Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.
Stephen Hawking
Interesting. This is coming from the most celebrated scientist of our era so let's not dismiss it out of hand. Let's take a look at what is said by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). I have never heard of that particular organization before right now but it was the first thing to come up when I searched Global Warming. The NRDC indicates that "unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century." The NRDC does not agree with Trump that climate change is a Chinese Hoax and would be put firmly in the climate-change-is-real camp. Let's do the math with their presumed worst-case scenario of 'up to 10 degrees' in 100 years. Okay, 10 degrees divided by 100 years gives us 1/10th of a degree a year. Trump will be out of office in 4 or 8 years and can thus - worst case per NRDC - see 0.8 degrees of warming. Okay, we are missing a piece. What is the current average global temperature? If it is 249.2 degrees, then I have to give the win to Hawking. My Google search provided Atmos News, which says the average annual temperature from 1951 to 1980 was 57.2 degrees while 2015 saw an average temperature that was 1.8 degrees warmer (reportedly the hottest on record), which - if my math is correct - would be 59 degrees. Even if NRDC's worst case scenario played out entirely within the Trump administration, that would only get us to 69 degrees, woefully short of Hawking's fear-mongering 250 degrees.
If the science is solid, it doesn't need to be sold with this sort of easily debunked hyperbole. For a famed scientist to spout such obvious nonsense only damages the credibility of scientists. There is so much junk science in the world today that it is much harder to trust any science. Hawking is not helping that sad state of affairs.
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