Just a few weeks ago, in his seemingly interminable speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump made quite a few “interesting” claims. The economics laureate, with a PhD in controversy, declared that climate change is the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” The day before, he announced that using Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism. As he put it: “taking Tylenol is… not good.”
As STEM students, our ears are bleeding. As writers, we strive to provide explanations grounded in scientific evidence.
While nearly all of the scientific community agrees that climate change is real and caused by human actions, the American president exhibited his climate nihilism in front of the entire world, calling it a “con job.” Astounded, the only thing an ecology student at the University of Edinburgh could say in reaction was: “It is clear ignorance.” This is indeed a perfect example of applied ignorance, overconfidence, and contradiction.
Essentially, the issue of climate change comes down to the intuitive concept of balance. Our entire universe functions because of a fundamental equilibrium reached after millions of years of natural evolution. In this equilibrium, cycles such as the carbon and nitrogen cycles — which are the very essence of all life on Earth — have been able to evolve. By digging up and resurfacing carbon matter such as oil and other fossil fuels, we have disrupted this elemental balance.
In a closed system such as our Earth, matter cannot be created or destroyed; it simply changes form. Thus, when we burn fossil fuels, the carbon does not vanish — it becomes carbon dioxide (CO₂). CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that is naturally occurring but is usually produced by life forms, not machines. Today, the amount of CO₂ in our atmosphere has skyrocketed from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 414 ppm in the past 150 years — dates which coincide with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Now, the sun’s rays remain trapped inside the atmosphere, causing climate change and a general increase in temperatures. This progressive disruption is being felt across the world: extreme heatwaves in summer, melting glaciers, and mass wildfires.
Although our Earth has known periods of climate variation, these have been caused by changes in the planet’s orbit or other natural phenomena that take hundreds of thousands of years. The rate at which the environment around us is changing is unprecedented — and unnatural. Humanity, like a tumour, has disrupted the Earth’s equilibrium.
The president’s view on climate change seems to fluctuate as much as our future weather. In a 2020 press conference — right before election campaigns — he said: “Nothing’s a hoax about that. (…) The environment is very important to me. Someone wrote a book that I’m an environmentalist.” However, after withdrawing the United States from the historic Paris Climate Agreement, his disregard for the issue became blatant and unmistakable.
President Trump has ignored every alarm rung by environmental specialists, yet he has himself become quite the alarmist — recently asserting that there are links between Tylenol consumption and autism. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the World Health Organization (WHO) have disputed this claim, stating that research cannot establish a causal link.
Tylenol is a pharmaceutical brand selling an analgesic — or painkilling — drug. Essentially, the active molecule in this drug is acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol). If anything were to be causing autism, it would be this molecule; any of the hundreds of medications containing it would therefore be blameworthy. The fact that Mr Trump appears to be unaware of this shows the depth of his research.
Autism, referred to as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the medical world, is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the brain. It is true that autism diagnoses have been on the rise, with a 300% increase in the US over the past 20 years, according to specialists from Johns Hopkins University’s research centre. However, these researchers also note that this increase coincides with changes in diagnostic criteria, which broadened the defined spectrum of autism required for diagnosis.
Although genetic inheritance has been pinpointed as the strongest risk factor, researchers agree that some drugs and environmental factors may contribute to the disorder. However, as they point out, “there will never be a soundbite answer to what causes autism.”
Links between moderate Tylenol consumption in pregnant women and autism in toddlers have not been proven by science. Maybe we shouldn’t take medical advice from someone who once suggested drinking bleach could cure COVID-19.
What is certain is that the American president has, once again, successfully become fuel for internet memes.
Illustration by Lucy Wellington for The Student