U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gestures to the news media as he appears outside the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday he thinks there is some connection between climate change and human activity and “clean air is vitally important,” a New York Times reporter said in a tweet.

Trump, who met Times reporters and editors in New York, “says he is keeping ‘an open mind’” on the issue, the Times’ reporter wrote on Twitter.

Trump has previously called man-made global warming a hoax. “I think there is some connectivity” between humans and climate change, Trump said in the Times interview.