FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy. It was launched in January 2015 with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. The foundation was founded by the late Frank Stanton, president of CBS for 25 years, from 1946 to 1971.
During his confirmation hearing on Jan. 16, Andrew Wheeler, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, repeatedly used a misleading statistic to defend the EPA’s proposed replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.
The Trump administration has inaccurately attacked the National Climate Assessment for lacking transparency and factual basis, and for focusing on an “extreme” climate scenario.
At a town hall event on Dec. 11, Rep.-elect Mark Green of Tennessee inaccurately claimed that vaccine preservatives might cause autism. He also repeated an unsubstantiated claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “fraudulently managed” data that showed a link between vaccinations and autism.
On Dec. 4, President Donald Trump tweeted about French President Emmanuel Macron and the Paris Agreement, misrepresenting the foreign leader’s position on the climate accord. Macron has not said or suggested the Paris Agreement is “fatally flawed,” as Trump implied.
In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at three climate-related claims President Donald Trump made in an interview with the Washington Post.
In a Nov. 27 interview with the Washington Post, President Donald Trump made a series of inaccurate statements. He questioned the cause of climate change, praised a nonexistent method for wildfire prevention and even recycled a long-debunked news story from the 1970s.
In response to a question about climate change, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the United States was “the cleanest we’ve ever been.” Data from a variety of sources show that while the country has made strides in the last decade, its carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions are far from their lowest point.
The president’s comments came on Nov. 26 after he was asked by a journalist about the latest National Climate Assessment.
Over the past two weekends, as two major wildfires devastated communities in Northern and Southern California, President Donald Trump has inaccurately blamed the state’s forest management practices for the blazes. He has also wrongly said that raking — a method he attributed to Finland — could have solved the problem.
President Trump loves to extol “clean coal.” But an exceedingly small amount of coal is used in a way that most people would consider clean.
An in-depth look at the science behind the test and what the results do — and don’t — show.