'More oceanfront property, right?': Trump dismisses climate change threat leading to sea-level rise

Former US President Donald Trump has once again dismissed the threat of climate change, saying that rising sea levels would lead to more oceanfront properties being developed.

Trump was speaking toElon Musk on Monday (Aug 12) on X (formerly Twitter) when he made the rather bizarre comment which reiterated his campaign policy regarding climate change.

"The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years," Trump told Musk.

"You'll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power, and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden."

It is not the first instance when Trump has sidestepped the conversation around global warming. After the first presidential debate, Trump criticised Joe Biden for the latter's claim that the "only existential threat to humanity is climate change".

“He [Biden] said it again last night, that global warming is an existential threat. And I say that the thing that’s an existential threat is not global warming, where the ocean will rise – maybe, it may go down, also – but it may rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 497 years, they say. One-eighth," said Trump at a rally in Virginia.

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What does data suggest?

However, Trump's claims were quickly debunked as NASA reported earlier this year that the current global average sea level rise in 2023 was 0.17 inches per year - more than double the rate in 1993.

"The total rise is equivalent to draining a quarter of Lake Superior into the ocean over the course of a year," NASA said.

Simply put, sea level rise was already more than an eighth of an inch annually and was accelerating, NASA added. Notably, the NASA-led analysis is based on a sea level dataset featuring more than 30 years of satellite observations.

Democrats have cornered Trump on the issue by claiming that the former prez maywithdraw from the Paris Agreement if he comes to power again.

The Paris Agreement is an important milestone in global efforts to address climate change which has drawn a collective commitment by nearly every country in the world to combat this pressing issue.

(With inputs from agencies)