President-elect Donald Trump rejects science, claims “nobody really knows” if climate change is real.

In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” president-elect Donald Trump said that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real. At one point in Sunday’s interview host Chris Wallace asked Trump where he stands on climate change. Trump replied:

I’m very open-minded. I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows. Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast.

Trump is wrong. Climate change is real. Scientists know this to be a fact. Full stop.

CBS reports there is a near-universal scientific consensus that climate change is a real phenomenon — despite continued opposition to the notion among some Republican politicians.

For example, NASA’s website on climate change notes that approximately 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree that human activities are very likely responsible for rising temperatures.

This is not the first time Trump has denied the reality of climate change. Prior to November’s election, Stephen Hawking and 374 other scientists warned Americans that Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because of his controversial and profoundly mistaken position on climate change.

A letter published on ResponsibleScientists.org prior to the election, and signed by 375 members of the National Academy of Scientists, opens by declaring:

Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality.

The letter goes on to explain that human health, food production and even national security are at stake, and describes the matter as “basic science.”

The letter sharply criticizes Trump’s position on a matter of “basic science” by citing the threat of climate change and blasting his push for the U.S. to leave the Paris Accord, noting:

It is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord.

The following is an extended excerpt from the opening of that letter:

Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality. Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution. But the burning of oil, coal, and gas also caused most of the historical increase in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This increase in greenhouse gases is changing Earth’s climate. Our fingerprints on the climate system are visible everywhere. They are seen in warming of the oceans, the land surface, and the lower atmosphere. They are identifiable in sea level rise, altered rainfall patterns, retreat of Arctic sea ice, ocean acidification, and many other aspects of the climate system. Human-caused climate change is not something far removed from our day-to-day experience, affecting only the remote Arctic. It is present here and now, in our own country, in our own states, and in our own communities. During the Presidential primary campaign, claims were made that the Earth is not warming, or that warming is due to purely natural causes outside of human control. Such claims are inconsistent with reality.

“Inconsistent with reality” might as well be the motto for the incoming Trump administration.

Adding insult to injury, Trump recently said he plans to appoint Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier who has opposed many environmental regulations, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

And so it goes.