Watch Rand Paul bulldoze through each global warming talking point
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shot down every global warming argument that CNN’s Jake Tapper tossed at him on Thursday after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord.
“We anticipate that President Trump is going to announce not only that he is withdrawing but that he does want to have a better climate deal,” Tapper asked. “What might a better climate deal look like?”
“Well, first you wouldn’t lose 6 million American jobs,” Paul responded.
“I think one of the reasons President Trump was elected is that he promised that he would defend American workers and American jobs,” he said. “There are estimates that this agreement, which is unfair, and punishes America in a much greater fashion than other countries, that we would lose 6 and a half million jobs. Meanwhile, countries like India and countries like Iran, we would have to pay them to reduce their carbon emissions.”
“I can’t imagine a worse agreement than this thing for the American worker,” he continued. “But I think this is something that President Trump promised the voters.
“So if America, under this accord, has to reduce her carbon footprint by 20 percent, but China doesn’t have to reduce their carbon footprint at all,” he said, “how could that possibly be fair? Who in their right mind would sign something that says China doesn’t have to do anything? When you reduce your carbon footprint it means you have to reduce your energy output, or you have to convert to other sources, but there may not be enough energy from the other sources. So then we’re talking about going without energy.”
“How much should the U.S. reduce its carbon footprint?” Tapper then asked.
“Under the accord, it’s about a 20 percent reduction, but China doesn’t have to reduce it’s footprint at all,” Paul answered. “I don’t think anybody could tell you right off the number. I think we should try to constrain pollution. We should try to control pollution and I think we have been doing that for about 50 to 60 years. And I think we should continue, but you know your previous guest sounded like, oh my goodness, the sky is falling, ‘mass extinction’? Really?”
“So I don’t think we should be alarmist about this,” Paul continued. “I mean the planet’s 4.5 billion years old, we have gone through great extremes of climate change, natural, and now we may have a man-made influence as well. But these people, the question I always ask these alarmists is, ‘how much is nature, and how much is man?’ They act as if it’s a given that man is the only source of climate change.
“Well my goodness,” he said, “the great climate changes in our history all happened before the industrial revolution. So is there climate change, can man have an impact? Yes, but let’s don’t be so alarmist as to say such outrageous things that if we don’t sign the Paris Accords, there’s going to be ‘mass extinction’? That is a ridiculous statement!”
When Tapper challenged Paul’s argument, he explained why climate scientist’s models were unreliable to make the kind of conclusions Tapper was looking for.
“You need to make sure that your viewers know that most of their modeling has been wrong,” Paul said, “they readjust their modeling every year because they haven’t been good at predicting things. Predicting the future is notoriously difficult, and this is a modeling is not an exact science.”
“But they have been predicting for years that the temperatures would go up,’ Tapped responded, “that glaciers would shrink, that sea ice would disappear, that oceans would rise, that the sea level would rise and there would be longer and more intense heat waves and all of that has happened, Senator, all of it has happened.”
“Yeah, but Jake, before man was even on the planet, before man was even burning fires, the oceans were 300 feet shallower,” Paul explained, “when people walked across from Asia, probably 20-30,000 years ago, maybe up to a hundred thousand years ago, the seas were 300 feet shallower, that’s why they could walk across the Bering Strait.”
Trump announced Thursday that the U.S. would be exiting the Paris Climate Accord that was signed by former President Barack Obama in April 2016, but never ratified by Congress. Because it lacked Congressional approval, it could be undone by presidential fiat. Many on the left registered their displeasure, along with some world leaders, that Trump would keep his campaign promise to drop an agreement they say is meant to fend off climate calamity.
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