'No, no, I don't believe it': Donald Trump rejects his own Government's warnings on climate change

Donald Trump has long said he distrusts the consensus by nearly all the world's respected climate scientists on the link between human activity and rising temperatures. Photo / AP

American President Donald Trump says he does not believe his own Government's report last week warning of massive economic losses if carbon emissions continue to feed climate change unchecked.

"I don't believe it," Trump said at the White House, adding that the United States would not take measures to cut emissions if the same was not done in other countries.

Trump said he had read "some" of the report and that it was "fine", the Daily Telegraph reports.

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However, he rejected the central warning in the National Climate Assessment, which said there would be hundreds of billions of dollars in losses by the end of the century due to climate change "without substantial and sustained global mitigation."

"No, no, I don't believe it," he repeated.

"You're going to have to have China and Japan and all of Asia and all of these other countries, you know. It addresses our country," he said.

"Right now, we're at the cleanest we've ever been. And that's very important to me. But if we're clean, but every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good. So I want clean air, I want clean water, very important."

US carbon emissions from industry slipped 2.7 per cent last year as coal plants shut and use of natural gas and renewable energy rose.

But Trump's critics said leaving the Paris Agreement means the United States is allowing others to lead the global fight to curb climate change.

Trump has also rolled back Obama-era environmental and climate rules such as the Clean Power Plan, while seeking to boost output of oil, gas and coal for domestic use and for shipping to allies and partners. US output of crude oil is already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia.

According to the report, released on Friday, climate change will "cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century."

The effects will spill into global trade, hitting import and export prices and US businesses with overseas operations and supply chains, it added.

Trump has long said he distrusts the consensus by nearly all the world's respected climate scientists on the link between human activity and rising temperatures, as well as other damaging climate change phenomena.

Since becoming president in 2016 he has pulled the United States out of the international Paris Agreement on attempting to bring down global temperatures, and torn up a raft of environmental protection laws, saying the US economy needs the boost.

In October, Trump said during a visit to inspect hurricane damage in the southern state of Georgia that climate change "is going to go back and forth," rather than be permanent.

He also gave a lukewarm reaction to publication of a major UN report warning in October of global warming-caused chaos, saying "I want to look who drew it, you know, which groups drew it, because I can give you reports that are fabulous and I can give you reports that aren't so good."