Does Donald Trump Believe Climate Change Is A Hoax? British Scientists Think He Accepts Global Warming Science More Than He Says

The election of a candidate who once called climate change a "hoax" and once elected packed his cabinet with climate change skeptics has led many to doubt the willingness of the planet’s second-highest emitter of greenhouse gasses to tackle the problem of global warming.

But one group of British scientists have said that they believe President-elect Donald Trump accepts far more of the science on climate change than he has let it be known in public.

One hundred researchers have written to British Prime Minister Theresa May urging her to help push Trump toward supporting international efforts to combat global warming. However, speaking to the media, one of the leading climate scientists said he thought Trump had already moved toward a more favorable attitude.

"It is clear that they actually accept a great deal more of the science of human influence on climate than they are prepared to let on," Professor Myles Allen from the University of Oxford said, reports the BBC.

"They are acknowledging there is a link, there is a potential problem and that's already more than enough to justify continuing the relatively modest goals of both the Paris agreement and Clean Power Plan."

In 2012, Trump posted on Twitter that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

More recently, he said during his successful campaign for president that he will “cancel” the Paris climate agreement, which was ratified earlier this year and will go into effect in 2020. Meanwhile, he has selected Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who has claimed that “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”

Multiple studies have shown that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate warming over the past century is extremely likely due to human activity.

Following his election win, Trump has struck a more moderate tone on climate change and the Paris agreement, but he continued to state that there was far more division within the scientific community than there is in reality.

It was a similar tone struck by Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, Rep. Ryan Zinke, during his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday.

Yet Zinke also said plainly that “I don’t believe it’s a hoax.” And Trump has told the New York Times that he has an “open mind to it.”

It is those statements that appear to be giving scientists hope that Trump will not completely unravel the recent progress made towards tackling climate change and that, at the very least, his views are more nuanced than those held by many of his supporters.

"We're in a situation where the foot soldiers of denial are well behind their generals," Allen said.

"If the blue collar voter that Trump is so concerned about is to change their position to support climate action they are going to have to understand that it isn't a Chinese hoax plot, and they are going to have to understand that even the people they vote for don't believe that either."