For the first time since becoming President, Donald Trump has paraded his climate change denial on Twitter.
Trump posted his defiance of science in a message from his Florida vacation to those facing freezing temperatures along the East Coast:
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
Steadily increasing temperatures with climate change led to 2016 as the hottest year in history, and some studies show 2017 is on pace to become the fourth consecutive year to claim the record.
But the Trump White House has been dedicated in pushing aside any recognition. It has barred references to “climate change” on websites and in Government memoranda, sharply cut funding for scientific evaluation, gutted regulations, and withdrawn from the Paris Accord, leaving the US as the only country in the world outside the agreement. Climate change deniers have been appointed to senior positions, and Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has said that he does not believe the science about human-based climate change.
Trump’s Thursday tweet revived his forthright denial of any climate issue. In 2012, he chided:
It's freezing and snowing in New York–we need global warming!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
A year later, he returned to his observations of the weather:
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013
By the 2016 campaign, he refined his argument of a Chinese hoax:
Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. 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.
A White House official did not respond when asked what Trump’s latest tweet means for Administration policy.
