As tropical storm Barry began forming this week, threatening an already-soaked Louisiana with potentially dangerous levels of flooding, one man has stood firm in rejecting the well-established science linking climate change and hurricanes.
That man is Ryan Maue. In his infinite bravery, he chose to lash out at The New Republic’s Emily Atkin for daring to tweet out a story by Eric Holthaus about how the one-two punch of flooding on the Mississippi River and the storm surge of a potential Hurricane Barry is “a sign of things to come in a warming world.”
Maue either fundamentally failed to comprehend the piece, which in no way blames climate change for Barry, or was deliberately being misleading when he tweeted a complaint that although the storm hadn’t been named yet, it was already being blamed on climate change. Atkin, to her credit, didn’t take Maue’s misplaced criticism too seriously, and responded about how nice it is to talk with “the Reasonable Meteorologist Who Totally Doesn’t Deny Mainstream Climate Science But Is Just Simply Asking Questions”.
A whole big thing then ensued, with a number of morons from the Daily Caller tweeting and publishing just fantasically dumb stuff, often at their own expense and definitely with absolutely no hint of misogyny. Anyway, the joke’s on them: Atkin’s going to be moderating a Democratic summit on climate change in September, and they’re… well, they work for the Daily Caller. (Bastasch being the exception, obviously!)
Daily dramas aside, this isn’t the first time Maue’s gone after a woman who he believes is wrong to connect climate change to extreme weather. Just like before, he’s wrong.
While Maue loves to cherry-pick examples of the IPCC or NCA carefully qualifying their findings on the hurricane and climate connection, the 2017 NCA report makes it clear that human activity has contributed to an increase in hurricane activity since the 1970s. After all, higher sea levels due to melting glaciers give a big boost to storm surges. And warm air can hold more moisture, leading to stronger rains.
These downpours are a major threat, as extreme rain was the top source of hurricane-related deaths in the United States between 2016 and 2018. And thanks to ongoing flooding along the Mississippi River, New Orleans is already experiencing flood conditions, even before the arrival of Barry.
So yes, Holthaus’s argument that river flooding + sea level rise is a major threat and a sign of things to come in a warming world is absolutely borne out by the facts.
But Maue, ever eager for praise from the dinguses at the Daily Caller, wasn’t about to let facts get in the way of his Twitter temper tantrum.