Trump again confuses climate with weather in tweet attacking Amy Klobuchar
Donald Trump attacked Amy Klobuchar on Sunday, in a tweet that appeared to demonstrate a lack of understanding about climate change.
The Democratic senator had announced that she was running for the presidency earlier that day, in a speech delivered as snow fell around her in Minneapolis.
“As your president, I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That’s what I’ve done my whole life,” she told a crowd of people gathered at a park along the Mississippi River.
The Minnesota senator added that on her first day as president she would have the US rejoin the Paris climate agreement, which Mr Trump withdrew the country from in 2017.
“Well, it happened again,” the president wrote on Twitter.
“Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures.”
“Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!”
Conflating weather and climate change is a common error and Nasa has a webpage dedicated to distingushing the two.
“The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time,” it states.
“Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time.”
Mr Trump has a long history of spreading incorrect information about climate change, despite the wealth of information available.
His tweet came just three weeks after another one in which he discussed forecasts of heavy snow.
“Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now,” the 72-year-old said.
Mr Trump also once claimed that climate change was a Chinese hoax, invented to hurt US exports.
Ms Klobuchar responded to his mockery on Twitter by saying that science supported her policies.
“Science is on my side,” she wrote, addressing the president.