Donald Trump gave a dire warning against what he called “nuclear warming” as he claimed to be an environmentalist in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The former president, without any evidence to back up his claims, used the term “nuclear warming” and said it was the world’s biggest challenge – far greater than “global warming”.
“When I listen to people talk about global warming that the ocean will rise in the next 300 years by 1/8th of an inch and they talk about how this is our problem. Our big problem is nuclear warming but nobody even talks about it,” he said in the interview that aired on Tuesday night.
“The environmentalists talk about all this nonsense in many cases. I’ve become an environmentalist also, I guess in my own way because I have done a good job with the environment.”
“Nobody talks about nuclear... the problem... the biggest problem we have in the whole world... it’s not global warming, it’s nuclear warming,” he said.
“And all it takes is one mad man and you’re going to have a problem, the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Elsewhere in his rambling rant, he referred to nuclear as “the n-word”
“I call it the n-word,” he said.“You have two n-words. You don’t mention either one of them.”
Mr Trump was swiftly mocked on social media for apparently making up his own nonsensical term.
“The biggest problem, Trump says, is ‘nuclear warming.’ What is he talking about?” tweeted David Corn, DC bureau chief for Mother Jones.
Another critic reminded of Trump’s prior ridiculous comments about the climate crisis.
“Nuclear warming? Is this along the same lines as when the wind stops blowing your TV goes off? And windmill noise causes cancer?” they wrote.
Mr Trump’s new comments come after he highlighted, in recent months, new ways to deny the climate crisis ahead of his bid to run for president again in 2024.
The former president has consistently denied the science behind climate change.
Trump had also claimed to be an “environmentalist” despite overturning dozens of environmental and climate regulations during his presidency.
In October last year, he claimed rising sea levels would create more “oceanfront property”.
“The world is going to be destroyed because the oceans are going to rise 1/100 of an inch within the next 300 years,” he had claimed in a mocking tone. “It’s going to kill everybody.”
“It’s going to create more oceanfront property. That’s what it’s going to do.”
The global ocean has risen six to eight inches (15-20 cm) in the last 100 years and the rate has accelerated in the past two decades.
More than 90 per cent of excess heat in the atmosphere – caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossi fuels – is absorbed by the seas. Heat causes water to expand and raises the sea level, with melting glaciers and ice sheets compounding the problem.
Average sea level along the US coastline is expected to rise by 10 - 12 inches (25-30cm) in the next 30 years, according to a 2022 update from the National and Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In December, the former president asked “Whatever happened to Global Warming?” on his social media site, Truth Social, in the aftermath of a devastating winter storm which left more than 100 people dead across the US.
