UK's new environment secretary once asked whether climate change was real

Andrea Leadsom, the newly-appointed environment secretary, once said that she had to ask whether climate change was real. 

Yes, you read it right. 

Leadsom, a former banker and fund manager who served as energy minister in the previous government and campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, recounted the episode to a parliamentary fracking group.

"When I first came to this job, one of my two questions was: 'Is climate change real?' and the other was 'Is hydraulic fracturing safe?' And on both of those questions I am now completely persuaded," she told the All Party Parliamentary Group on unconventional gas and oil in October 2015. 

This occurred just two months before world leaders, including then-prime minister David Cameron, signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement to address global warming.

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Leadsom pulled out of the Tory leadership race on Monday, saying the UK needed a "strong and stable government" and that Prime Minister Theresa May was "ideally placed" for the job. 

In her first full day as prime minister, Theresa May has made several cabinet and government appointments. 

As environment, food and rural affairs secretary Leadsom, a vocal Leave campaigner, will be responsible for dealing with farmers and work out subsidies in the post-EU scenario. 

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