President Biden said the severe weather and forest fires the country has seen in recent weeks are caused by man-made climate change, arguing that the point is resolved.
“We know what the engine is, climate change. We know what is causing climate change, human activity,” Biden said during an appearance Tuesday at Colorado’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “This is no longer under debate.”
But some are still debating whether climate change plays a major role in natural disasters, such as California wildfires and hurricanes, as Biden suggested.
FIREFIGHTERS FIGHTING WESTERN WILDFIRES SHARE THEIR HISTORY ON THE FRONT LINES
“When I hear about climate change, it’s suggested to me that it’s an important reason and it’s not,” Scott Stevens of the University of California told Forbes last year when he was discussing wildfires.
Stevens ’vision was echoed by University of Wisconsin geographer Paul Robbins, who argued that these fires are not something new.
“The idea that fire is somehow new … a product solely of climate change, and part of a moral crusade for the nation’s soul, borders on the crazy,” Robbins said.
Nick Loris, an economist who focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues as a Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has also discussed the idea that climate change is causing increased hurricane activity.
“There is conflicting literature in the scientific community about what has made this rise in temperature and the rise in ocean temperature toward the size and magnitude of the hurricane,” Loris said in an interview with the 2018. “The reason we continue to feel this is not too surprising, is to have this excitement that we need action against climate change, especially because we need to restrict the use of coal, oil and natural gas, which provide 80% of energy needs and provide 80% of the world’s energy needs. “
But others agree with Biden’s assessment of the problem, including Ocean and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist James P. Kossin.
“It is very likely that human-induced climate change has contributed to that abnormally warm ocean,” Kossin said last month. “Climate change makes hurricanes more likely to behave in certain ways.”
According to Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one way the oceans can affect the behavior of storms is to raise sea levels.
“Potential intensity increases,” Emanuel said. “We predicted it would increase 30 years ago and observations show it would rise.”
“Even if the storms themselves don’t change, storm surges circulate above high sea level,” he added. “If the Sandy storm had occurred in 1912 instead of 2012 … it probably wouldn’t have flooded Lower Manhattan.”
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Biden also warned that the problem of climate change needed to be addressed, arguing that this was a “decisive decade” in the battle against the problem.
“We don’t have much time,” Biden said. “We’re not much more than ten years old … really. This is a decisive decade.”