Sean Spicer Can't Answer Whether Trump Believes In Man-Made Climate Change

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer claims to be in the dark about what his boss believes about climate change, even though Donald Trump has dismissed it as a Chinese-perpetrated hoax and, in a 2014 tweet, “bullshit.”

Asked at Tuesday’s press briefing if the president thinks human activity is contributing to global climate change, Spicer said, “Honestly, I haven’t asked him that. I can get back to you.”

A longtime climate skeptic, Trump in a Saturday post to Twitter said he would announce this week whether the U.S. will withdraw from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump vowed to “cancel” the pact.

In signing the accord, nearly 200 countries committed to slashing carbon emissions in an effort to prevent global temperatures from spiraling to the 2 degrees Celsius mark.

Earlier this month, White House sources told HuffPost that Trump was leaning toward an exit from the accord. And the president recently told “confidants,” including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he intends to walk away from the agreement, Axios reported on Saturday.

Spicer said Trump met Tuesday with Pruitt — who has called the Paris pact a “bad business deal” for the U.S. — to discuss the matter, and an announcement will be made “shortly.”

“Ultimately, [Trump] wants a fair deal for the American people,” Spicer said.

Also on HuffPost

Our carbon footprint says it all.

This graph shows the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as measured at&nbsp;Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, from 1958 to today. In September, scientists at Mauna Loa announced that C02 levels had <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carbon-dioxide-400ppm-permanent_us_57eb7636e4b082aad9b7e9ab">likely&nbsp;surpassed the threshold of 400 parts per million permanently</a>.

Year over year, the trend becomes more obvious.

This graphic by climate scientist Ed Hawkins shows 167 maps of temperature change from 1850 to 2016.
This graphic by climate scientist Ed Hawkins shows 167 maps of temperature change from 1850 to 2016.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.