ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — President Donald Trump appeared to cast doubt on Twitter about the existence of global warming while frigid temperatures grip much of the U.S., only to have his own science-backed agency throw cold water on the subject.
"In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded," Trump tweeted Monday night. "In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? [SIC] Please come back fast, we need you!"
His scientists say there's no need to make a request for its return because it's already here.
Life-threatening cold air continues to push across much of the Midwest. Chicago's high temperature Wednesday likely will hold at minus 10 degrees, with wind chill values plunging 40 degrees below zero -- or worse. Contrary to the skeptical sounding tweet, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) theorize global warming is contributing to the cold weather.
It says some evidence exists that higher temperatures and less Arctic sea ice results in atmospheric patterns that cause cold air typically trapped at the North Pole to be forced southward and into the U.S.
NOAA further proved its point with a tweet Tuesday to a 2015 climate article, saying warmer ocean temperatures lead to greater evaporation rates and potentially higher snowfall amounts during big winter storms. It, too, included a cartoon with the caption: "Winter storms don't prove that global warming isn't happening."
In a statement to CBS News, NOAA said the tweet was not published in response to Trump, but it was "something NOAA routinely puts out when we get an extreme cold snap such as the one we're in now." The cartoon itself was posted in the 2015 article.
Trump's tweet isn't his first as a skeptic. He later said he was joking, but in 2012, Trump tweeted global warming was created "by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." He backed off claims that climate change was a hoax during an October 2018 interview with "60 Minutes" but said he doesn't know if it's manmade.
That point has been addressed, too: A group of 1,300 scientists concludes there is a more than 95 percent probability that human activities in the past 50 years have contributed to the warming of the planet, according to a report referenced on NASA's Global Climate Change website.
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