Gov. Bevin uses deep freeze to credit President Trump with having 'fixed global warming'

Citing the deep freeze gripping much of the U.S., Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is crediting President Donald Trump with having “fixed global warming.”

With temperatures falling to near zero degrees across much of Kentucky on Friday night, Bevin took to Twitter to mock mainstream climate science and defend Trump. In a tweet with echoes of a recent one by the president that longed for some “good old global warming,” the governor tweeted: “Trump has been in office 1 year and has already fixed global warming.”

That statement on Bevin’s personal Twitter account was superimposed over a weather map showing frigid temperatures gripping much of the country.

A Bevin spokesperson hasn't yet responded to a request for comment made just before 1 p.m. Saturday.

In response to Trump’s recent climate tweet, and the recent big chill, some scientists are speaking out, pointing out there’s a difference between weather and climate, and cold weather is expected to occur even in a warming world.

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Specifically, some have noted that:

No, a cold snap doesn’t mean global warming is a hoax.

Yes, climate change may – counterintuitively – be at least partly to blame for the unusual cold.

"A huge blob of icy Arctic air, usually corralled up north by the polar vortex, has escaped and moved south," tweeted Stefan Rahmstorf, a physics professor at Potsdam University, explaining how a warming arctic could allow bone-chilling cold to dip farther south than normal.

President Trump himself signed a military defense bill in December that describes climate change as an urgent threat to American security and details the challenges climate change poses to U.S. military operations worldwide. The U.S. military repeatedly has said that climate change is one of the greatest challenges that must be dealt with to ensure American security.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently made public a new study that finds climate change will push the Ohio River and its tributaries into uncharted waters, setting off economic and environmental crises like never before across a 13-state region, including Kentucky and Indiana.

Gov. Bevin, a U.S. Army veteran, is at odds with the military on climate change, calling it “fluff and theory” and saying the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is no longer needed.

Politicians who question climate science have previously used cold winter weather to raise doubts about mainstream climate science, which has concluded that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming and that human activities are largely to blame, with serious long-term consequences.

Scientists are also increasingly finding the fingerprints of climate change on current weather disasters, from major flooding to droughts to longer and more devastating wildfire seasons.

Bevin’s tweet prompted dozens of responses, many defending climate science but others saying people can’t take a joke.

On a per capita basis, Kentucky ranks seventh nationally among 50 states for energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas. And on a state-by-state basis, Kentucky is 12th nationally for such emissions.

The information comes from a January report by the U.S. Energy Information Agency and includes emissions from sectors such as residential, commercial, industrial and transportation, as well as fuels consumed for electricity generation. These emissions dominate overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to Energy Information Agency.