Weather Channel Schools Trump On Difference Between Weather, Climate

U.S. President Donald J. Trump departs the White House in Washington, DC, December 22, 2017 en route Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach FL for his Christmas break after signing tax overhaul and budget bills. Credit: Chris Klep... U.S. President Donald J. Trump departs the White House in Washington, DC, December 22, 2017 en route Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach FL for his Christmas break after signing tax overhaul and budget bills. Credit: Chris Kleponis / CNP - NO WIRE SERVICE - Photo by: Chris Kleponis/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images MORE LESS
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After President Donald Trump tweeted mocking the science behind climate change and touting his decision to pull out of a global deal to combat planetary warming, the Weather Channel shot back.

Tweeting out an article that carefully outlines the difference between weather and climate, the publication said that 2017 is still projected to be the warmest year on record and that the eastern cold snap Trump referenced in his tweet was actually evidence of a warming climate.

The Weather Channel specifically lambasted the Trump administration for ignoring science and cited NASA’s official distinction between weather, which is “what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time” and climate, “how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time.”

Trump’s Thursday tweet referenced the extreme cold temperatures projected to freeze several regions of the country this coming weekend. He inaccurately suggested that the country 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,” implying that if global warming were real it wouldn’t be so cold.

“Bundle up!” he said.

Trump has been a longtime skeptic of the science behind climate change and has previously called global warming a “hoax” that China created to harm the American economy. He removed the U.S. from the Paris Accord earlier this year because he said it was a bad deal for the U.S.

The global agreement is designed to set goals for reducing carbon emissions to slow down the rate of climate change. In November, Syria joined the climate agreement, making the U.S. the only country in the world that’s not participating.

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