As a severe winter storm makes its way across the United States, President Donald Trump issued a confused statement in an attack on environmentalists, who he dubbed “environmental insurrectionists.”
“Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”
Trump has long been a critic of the concept of climate change, calling it last September “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
During his second administration, Trump has taken several steps against efforts to combat climate change activism, including withdrawing from a global climate treaty, enacting policy to boost the use of fossil fuels, and rolling back environmental regulations.
According to NASA, the earth’s surface temperature has increased dramatically over the past 80 years, with 2024 being the hottest year on record since 1880. The existence of extreme cold weather events amid global warming is also a well-documented and well-researched phenomenon, with changes in atmospheric patterns from global warming sometimes allowing for Arctic air to spill southward in atypical ways.