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ETHAN: Yes, Hurricane Ian was historically catastrophic. Yes, climate change intensified it. And yes, Ian is probably the least intimidating name they could have possibly picked for this. I mean, when I think of Ian, I think of a skinny white guy who could be knocked over by a light breeze, not a hurricane that causes a heavy one. Good Wednesday morning, I’m Ethan Brown, and this is Tip of the Iceberg, where I will break down some environmental news and then answer a question from our listeners on the air. Submit questions via Patreon, email, or social media. Patron questions go to the front of the line, so sign up at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin.
ETHAN: The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise.
ETHAN: After forming on September 19th, Ian brought heavy rain and winds to Trinidad and Tobago, the northern coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, and the ABC islands. Luckily, Ian missed the PBS islands, which is a relief because that’s where we keep the money. On September 21st and 22nd, Ian moved into the Caribbean and intensified into a hurricane, hitting the Cayman Islands on September 26th and western Cuba on September 27th, reaching wind gusts of 129 miles per hour. There, Ian caused at least two casualties, destroyed buildings including those used for tobacco production, and led to the collapse of the entire Cuban power grid, leaving the entire nation’s population of 11 million people without electricity. Ian also damaged 40 percent of banana plantations in one province, and I’m sorry, what’s with the hate for bananas, Ian? ‘Cause to be honest, it just sounds like you seem threatened by them, and that kind of toxic masculinity is not acceptable. Do better, Ian. Do better.
ETHAN: Then, Hurricane Ian only got stronger as it ditched the chess club and took up football. [football music sting] FSW acceptance letter in hand, Ian headed toward Southwest Florida where it made a touchdown on September 28 as a strong Category 4 hurricane with winds approaching 150 miles per hour. That sentence was brought to you by NextGen Stats. AWS is how. [football music sting] As I’m sure you know though, Ian caused horrific damage. It knocked out electricity for more than 2.5 million people, trapped people in their homes, ripped the roof off a hospital ICU, flooded fire stations and parking garages, and caused at least 76 casualties. An estimate by financial services company CoreLogic approximated the total damages of Hurricane Ian in Florida at 47 billion dollars. After passing over Florida, Ian weakened into a tropical storm as it moved back into the Atlantic before intensifying into a hurricane and making its third landfall, or third down, as it were, on the coast of South Carolina. Over 57,000 people in South Carolina, over 300,000 in North Carolina, and over 91,000 in Virginia lost power.
ETHAN: Before I get into my main topic of discussion today, let’s clear up one of the really big pieces of misinformation I kept seeing: no, Hurricane Ian was not just another hurricane. If you hear things along the lines of “Florida always gets hurricanes, this is just the latest one,” that is not rooted in the facts. Yes, obviously Florida has gotten many bad hurricanes in its history. But Ian, silly as its name may be, is one of the five most powerful hurricanes in recorded history to hit the United States. It is tied with 2004’s Hurricane Charley as the strongest to ever hit the west coast of Florida, meaning they’ve both earned the Hurricane Heisman trophy. By the way, normally I get yelled at for writing too many football jokes, but I believe this is the first time in Sweaty Penguin history that I opened a script and someone other than me had written football jokes! So maybe I’m not the only football fan on The Sweaty Penguin, who knows?
ETHAN: The fact that Ian is tied with Charley as the strongest hurricane to hit the west coast of Florida in recorded history is significant enough, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story. If we’re comparing Ian to Charley, the 150 mile per hour wind speeds were the same, but by every other metric, Ian was significantly more damaging. Charley produced a maximum storm surge of six to seven feet; Ian’s looks to be twelve to eighteen feet. Charley moved through Florida at a speed of fifteen miles per hour, while Ian moved through at a speed of nine miles per hour, meaning the storm sat there for longer and could cause more damage.
ETHAN: And here’s where it gets really wild. As we all know from Hamilton, the middle of the hurricane is called the eye, and it’s an area of relative calm that the winds and water rotate around. The edge of the eye is called the eyewall, and it is made up of a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds occur. If you’re wondering, yes, Tiffany has a sale on the ring of towering thunderstorms. It’s only an eighth of a carat, but what it doesn’t have in flash, it makes up for in being able to CREATE TOWERING THUNDERSTORMS! [thunder clap] I mean, what woman wouldn’t say yes to that proposal? Now sometimes, if dry air makes its way into one of these rotating storm systems, the eye can start to break down, and when that happens, no amount of eye drops can prevent the storm from weakening. In fact, a leak of dry air can even diffuse the hurricane entirely. And that process started to happen with Ian as it entered the Gulf of Mexico, but rather than breaking down, Ian only got stronger. The storm maintained its shape and speed with the dry air entering, and the eye collapsed but ultimately formed a new eye. It’s like Lin Manuel Miranda once said…
“LIN MANUEL MIRANDA”: In the eye of a hurricane, there is… another eye. For just a moment. What the [beep].
ETHAN: And the new eye that formed was way bigger than the previous eye. You might even call it… an eye for an eye. [crickets] In fact, at one point, that new eye could have fit Hurricane Charley inside it. Yeah. And that meant even though the wind speeds were the same, the actual storm was a lot larger in the case of Ian. When these two hurricanes made landfall, Charley’s hurricane-force winds spanned an area of 50 miles, while Ian’s spanned an area of 90 miles. So again, Florida has had many bad hurricanes, no one’s disputing that. I mean, do you remember when the Miami Hurricanes got clobbered by Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen a few years ago? I know that was a college basketball team and not a tropical storm, but still! Brutal! That said, Ian was historic by a number of metrics, and yes, climate change played a role in that.
ETHAN: Now, I know that this audience is used to me laying out the links between hurricanes and climate change, as recently as last week with Hurricane Fiona. And by the way, since we last spoke, hundreds of thousands of people are still without power in Puerto Rico, and Fiona has made its way all the way up to eastern Canada and become the costliest tropical cyclone on record to hit the country. So if you want to learn more specifics on how climate change is linked to hurricanes, check out last week’s Tip of the Iceberg, or our Tropical Cyclones episode from last year where we interviewed world renowned expert Dr. Suzana Camargo of Columbia. Today, I’m going to assume you’ve already listened to one of those episodes and you’d probably give us a one-star review if I say the word Coriolis effect again, so I’m going to skip over that and assume we’re on the same page as I get into the drama that happened last week.
ETHAN: So the National Hurricane Center’s Acting Director Jamie Rhome was on CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight on September 27th, the night before Ian made landfall in Florida. One of the rare times the Breaking News banner on CNN was warranted, actually. After discussing the models of the storm, Don asked Jamie how climate change was affecting the rapid intensification of the storm, to which Jamie replied, “We can come back and talk about climate change at a later time, I want to focus on the here and now,” before turning to explain that eyewall replacement I just discussed. Don then pressed again, asking “What effect is climate change having on this phenomenon that is happening now,” noting that these storms are intensifying. Jamie then said and I quote, “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event. On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse.” Don then said, “Listen, I grew up there, these storms are intensifying, something is causing them to intensify,” before moving on.
ETHAN: A clipped version of that exchange then was posted to Twitter by Fox News producer Alex Pfeiffer, with the caption, “This is amazing. Don Lemon tries to blame Hurricane Ian on climate change. NOAA’s hurricane director shuts him down.” The tweet went viral, and led to a barrage of news stories, with headlines such as “NOAA Hurricane Director Twice Shuts Down Lemon For Blaming Climate Change” from MRC Newsbusters, “’It’s not the time to point score’: Don Lemon is schooled AGAIN by CNN guest after blaming Hurricane Ian on ‘climate change,’” from The Daily Mail, and “WATCH: Don Lemon face-plants in attempt to link Hurricane Ian to climate change,” from The Washington Examiner to name a few. The exchange was also featured prominently on Fox News that day, with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo all bringing it up.
ETHAN: Now, just looking at facts here — I’m not going to politicize a hurricane unless Ian runs for office — I think everyone involved in this drama messed up to some degree, and I think we can learn something from it. And that’s why it’s time for The Sweaty Penguin’s Feelings Corner. [music sting] Starting with Don Lemon: climate science and meteorology are two different things. Like Coke and Pepsi, or Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley. In the past, climate scientists didn’t talk much about day-to-day weather and meteorologists didn’t talk much about long-term trends. For many, that remains their preference. I can tell you from doing this podcast that when we interview scientists specifically, they really don’t like talking about things even a little bit outside their area of expertise. So if he wanted to talk about climate science, he probably should have invited a climate scientist onto the show rather than a meteorologist. You know what they say, when life gives you Don Lemon, sometimes he needs lemon-aid. [crickets] No? No good?
ETHAN: I also didn’t love Don’s “listen, I grew up there” line which took some heat from some of those aforementioned news outlets. Jamie Rhome was the expert in the room there. There was no reason for Don to try to get the last word on that one, or to bring anecdotal evidence into a conversation about science with a scientist. If he wanted to keep asking questions or get clarification, that’s one thing, that could have been more effective, but again, if you’re inviting a meteorologist onto the show, don’t be too surprised when they want to stick to meteorology. It’s like inviting Cookie Monster on to talk about world hunger. I’m sure he has some thoughts, but he’s mostly gonna talk about snickerdoodles.
ETHAN: Now, over to Jamie Rhome. I know Jamie didn’t want to talk about climate change and he voiced that to Don, which we love to see in The Sweaty Penguin Feelings Corner, but to say “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event” is actually not true according to many other scientists I follow or have interviewed on this show. If we went back even less than ten years ago, he’d have been correct. Scientists couldn’t link climate change to individual events at the time. And it remains true that climate change does not cause extreme weather events. It’s more like your kid playing with a cheap remote control helicopter. Your kid didn’t cause it to break, you got it at the dollar store, but also like… it’s 11am on Christmas morning. The kid had something to do with it, come on. So in the last few years, a new field called “attribution science” has started to emerge. Using attribution science, climate scientists are able to measure not a causal relationship, but rather to what degree climate change influenced a given weather event.
ETHAN: In fact, last Thursday, Dr. Kevin Reed of Stony Brook University and Dr. Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab released a rapid analysis that found climate change added at least 10 percent more rain to Hurricane Ian. What they did is created 20 different computer models with storms that had the same characteristics of Ian minus the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere that have driven global climate change. This type of modeling was peer-reviewed and published in Nature Communications earlier this year. By comparing the models without climate change to the real-life Ian which did have climate change, they found real-life Ian was 10 percent wetter. In other words, in a world without climate change, instead of raining cats and dogs, it could have been raining hamsters, and let’s be honest, that sounds a lot more fun.
ETHAN: Why would Ian be wetter with climate change? For one, warmer air is going to evaporate and hold more water. The Gulf of Mexico was about 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than normal last week, and if you do some physics calculations, that would equate to 5 percent more rain, or about half the excess rain that Dr. Reed and Dr. Wehner measured. These particular scientists didn’t address the rest of the excess rain, but in all likelihood, the rest had to do with Ian’s high wind speed. A 2019 study in Climate and Atmospheric Science found high wind speeds also have an effect on the amount of water that builds up in the atmosphere, independent of what the air temperature is. I’m not exactly sure how that works — maybe fast wind is just really good at peer pressuring — but regardless, it’s very likely that the high wind speeds would be playing a role.
ETHAN: So I know Jamie didn’t have Thursday’s analysis handy, but we know how attribution science works. It’s new, but it’s peer-reviewed. It’s chill guys, it’s cool, attribution science is with us. So he should not have said “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event” because with the emergence of attribution science, we now can. If he’s not well versed in attribution science, that’s totally fine, but by saying what he said, he did invite a certain amount of misinformation that has now gone viral, and a lot of climate scientists are having to do the hard work of setting the record straight.
ETHAN: However, nothing Jamie said should have given anyone the impression that he was denying climate change, denying a link between climate change and hurricanes, or anything of the sort. He did not “school” or “shut down” Don Lemon either. If that was schooling, then apparently I also schooled my therapist when she asked “how was work today” and I said “I don’t want to talk about it.” Where’s the viral news story about that? But seriously, the news outlets and the Fox News producer that covered this clip should know — even better than I know — that in media appearances, most scientists prefer to talk about their field of science. Or pumpkin patches, if they’re in a good mood. Some of these news outlets have meteorologists on staff, and would know many meteorologists prefer sticking to the day-to-day and not discussing climate change. The fact that they ignored that nuance, which I know they understand, is ridiculously irresponsible.
ETHAN: They also completely misstated what Jamie said. The National Hurricane Center’s public affairs officer Maria Torres was quoted in TIME saying, “The acting NHC director clearly stated that ‘on the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse.’ That is supported by the overwhelmingly clear science on what climate change means for storms like Ian in general: heavier rainfall, possible slower movement which prolongs heavy rain and battering winds, and more inundation as sea levels rise. Researchers will analyze Ian afterwards to see what impact climate change may have had on this specific storm.” There’s no scandal here, there’s no climate deniers in the National Hurricane Center pulling up spreadsheets and changing twos to sevens while giggling or anything. It was just a couple of gaffes by Jamie and Don in that interview that got twisted beyond belief into a completely inaccurate and damaging news story.
ETHAN: So where do we go from here? (1) I hope news outlets can learn the lesson that if you want to talk about climate science, get a climate scientist. Not that meteorologists can’t discuss it, but they might not want to or they might not be able to answer very specific questions with the requisite level of expertise. (2) I’m not at all qualified to suggest this, but climate scientists and meteorologists may want to consider brushing up on each other’s work a little more and ensure they’re able to talk about it more comfortably. As much as I respect these scientists’ desire to stick to their field and not step on each other’s toes, the environment is inherently interdisciplinary. Mother Nature undoubtedly did the “invent your own major” thing as some small liberal arts college. And a newscast might not be able to bring on guests from multiple disciplines, they might only have one guest for Hurricane Ian in a given broadcast. I’m definitely not saying meteorologists should tell you there’s a 40 percent chance of rain and then jump into a rant about plastic bottles, but if they could explain the link between climate change and hurricanes for their audience simply and succinctly, that would probably do a lot more good than harm. I personally don’t think it would do any harm, to be honest. It’s just science.
And (3) this goes for all of us: stop waiting until hurricanes happen to discuss climate change. This is why I talked about it in August when there were no storms. There are a number of people that find it so disingenuous that climate communicators get so loud in the aftermath of a storm. Whether people perceive it as an attention grab or a political stunt or just insensitive, I don’t know, but I know some people feel this way. I have interacted with them before. It’s just the way it is. And I don’t pin that entirely on climate communicators — I’m willing to bet CNN wasn’t inviting reps from the National Hurricane Center on in February. Part of this is on journalists to keep climate change in the news even when there isn’t a disaster in our backyard. But on the climate communicator side, I feel like it would help a lot if we talked about hurricanes when there aren’t hurricanes happening. There’s plenty of times it’s appropriate, as recently as August when I did that episode on the historic streak we experienced. So I hope others will join me in trying to discuss these issues year round rather than waiting and then using individual catastrophes as education opportunities. If, every time, we wait until life gives us Don Lemon, then we might be too late.
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ETHAN: The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise.
ETHAN: Welcome back to Tip of the Iceberg. It’s time for “Ask Me Anything,” where our listeners get a chance to ask me any environmental questions they may have. Submit questions on our Patreon, email, or social media. Questions from patrons go to the front of the line, so be sure to sign up today at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin.
ETHAN: As you all know, we did a live show in August to celebrate episode 100, and today’s Ask Me Anything comes from that show! The question was about electric cars, and so I’m going to play for you the audio from the show when I answered the question live, and then I want to add a few thoughts because there’s actually been some major news around electric cars since that live show was recorded. So, have a listen:
SPEAKER: So I’m from the midwest, and I’m from actually the same town as Mo here. And I’ve noticed here in California electric vehicles are far, far, far more prominent and popular than they are in the midwest. I’m wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about why that is, and also like, is the rest of the country on a trajectory to kind of catch up, what does the future of electric vehicles look like in general?
ETHAN: Alright, so for the update. On August 25th, California adopted rules that would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and light trucks by the year 2035. New York has also adopted a similar ban, Washington has said the state will follow suit by the end of the year, Massachusetts and Virginia actually had trigger laws that would automatically follow California’s lead on clean transportation, and — here comes a mouthful — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington D.C. have policies tied to California as well, making them lead candidates to also adopt this ban.
ETHAN: To address the point I made in the live show — this policy doesn’t ban gasoline-powered cars, it bans the sale of them. And it also has incremental targets between now and 2035 to ensure a gradual transition. Electric cars are already becoming increasingly popular, so largely this policy just sends a signal to the car industry saying “this is the type of vehicle we want, put your energy into making those.” The policy also does not ban the sale of used gasoline-powered cars, and has some loopholes around hybrid vehicles. So in that sense, I’m not worried about the issue I brought up in the live show.
ETHAN: Here’s where I am worried. In the weeks after California announced this policy, we had a historic heat wave which I discussed last week that pushed California’s power grid to the point of nearly experiencing rolling blackouts. We only avoided them because the state blasted emergency texts to everyone asking us to reduce our electricity use. Imagine if there were an even worse heat wave in fifteen years, but this time, millions more electric vehicles are plugged into the grid.
ETHAN: Is that a fixable problem? Absolutely — we’ll need more electricity, better resilience, better planning, all that stuff. But it’s still a question mark about electric cars. Just like the environmental and human rights consequences of mining cobalt, lithium, and rare earth minerals for batteries is a question mark. Just like high prices remain a question mark. Just like supply shortages remain a question mark. It’s not to say electric cars can’t take off, but it requires a huge amount of planning.
ETHAN: And because of those question marks, the thing I actually was trying to remember that slipped my mind at the end of the live show clip you just heard was that electric cars aren’t the only alternative to gasoline-powered cars. There’s biking, there’s walking, there’s increasing work from home, there’s scooters, and of course, there’s public transit. How’s California doing on public transit? Well, as I come to you right now from Orange County, Amtrak and Metrolink just suspended service here until further notice. Why? Coastal erosion and climate change have made the tracks unsafe.
ETHAN: Now I know Californians love cars, but high quality public transit brings a lot of benefits that electric vehicles cannot. It saves electricity, it provides alternatives for those unable or uninterested in buying a car, and it reduces traffic. My apartment is right off the I-5 South, and in 2021, INRIX ranked the I-5 South as the most congested roadway in the country, costing the average driver 89 hours annually. That wastes time, money, and even if everyone’s in an electric car, that means everyone is using precious electricity resources to idle on the highway.
ETHAN: So we could go on and on, but my feeling is a transportation transition ought to be a little more comprehensive than just switching from one type of car to another. Not only are there question marks about electric cars, but there’s a whole lot of other transportation issues that could be addressed with a more holistic approach. [SONG: Sunshine and Smiles] I know I strayed very far from the question that was asked in the live show, I really just wanted a chance to vent about public transit in Southern California, but alas, thank you so much for the question. And thanks to all of you who listened to Tip of the Iceberg. Take two minutes, help out the show, and get a shoutout at the end of the show by leaving a five star rating and a review on Apple or Podcast Addict OR join our Patreon at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin. You get merch, bonus content, and your questions moved to the front of the line for Tip of the Iceberg. The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Peril and Promise or The WNET Group. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you on Friday for a deep dive on Eastern Hemlocks. These are a really cool type of tree I just had the opportunity to learn about, very interesting episode, so I will see you then!
