I noticed several laughing emojis in a Facebook post last week about climate change, stormwater runoff and flash floods. Some people — almost all white males, many of them clearly Trumpies — apparently still mock the fact that a warming planet is causing more extreme weather, and that 100-year storms are happening more frequently. I’ve seen this kind of reaction before. Two decades ago, conservatives ridiculed Al Gore’s warnings about climate change, and most were in outright denial about it.
There was a period when Republicans in Congress started to acknowledge some inconvenient truths, but the denialists came roaring back when Trump was elected. Now the U.S. government is in full retreat from efforts to slow climate change and prepare Americans for the extreme weather already occurring because of it. The MAGA ridicule talk of climate change like it’s some imaginary nothing.
Those people with the laughing emojis probably don’t subscribe to The New Yorker. They probably never heard of Elizabeth Kolbert and her excellent journalism on climate change. So, for their benefit, I offer some highlights — some facts — from her recent report following the deadly flood in Texas:
The Trump Administration has made no secret of its disdain for science, and on June 30th it recommended cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from projects aimed at improving climate and weather predictions. Among the many research centers the Administration wants to shutter are the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations. The last two of these are based in Oklahoma; all are funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department. “I cannot emphasize enough how disastrous closing the National Severe Storms Laboratory and CIWRO would be—for ALL of us,” Stephen Nehrenz, a meteorologist with the CBS affiliate in Tulsa, posted on X after the budget proposal was released.
In a warming world, flooding of the sort that occurred in Texas will be more common. The hotter the air, the more moisture it can hold. This is a recipe for fiercer downpours, and, indeed, a trend toward more intense rainfall has already been documented across the United States. According to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, published in 2023, the amount of rain falling on so-called “extreme precipitation days” has, during the past several decades, increased by twenty per cent in the region that includes Texas, by almost half in the Midwest, and by a staggering sixty per cent in the Northeast. “Climate change is forcing a reexamination of our concepts of rare events,” the report noted. A study released this week by a group of European researchers concluded that the Kerr County floods bear the fingerprints of warming. “Natural variability alone cannot explain the changes in precipitation associated with this very exceptional meteorological condition,” the researchers wrote.
In a sane country, information like this would prompt two responses. First, steps would be taken to limit the dangers of climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Second, more resources would be devoted to preparing for weather extremes. Unfortunately, that is not the sort of country we live in now. The federal government is openly trying to maximize fossil-fuel consumption—and, hence, emissions. On Monday, as twenty more deaths were reported in Texas, Trump signed an executive order aimed at further hobbling the solar- and wind-energy industries, which had already been kneecapped by previous executive orders, as well as by the provisions of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, approved by Congress earlier this month. On Tuesday, as the death toll climbed by another ten people, the Environmental Protection Agency held hearings on a proposal to scrap Biden-era limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants. Trump and congressional Republicans have put an end to, as one commentator put it in Forbes, “any notion that a true energy transition is happening in the United States.”
Meanwhile, the White House is actively undermining the nation’s ability to predict—and to deal with—climate-related disasters. In April, the Administration dismissed nearly four hundred scientists who were working, on a volunteer basis, to draft the next climate-assessment report, which is due, under law, in 2027. Late last month, it shut down the website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, where the Fifth Assessment report and its predecessors used to be available. It has cut off grants to climate scientists, kicked nasa climate researchers out of their offices, and hired climate-science deniers to fill key government positions. Trump has said that he wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Further reading: The kids are not all right.
How anyone with children or grandchildren can support Trump is impossible to fathom.
Published by Dan Rodricks
Dan Rodricks is a former long-time columnist for The Baltimore Sun, winner of numerous national and regional journalism awards, a radio and TV personality, podcaster and fly angler. His narrative memoir, "Father's Day Creek," was published in May 2019 by Apprentice House at Loyola University Maryland. View all posts by Dan Rodricks
English (US) ·