Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made headlines in January after she claimed the world will end in 12 years if climate change is not addressed.

"I think that the part of it that is generational is that millennials, and Gen-Z, and all these folks that come after us, are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, and your biggest issue is, your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?" Ocasio-Cortez said at the time.

"And like this is the war, this is our World War II," she claimed.

Over the weekend, the controversial freshman lawmaker downplayed her claims in an apparent attempt to walk them back completely.

What did she say?

Writing on Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez mocked Republicans, saying of her claim, "you'd have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it's literal."

Ocasio-Cortez walked back her comments Sunday despite previously defending them.

After she was initially mocked for the comments in January, she said, "For some reason GOP seems to think this is a gaffe, but it's actually a generational difference."

The New York lawmaker even doubled down on many of her climate change claims in March during an MSNBC town hall with network host Chris Hayes.

Meanwhile, scientists have heavily pushed back against the 12-year claim, mostly due to the fact that it misrepresents data included in a report by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.