March 31, 2016)
• Trump’s Energy Speech: Strong Free Market Directions (June 1, 2016);
• Trump on Climate in 2009 (crony aside now corrected) (June 13, 2016)
• GOP Energy Platform: Free Market Directions (July 20, 2016)

Trump’s energy views, below, are not quite free-market or libertarian with a seeming role for nuclear power despite its non-competitiveness and a possible continuation of renewable-energy subsidies.…

“A ‘crisis is a terrible thing to waste.’ So is a non-crisis.”  – —author

“’There is no drought’… You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to the sea in order to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

— Donald Trump, Fresno, California, May 27, 2016

“We have been assured that once the winter rains and snow returned so would California’s water supply. Despite storage levels near or above 100% in California’s major reservoirs, we understand … FWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) is “now proposing… actions that will significantly reduce the water available to Californians”.… FWS has requested up to 300,000 acre-feet of water be purchased to further increase (Sacramento) Delta outflow this summer for Delta Smelt – something not required by the Delta Smelt biological opinion…the cost could approach $500 million.”

“We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don’t postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

– Donald Trump, signatory letter/advertisement in the New York Times, December 6, 2009.

“A Trump Administration will focus on real environmental challenges, not phony ones …. We’ll solve real environmental problems in our communities like the need for clean and safe drinking water.”

– Donald Trump, “An America First Energy Plan.” May 26, 2016.

Consider it corrected.

It does not take a climate scientist to understand the intellectual weaknesses of climate alarm. And it does not take a political scientist or political economist to see the problems of any one-world solution, much less a domestic one, to this alleged international problem.…