Hey Donald Trump, this is the difference between climate and weather

No, Donald. Just ... no.

The president of the United States sent out an irresponsible and flat-out wrong tweet on Thursday that shows his total ignorance on the issue of climate change.

In case you hadn't heard, it's very cold in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. and parts of Canada. Here's what Donald Trump had to say about it:

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Let's examine why this tweet is such a mess, shall we?

First of all, Trump has confused climate and weather. As NASA so helpfully explained, weather is the way the atmosphere behaves in the short-term. Is it cold and raining outside your window? That's the weather.

Now, consider the weather in an area over a period of years or decades or centuries. That long-term pattern is the climate. So, just because it's colder than usual in your city this week doesn't mean it's not trending warmer over time.

And the science proves that the Earth is getting warmer. Globally, 2017 is set to be one of the five warmest years on record. The warmest on record is 2016. Before that it was 2015, and before that was 2014. You get the picture.

Via Giphy

And yeah, it's likely to be frigid on New Year's Eve in the Northeast. But it won't be colder than usual everywhere. Here's a global map of temperatures from today.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The red doesn't mean it's hot -- those areas are just experiencing milder than usual temperatures. And even if it was scorching hot everywhere, that's only data from a single day, not over time. So no, this map doesn't show climate change. It just shows that temperatures aren't colder than average across the globe today, but the U.S. is currently experiencing the most unusually cold weather on the planet right now, which is notable from a weather standpoint.

Trump's tweet also grossly mischaracterizes the Paris Climate Agreement, which committed countries to take voluntary emissions reductions in order to keep global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above average through the year 2100. The U.S. was not required to pay trillions of dollars under the agreement, and every country on Earth aside from the U.S. is moving forward with implementing it.

Trump's own administration published a climate study in November that found that global annually averaged surface air temperatures have increased by about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, during the past 115 years.

"This period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization," the report states. It also said (original emphasis included):

"This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence."

Climate change is real. Whether Trump is just being ignorant or irresponsible is the only real unknown factor here.