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After President Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, journalists <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/donald-trump-climate-change-belief/index.html">repeatedly asked</a> the White House what he thought about climate change — and couldn’t get straight answers.

Since then, though, additional statements from Trump and members of his administration have provided additional evidence suggesting that these leaders don’t accept the mainstream science of climate change.

Let’s begin with Rick Perry, the energy secretary, who challenged the idea that human-induced carbon dioxide is the main “control knob” for the climate — as scientists say that it is, especially when it comes to the current warming trend — in an interview on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/19/trumps-energy-secretary-just-denied-that-man-made-carbon-dioxide-is-the-main-driver-for-climate-change/">CNBC</a>.

Perry <a href="https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/review-of-the-fy2018-budget-request-for-the-us-department-of-energy">went even further Wednesday</a> at a Senate appropriations hearing, saying climate change was “not settled science” and that “maybe it’s time for us to have a red team approach to this, set them in the room and let’s listen to what they come up with.”

The statement puts Perry in line with the Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who has also <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/06/05/pruitt-paris-climate-agreement-driven-regulation-litigation/">floated</a> the “red team”<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-red-team-exercise-would-strengthen-climate-science-1492728579"> notion </a>of having scientists who are skeptical of climate change challenge those researchers who accept the scientific consensus, and sort out who is “right.”

Pruitt, who had a strong influence on the president’s Paris decision, has strongly questioned the role of humans as the principal driver of climate change. His agency has taken down an informational website that stated the scientific consensus that climate change is predominantly caused by humans.

The “red teams” would operate outside of standard scientific peer review, or the drafting of expert scientific assessments — and scientists studying climate change have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/06/21/attention-scott-pruitt-red-teams-and-blue-teams-are-no-way-to-conduct-climate-science/">strongly objected</a> to the “red team” idea, precisely for this reason.

Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/21/trumps-pick-for-interior-secretary-cant-seem-to-make-up-his-mind-about-climate-change/">does not affirm</a> the predominant human causation of climate change. And <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?430213-1/interior-secretary-ryan-zinke-testifies-fy-2018-budget&amp;start=5909">before the Senate on Tuesday</a>, he did not answer Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) when asked (three times) how much scientists say the planet could warm this century.

Zinke instead said, “I don’t think government scientists can predict with certainty. There isn’t a model that exists today that can predict today’s weather given all the data.”

Actually, models <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/03/the-amazing-improvements-in-winter-weather-forecasting-since-the-1970s/">can predict today’s weather pretty well</a>, and the climate is about long-term patterns and trends in weather, not individual swings in particular places. Models can give <a href="http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf">informative, if imperfect</a>, future projections of that, too (based, of course, on a necessary set of assumptions about the future, in this case, a “business as usual” trajectory in which we don’t take major action to curtail the use of fossil fuels).

The answer is that under a business as usual trajectory, the planet could warm by a <a href="http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf">very dangerous</a> global average of 2.6 to 4.8 degrees Celsius, or 4.7 to 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit, in the years between 2081 and 2100.

And then, finally, there is Trump himself.

Despite past tweets suggesting that climate change is a hoax, the president hasn’t been talking about the science of climate change publicly. He didn’t even bring it up in his Rose Garden speech exiting from the Paris climate agreement.

Still, we know that Trump recently called the mayor of Tangier Island, a threatened community in the Chesapeake Bay, and discussed climate change. More specifically, Trump reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/14/trump-calls-mayor-of-shrinking-chesapeake-island-and-tells-him-not-to-worry-about-it/">told that community’s mayor</a> (by the mayor’s account) not to worry about sea-level rise.

“He said we shouldn’t worry about rising sea levels,” James Eskridge, the island’s mayor, told The Washington Post. “He said that ‘your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’ ”

There are few things more certain than that on a warming planet, the oceans will rise, just as on a cooling one, they’ll fall. So it has been throughout glacial and interglacial periods throughout the planet’s history.

Right now we’re in a warming period and the seas are rising — something that is clear even if you for some reason doubt that humans are the cause.

In general, representatives of the Trump administration have tried to avoid outright denial of climate change, and to bridge from questions about science to saying that they’re taking the steps they’re taking because they’re concerned about the economy.

But there’s little evidence that they think the problem is fully caused by humans — and with that mind-set, it’s also difficult to believe the administration is weighing the full consequences of pursuing economic growth driven by fossil fuels.

So in sum: There is plenty of evidence to suggest the Trump administration doesn’t accept the mainstream science of climate change. We don’t really need to make this complicated.

2020 Pulitzer Prize, explanatory reporting.

Yale University, BA in English

Chris Mooney is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter covering climate change, energy, and the environment. He has reported from the 2015 Paris climate negotiations, the Northwest Passage, and the Greenland ice sheet, among other locations, and has written four books about science, politics and climate change.

Chris Mooney

The Washington Post

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