Last Thursday, President Donald Trump posted a long message on Twitter, saying he thinks the United States would benefit from more climate change and global warming.
CNN reports that the tweets showcase just how far removed the commander-in-chief’s policy toward climate change is from the rest of the world. After abandoning the Paris Accord earlier in 2017, several European leaders stepped up to fill the void left by American leadership.
“In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Bundle up!”
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
No matter what the president says, the fact remains that average temperatures have been consistently climbing over the course of the past decade. 2016 was the hottest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. And 2017, writes CNN, is still on pace to overtake it.
If the year ends with another record, it’ll be the fourth consecutive in a row to rank hotter than its predecessors.
White House officials initially declined to offer any comment on the tweet. In the past, journalists were told to regard the content on President Trump’s Twitter feed as official statements from the Oval Office.
As CNN notes, the post is only the latest in Donald Trump’s longstanding history of climate change denial. He’s made a habit of linking regional weather trends to global warming – a relationship researchers say isn’t the right way to detect trends in temperature across the planet.
“It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming,” said Trump in 2012, years before he entertained a serious run for the White House.
A year later, he wrote, “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”
As a presidential candidate, Trump didn’t shy away from showing his opinions on climate change. He publicly accused China of engineering the appearance of global warming, saying the entire phenomenon is simply an artificial invention intended to hurt America’s economy.
“Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax,” said Trump in 2016. “A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I’d be – received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change.”
Since his inauguration, President Trump has made his climate change denialism a matter of public policy. In addition to promptly pulling out of the Paris Treaty on climate change, he’s also appointed former energy champion and Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, in his former post, sued the EPA well over a dozen times, fighting to prevent the clean-up of one of America’s most polluted bodies of water.
Sources
Trump tweets that ‘cold’ East Coast ‘could use a little bit of’ global warming
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