Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson refused to briefly answer a question about global warming at a debate in Iowa, suggesting 30 seconds wasn’t long enough to lay out his views on the issue. During a recent telephone interview with Radio Iowa, Thompson was given an unlimited amount of time to talk about global warming. He said it was a problem.

"We don’t know the extent to which it’s warming. We don’t know whether or not it’s part of a cycle. We’ve had cooling periods in our country. We don’t know the extent to which man-made causes are contributing to it. We don’t know what the long-term effect of it is going to be and what we can do about it," Thompson said.

Thompson went on to warn against an over-reaction to global warming. "If we unilaterally do things precipitously, not only will we damage our economy but we won’t be doing very much good at all unless countries like Russia, or mainly China and India, participate," Thompson said. Those growing economies are major polluters, according to Thompson.

Thompson warns the U.S. economy could be harmed if American industries start getting penalized for carbon emissions. "Before we start rushing off and having United Nations countries, you know, big as a postage stamp telling us what to do and what we must do and so forth, let’s double-down and make sure we understand the ramifications and the significance of what we know and let’s improve on what we don’t know," Thompson said during his interview with Radio Iowa.

His answer on the topic lasted a total of one and a half minutes.