Trump questions climate change during hurricane damage tour
US President visits latest storm-ravaged area
PANAMA CITY, US: President Donald Trump on Monday met victims of Hurricane Michael in devastated areas of Florida and Georgia but again cast doubt on the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity.
Flying in the Marine One presidential helicopter over Florida's Mexico Beach, one of the towns worst hit by the Category 4 storm, Mr Trump surveyed uprooted trees and rows of roofless homes, some of them torn from their foundations.
"It is incredible, the power of the storm," Mr Trump said in televised remarks after witnessing downed water towers and a parking lot where 18-wheel trucks had been scattered like children's toys.
"Somebody said it was like a very wide, extremely wide tornado. That's really what this was," he said. "This was beyond any winds that they've seen."
Michael smashed into Florida's western coast last Wednesday, packing winds of 250kmh as it began a northern march through several states, killing at least 18 people, according to US media reports.
Mr Trump was accompanied by his wife Melania , Florida's outgoing Republican governor Rick Scott and Ms Kirstjen Nielsen, head of the Department of Homeland Security, as he inspected damaged homes and businesses.
The president praised Mr Scott, who is running for the Senate in next month's tense midterm elections, for "doing an incredible job."
The governor thanked Mr Trump for federal aid, saying that everything the state asked for had been delivered.
Mr Trump, a long-time climate change sceptic, said he does believe the climate is shifting, but argued that any worsening may not be permanent.
He also questioned the overwhelming scientific agreement that global warming is caused by human activity.
"There is something there, man-made or not. There is something there. It is going to go back and forth," Mr Trump said while visiting Georgia, which was also damaged by Hurricane Michael last week.
However, he noted that there had been violent hurricanes, causing widespread destruction, in the past.
"The one that they say was worse, two or three (times) worse - one was in the 1890s and one exactly 50 years ago. Winds were 200 miles an hour (322 kmh). Who knows? That's what the numbers are."
Mr Trump has previously openly dismissed claims - backed by the vast majority of important scientific bodies - that greenhouse gases caused by human activity are responsible for a rapidly warming planet, triggering ever more extreme weather.
He has even dismissed international pushes to reduce greenhouse gases as a hoax invented by China to cripple US industrial might.
Florida's Panama City, along with the smaller resort of Mexico Beach, were left particularly devastated, with thousands of homes and businesses destroyed.
Power lines and telephone networks remained out of service in many neighborhoods, with only major highways cleared so far. - AFP
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