Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Wednesday said it's unclear whether man-made global warming is real.
"I believe we don't know," he told Fox News' Sean Hannity in a Wednesday night interview.
In 2008 Gingrich appeared in an ad with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging action on climate change. "We do agree that our country must take action to address climate change," he said, sitting on a sofa with Pelosi in front of the U.S. Capitol. The former House speaker recently said that the ad was "the dumbest thing I've done in recent years."
Earlier in his career, Gingrich co-sponsored a 1989 bill stating that climate change was "resulting from human activities."
In the Hannity interview, Gingrich also outlined what he would do within the first hours of being president. "We would have about two hours after the inaugural address, we would stop and sign between 100 and 200 executive orders and presidential findings," he said. "For example, the very first executive order we'll sign will terminate all of the White House czars as of that moment. So they'll all be gone. The goal is, by the time President Obama lands in Chicago, we will have dismantled about 40 percent of his government by signing a whole series of extensive orders.
He also predicted an instantaneous economic recovery if President Barack Obama is voted out of office: "The economy starts to recover late on election night, when people realize Obama is gone. Literally that night, you'll see businesses making hiring decisions. You'll see investors making investment decisions. You'll see folks going ahead with new startups who were waiting and with bated breath."
