Last week, the Midwest endured a brutal arctic blast, which resulted in dangerously low temperatures.
Chicagoans who dared to venture outdoors last Wednesday were at risk of contracting frostbite in as little as five minutes. Saint Xavier University along with multiple schools in the surrounding area canceled classes for two consecutive days.
Temperatures dropped to record breaking lows of 24 degrees below zero with wind chills bringing it down to around negative 50 degrees.
After seeing the devastating weather affecting the Midwest, President Trump decided to put in his two cents via Twitter: “In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder.
People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Wa(r)ming? Please come back fast, we need you!” Normally, it’s easy to ignore the President’s countless ramblings on Twitter, but this tweet highlights an unfortunate problem happening in our country today: Many Americans still remain ignorant about climate change.
Which is a shame since climate change is a very clear and present threat, and the sooner we can do something about it the better. It doesn’t help that Trump and many other conservative politicians jump at every opportunity to dismiss climate change and ridicule the well-informed experts and scientists.
Mistaking weather for climate also doesn’t help. Just because we have winter storms and freezing temperatures doesn’t mean climate change is not real. What Trump and many other climate change deniers should be looking at is the extreme weather we have been experiencing recently.
The past four years were the warmest on record, ocean levels are rising, and the arctic weather the Midwest recently endured are all a result of climate change. Last year, scientists from Rutgers University and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), linked extreme winter temperatures in the United States to Arctic temperatures.
“Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings,” Jennifer Francis, a research professor of marine and coastal sciences, states, “and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south. These swings tend to hang around for awhile, so the weather we have in the eastern United States, whether it’s cold or warm, tends to stay with us longer.”
Trump supporters are turning their backs to scientists and listening to the president, which in turn, makes them ignorant to what our planet is currently facing. Despite all the research and warning signs, it doesn’t seem President Trump is going to have a change of heart any time soon.
The president has dismissed climate change multiple times. He has turned down reports simply because he “doesn’t believe it,” and many of us still remember when he called global warming a “Chinese hoax.” Climate change is very real, and if people remain uninformed and ignorant, we may face consequences more severe than 50 below zero temperatures.
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