Teens Behind Climate Change Hoax Outed by Sister

The two teens now known to be responsible for the elaborate and years-long global hoax to convince the world that the planet’s temperature is rising due to man-made causes have finally been identified. Randy Sutton and Billy Klive, both 18, from Bakersfield, California, admitted to federal agents Friday that they alone were behind the lie that has fooled the world’s scientific community and nearly every intelligent person alive. The teens told investigators that the hoax sprang from an April Fools prank they played on Klive’s younger sister Haley over ten years ago, that the teens say quickly got out of hand. Wanting his sister to be scared of global warming due to industrial and automotive pollutants, Klive and his friend cooked up the idea for man-made climate change while doing ‘whip-its’ in the parking lot at a local convenience store.

Klive says he and his friend were loitering near the “no loitering” sign at their local 7–11 when Sutton came up with the idea. “Randy goes, you know what would scare the crap out of your sister? If we convince her that carbon monoxide emissions are heating up the earth’s atmosphere and could melt the polar ice caps leading to a rise in the sea level,” Klive reportedly told law enforcement officers.

But the prank quickly got out of hand, according to Klive. “We just had to keep it going.” The boys began skipping school to fool climate scientists and world leaders into believing their elaborate lie. They were surprised how gullible everyone was. Well, almost everyone. “Donald Trump, man, he was on to us from the get go!” Klive told the Times by phone from his residential motel. Trump’s early doubts almost convinced the boys to give up the lie, but after so much time invested in the scam, they decided to press on. “We were like, there can’t be that many people as smart as Donald Trump out there.”

Federal agent Grant Thompson was the first to question the boys and said they regretted that the hoax got as big as it did, and mostly blame Al Gore for falling for it so easily, and then spreading the word with his documentary.

The scam came to light last week when Haley Klive tipped off investigators that her brother and his friend were behind the hoax. She did so, officials say, because she felt bad that Donald Trump was being maligned for his stance on the issue.

When asked how they managed to fake the melting of the polar ice caps, the boys said simply, “Oh, no, that part is probably real.”