Trump’s Climate Tweets Fail His Own Government’s Fact-Check
Trump’s Climate Tweets Fail His Own Government’s Fact-Check
(Bloomberg) -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a message for the boss: Snowstorms don’t disprove global warming.
The agency’s message followed a tweet by President Donald Trump questioning the record-breaking cold poised to hit the Midwest.
“What the hell is going on with Global Waming? [sic]” Trump, a climate skeptic who once called it a Chinese hoax, tweeted on Monday night. “Please come back fast, we need you!”
The climate division of NOAA, a branch of the Commerce Department which provides “authoritative information about climate,” corrected the science with its own tweet Tuesday morning.
The message included a link to a NOAA explainer from 2015 that noted “Not only are severe snowstorms possible in a warming climate, they may even be more likely.”
A NOAA spokesman didn’t immediately respond to questions about the timing and intent of the tweet.
NOAA was closed during the partial government shutdown, when Trump issued a similar message: “Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record setting cold,” Trump tweeted Jan. 20. “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”
To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman
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