Intelligence needed in Washington

A huge and very powerful hurricane has hit Florida. That such a hurricane — one of the largest and most powerful ever seen — would encounter the U.S. shouldn’t really come as a shock. I have been getting emails that relate hurricanes Harvey and Irma to climate change. Because of climate change, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are getting warmer and the air can hold more moisture. From both of these effects energy that feeds the hurricanes is increasing. For an explanation on hurricane formation, see https:// spaceplace.nasa.gov /hurricanes/en/. Unfortunately, we have as president a person who doesn’t believe in climate change and considers all such reporting to be “fake news.” So we can’t expect him to address underlying causes. But we can expect these kinds of hurricanes in the future because the warming water in the Atlantic will undoubtedly feed other big hurricanes.

But it’s not just Trump and Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt who are climate change deniers. Our own Congressman Glenn Thompson chooses to ignore the first rate expertise on climate change that we have at Penn State and spouts nonsense on rising carbon dioxide levels. We need intelligence in Washington if we want to deal with this issue, not a president who would take us out of the Paris agreement on reducing carbon dioxide levels and promote coal. Returning jobs to the coal industry will only make matters worse. We should promote non-CO2 emitting generation from solar, wind and nuclear power.

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 7:41 PM with the headline "Intelligence needed in Washington."