It's freezing right now. Many cities have dealt with record-low temperatures that have dropped below 0. In one part of Minnesota, the temperature reached negative 36 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, as USA Today reported, the cold weather is not indicative of rising global temperature trends. It is likely 2017 will be the second- or third-hottest year ever recorded (tracking began in the late 1800s). The three hottest years recorded to date are 2016, 2015, and 2014—in that order. Based on the body of evidence, it sure seems like the world is getting, well, hotter.
Nonetheless, U.S. President Donald Trump used the current freezing weather to argue against climate change, sending out a polarizing tweet Thursday night.
Weather and climate, however, are different—weather is short-term; climate is long-term. Here's a longer explanation from NASA.
"The clothes that you have on today do not describe what you have in your closet but rather how you dressed for today's weather. The range of clothing that you have in your closet is climate," J. Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, told USA Today.
Climate change is real, and the climate study that Trump's administration published in November did nothing to disprove that. It seems that in this case—as in many cases—the president is hell-bent on viewing the world through his own reality.
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