President Donald Trump is once again sounding off on California’s recent spate of devastating fires, accusing officials exacerbating the situation by improperly managing debris in state forests.

While speaking in Pennsylvania, Trump blamed “years” of improper forest management as the reason for the fires, The Hill reports.

“And I see again, the forest fires are starting,” the president said. “They’re starting again in California. And I said ‘You’ve got to clean your floors. You’ve got to clean your floors.”

“I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,” he declared.

This is more or less what he said last year when his comments prompted Governor Gavin Newsom (D) to respond by noting that Trump is unqualified to talk about fire safety due to his past remarks where he called climate change a ‘hoax.”

At one point, Trump had this to say in a tweet:

“The governor of California, @GavinNewsom has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day that we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him.”

Newsom’s response was short — and pointed:

“You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”

You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation. https://t.co/PSt8N39Er5

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 3, 2019

Newsom noted the state has suffered a devastating wave of fires caused by at least 11,000 lightning strikes over a period of 72 hours.

Trump has been all over the place in his comments on climate change, simultaneously dismissing it and claiming it’s real and dangerous. He famously claimed that climate change was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He later claimed he was “joking,” BBC News reports.

But in 2009, he signed a full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times, along with dozens of other influential people, and voiced his support legislation to fight climate change.

“If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet,” the statement read.

And in the following years, he’s issued more than 120 tweets that either questioned or dismissed climate change. Some of his claims here are pretty foolish (but then this is Trump, after all.) He’s even purported that scientists have re-branded global warming as climate change because “the name global warming wasn’t working.” But he’s wrong, as usual, because scientists continue to use both terms. Scientists at NASA have indicated a preference for using the term “climate change” saying it’s more accurate.

He’s also said “We must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” “It’s freezing in New York, where the hell is global warming?” “The weather has been cold for so long that the global warming hoaxsters were forced to change the name to climate change to keep $ flow!” and “The environment is very important to me. Someone wrote a book that I’m an environmentalist.”

Trump is about as rational here as he is when he’s talking about anything else. Which is to say he’s not rational at all.

NASA and the dozens of other science-based agencies investigating climate change are very rational, however, and the conclusion is that man-made climate change is occurring and the World Wildlife Organization issued a dire warning, noting that even if Earth’s temperature rises by only 1.5 degrees C, sea levels worldwide may rise 1.5 feet, coral reefs will disappear as will all ice during the arctic summer. We are already experiencing devastating heatwaves and flooding and the world’s precious wildlife is vanishing.

The science on this, unlike Trump, is very clear. The world needs leaders willing to fight, not make excuses, obfuscate the truth, and engage in petty rivalries.

WATCH:

Trump is back on his “clean the forests” nonsense: “I see again the forest fires are starting. They’re starting again in California. You’ve gotta clean your floors, you’ve gotta clean your forests … maybe we’re gonna have to make them pay for it.” pic.twitter.com/TKnYdhHgnY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 20, 2020