The president Friday questioned how the world can be warming when it is so cold.<\/b>
\nAs much of the United States faces numbing cold, treacherous ice and heavy snow from an enormous winter storm, President Donald Trump used social media to dispute that the world is warming.
In a 25-word post on his Truth Social account, the president Friday questioned how the world can be warming when it is so cold, and called the temperatures nearly unprecedented. He also called advocates and scientists \u201cenvironmental insurrectionists.\u201d
More than a dozen scientists Friday told The Associated Press the president\u2019s claims were wrong. They point out that even in a warmer world, winter and cold occur, and they never said otherwise. They note that even as it is cold in the eastern United States, more of the world is warmer than average. They also stressed the difference between daily and local weather and long-term, planetwide climate change.
Meteorologists also said that global warming over the past couple of decades may make this cold seem unprecedented and record-smashing. But government records show it has been much colder in the past.
\u201cThis social media post crams a remarkable amount of inflammatory language and factually inaccurate assertions into a very short statement,\u201d said climate scientist Daniel Swain of the California Institute for Water Resources. \u201cFirst of all, global warming continues \u2014and has in fact been progressing at an increased rate in recent years.\u201d
Here\u2019s a closer look at the facts:
TRUMP: \u201cWHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???\u201dUS President Donald Trump attends the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber)
THE FACTS: \u201cGlobal warming hasn\u2019t gone anywhere, it\u2019s here,\u201d Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi said.
The last three years have been the warmest on record, increasing at significantly faster rate than they had been, data shows.
Globally, winter temperatures \u2014 December, January and February \u2014 have increased by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1995, with the previous two winters the warmest on record, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records. The United States has warmed slower than the rest of the world, about half a degree Fahrenheit since 1995. Last month was the fifth-hottest December on record globally and in the United States.
Scientists note they talk about \u201cglobal\u201d when it comes to warming. The United States is only 2% of Earth\u2019s area \u2014 and west of the Rockies isn\u2019t that cold for this time of year. Global temperature maps show two-thirds of the United States is many degrees colder than normal and same for Russia. But Australia, Africa, the Arctic, Antarctica, Asia, Canada, much of Europe and even Greenland are warmer than normal.
\u201cEven as the Earth warms, cold days and cold winters are not projected to disappear, just become fewer in number,\u201d said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. \u201cIn addition, what happens in the U.S. during a brief period of days is not an indication of what\u2019s happening to the U.S. as a whole or the Earth as a whole over the long term.\u201d
There is even a theory among many scientists \u2014 but it is not yet a consensus \u2014 that the American East is getting more extreme winter outbreaks because of a warming Arctic, which is part of climate change.
\u201cThis is an active research area with uncertainty,\u201d said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. \u201cOne hypothesis is that Arctic warming reduces the temperature contrast between the pole and mid-latitudes, which can sometimes weaken or distort the jet stream and allow cold Arctic air to spill south. That said, not every cold outbreak can or should be attributed to climate change. Weather still has large natural variability.\u201d
TRUMP: \u201cRecord Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before.\u201d
THE FACTS: Yes we have.
The National Weather Service forecasts Minneapolis to be minus-11 degrees on Saturday and minus-13 on Sunday, but that is nowhere near the records of minus-33 and minus-31 set in 1904 there. Chicago is supposed to drop to 2 degrees Saturday and 8 degrees Sunday, but the record for those days are minus-15 and minus-20 from 1897 and as recently as Jan. 30, 2019 it hit minus-23 in Chicago. Fargo, North Dakota and Washington, D.C. are forecast to not come within a dozen degrees of the coldest day on record.
\u201cTruly historic cold waves, like those in 1978\u201379, 1983\u201385, or earlier decades, were often colder and more persistent over large regions,\u201d Gensini said. \u201cWe are also less accustomed to severe cold now because winters overall are warmer than they were several decades ago.\u201d
Kristina Dahl, vice president of science at Climate Central, said a check of U.S. weather stations with at least 50 years of data finds 45 record lows set in January of this year \u2014 compared to 1,092 record highs.
While some daily records may fall, especially in the Plains, Texas and Louisiana, it will be \u201cvery hard to break long-period (100 years+) records with this cold blast,\u201d said Ryan Maue, who was NOAA\u2019s chief scientist in the end of Trump\u2019s first term. Maue forecast that on Monday the Lower 48 states will average a low of 10 degrees Fahrenheit with more than 90% of the country below freezing. But in January 1985, the Lower 48 averaged a low of 4.1 degrees, Maue tweeted.
Maue lauded Trump for \u201cappropriately raising alarm about the impending severe cold. In a roundabout way, while he is trolling about global warming it seems to be on his mind.\u201d
Find AP Fact Checks here: https:\/\/apnews.com\/APFactCheck.<\/p>\n