As Tornadoes Slam Midwest, Trump Assaults Climate Science

FEATURING RACHEL CLEETUS –  “World War III” is how Fire Chief Mark Lynch of Harrison County, Ohio, described the devastation left by a string of extreme tornadoes that slammed into the Midwestern United States on Monday night going into Tuesday. At least one person is known to have been killed and several injured by falling debris. One resident of Celina, Ohio who doesn’t have a basement told reporters she was forced to hide in her bathtub with her son holding a mattress above them for protection.

Such weather is increasingly commonplace. Evidence is all around us that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up. It is within this context, when we should be taking radical steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that President Donald Trump’s administration is launching a fresh assault on climate-related science research. The New York Times this week published a lengthy exposé about the ways in which federal climate research is being severely and systematically undermined.

Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director, Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.