The White House doubled down today on President Barack Obama's Earth Day message that climate change is 'a problem now' and knocked political figures who disagree with him as climate deniers and opportunists. 'The preponderance of scientific evidence is on the side of the president in making this argument. And the president believes that to deny the existence of climate change is to deny an observable fact that is substantiated by science,' press secretary Josh Earnest said today after he was asked about a Duke study that claimed the earth isn't heating up as quickly as expected. He then added, without any nudging, 'And there are some who are involved in politics that choose to deny that fact because it's inconvenient to their case and it might be inconvenient to some of their strongest political supporters.' Earnest's channeling of former Vice President Al Gore, star of the 2006 global warming documentary an Inconvenient Truth, followed the president's gas-guzzling, 1,836 mile trip on Wednesday, Earth Day, to the Florida Everglades aboard Air Force One. The White House doubled down today on President Barack Obama's Earth Day message that climate change is 'a problem now' and knocked political figures who disagree with him as climate deniers and opportunists. The president is seen here on Wednesday, Earth Day, boarding Air Force One before departing from Florida. There  he mocked opponents of climate change and said global warming is a 'problem now' There he preached about the harmful effects of global warming on the environment and the economy and mocked skeptics of man-made climate change. 'Climate change can no longer be denied,' he said. 'And action can no longer be delayed.' 'This is a not a problem for another generation. Not anymore. This is a problem now. It has serious implications for the way we live right now.' The president's spokesman did not name-check opponents of Obama's argument on climate change today but it was evident that he was referring to conservatives such as Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. The author of the anti-global warming book, The Greatest Hoax, Inhofe, has been a vocal critic of the administration's environmental policies. In late February he brought a snowball to the upper chamber's floor and presented it as evidence that global warming is a farce. 'It's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable,' Inhofe, chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, said and threw the snowball at the Senate president. Obama scoffed at the Republican lawmaker's antics in his Wednesday speech saying, 'yes, this winter was cold in some parts of this country, including Washington.' 'Some people in Washington helpfully used a snowball to illustrate that fact,' he noted. Taking a shot at Florida Governor Rick Scott, who allegedly banned the phrase climate change from his employees' vernacular, Obama said that 'simply refusing to say the words "climate changed" doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening.' 'If you’ve got a coming storm, you don’t stick your head in the sand,' he said. 'You prepare for the storm.' He said at another point in his remarks that climate change cannot be 'edited out' or 'omitted from the conversation.' 'There are some who are involved in politics that choose to deny' that global warming is happening 'because it's inconvenient to their case and it might be inconvenient to some of their strongest political supporters,' Obama's spokesman, Josh Earnest, said today . Responding to the question today about the Duke study, Earnest said  'the president is demonstrating genuine leadership by challenging the country and the world to confront [global warming].' Furthermore, he said, the president is going about it in a way that will 'not just safeguard the American people,' but one that can also have 'significant benefits for our economy.' Wind and solar power, he said, do stand to yield long term benefits for the United States' economy if it makes an early investment in alternative energy sources. The president 'is determined to position' the U.S 'so that we can capitalize on those trends,' he said.
President 'believes that to deny the existence of climate change is to deny an observable fact that is substantiated by science,' press secretary said.
He added: 'And there are some who are involved in politics that choose to deny that fact because it's inconvenient to their case and it might be inconvenient to some of their strongest political supporters'
Remarks followed the president's gas guzzling, 1,836 mile trip on Wednesday, Earth Day, to the Florida Everglades aboard Air Force One.