Is Climate Change Real? President-Elect Donald Trump Says ‘Nobody Really Knows’ Whether The Threat Actually Exists

President-elect Donald Trump’s skepticism over climate change was further reiterated when he said on Sunday that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real, adding that he was assessing whether the United States should withdraw from international agreements that may harm its competitive markets.

The top 10 hottest years on record have all been after 1998. This year is expected to be the hottest year since formal record-keeping began in 1880 and a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it is “extremely likely” that humans and greenhouse gas emissions — from burning of fossil fuels for transportation or industrial manufacturing, among others — have been the “dominant cause” of the planet’s warming since the 1950s.

Trump, however, has continuously disregarded that established scientific view on the topic.

The president-elect has not come to a decision on the reality of climate change but voiced concerns regarding President Barack Obama’s efforts to cut carbon emissions, which in turn have affected the country’s global competitiveness, he said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

“I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows,” Trump said. “Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast. I do know this: Other countries are eating our lunch.”

Citing examples of other countries who continue to benefit from the reported imbalance in environmental regulation, Trump said the U.S. should be able to work without the kind of restrictions it currently faces.

“If you look at what — I could name country after country. You look at what’s happening in Mexico, where our people are just — plants are being built, and they don’t wait 10 years to get an approval to build a plant, okay?” he said. “They build it like the following day or the following week. We can’t let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs.”

The reality continues to differ from Trump’s views.

According to the Washington Post, following the 2008 recession, the U.S. continues to outdo fellow developed nations in terms of growth. The comparisons with China or Mexico — both developing nations — do not stand as economists say developing countries typically grow faster than the developed ones.