If you had any doubts about Scott Pruitt's ignorance, doubt no further. On Thursday, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made known his skepticism about carbon dioxide as a chief contributing factor to global warming.
"I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
FYI: According to the EPA — the very organization Pruitt is in charge of managing — carbon dioxide accounted for 81 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. The greenhouse effect is what causes Earth's atmosphere to retain heat, thus changing the climate.
The EPA website says,
"Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change. CO2 is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through plant and animal respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, release large amounts of CO2, causing concentrations in the atmosphere to rise."
"The scientific community has studied this issue for decades. The consensus message from many national and international assessments of the science is pretty simple: Natural factors can't explain the size or patterns of observed warming. A large human influence on global climate is the best explanation for the warming we've measured and monitored."
This instance certainly isn't the first one in which Pruitt openly doubted the reason behind global warming.
"Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind," he wrote in National Review earlier this year.
The former Attorney General of Oklahoma is planning to unravel environmental regulations implemented by the Barack Obama administration, which control emissions from power plants, the New York Times reports.
"Pruitt is a pure product of the oil and gas industry, installed in successive government posts to sell out his constituents at every turn," said Greenpeace spokesman Travis Nichols late last year. "He will push this country far behind the rest of the world in the race for 21st century clean energy. With Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA, the people and the environment will be in the hands of a man who cares about neither."
Unfortunately, Nichols couldn't have been more spot-on.
Banner and thumbnail credit: Reuters, Brendan McDermid