Michael Oppenheimer:

It's impossible to say what was in the president's mind, but he probably was trying to confuse other people about the reality of climate change.

This cold snap is weather. Weather is what you experience day to day. Climate is the long-term average of weather over periods of years, decades, centuries or even longer.

Let me give you an analogy from the stock market. It's perfectly possible for the stock market to be rising due to understood factors like favorable economic forecasts, and yet to decrease significantly for one day, several days, a month or even several months. That happens all the time, even though the long-term trend might be continuing thereafter.

It's the same thing with climate change. The Earth's temperature is going up. It's been going up for about a century. That increase is due to the buildup of the greenhouse gases caused by — by and large, by the burning of coal oil and natural gas.

And yet climate has certain unpredictable factors about it which can cause variations like the current cold snap, which can cause temperatures to drop below normal, especially for relatively small areas. After all, what we're talking about here is the northern half of the United States.

So there's a long-term trend of warming. This cold snap says nothing really about that long-term trend. And that trend will continue until we make a radical reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.