Climate Change and Hurricane Correlation and Strategy Act would ban Trump from nuking hurricanes, as he once purportedly suggested
In the words of Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons, “You gotta nuke something.”
Context
The Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts 60% odds this year’s hurricane season will be worse than normal, and only 10% odds it will be lighter than normal. On June 7, the third named storm of the year arrived in Louisiana, threatening flooding and storm surge.
Last year, Axios reported that President Trump proposed several times using nuclear bombs to thwart hurricanes, bringing up the idea several times during meetings with Homeland Security officials.
An anonymous source claimed that Trump said, “Why don’t we nuke them? They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?”
Trump himself denied the report, tweeting, “The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”
What the bill does
The Climate Change and Hurricane Correlation and Strategy Act would prevent the president, whether Trump or anyone else, from using a nuclear bomb or any other strategic weapon to “alter weather patterns.”
It also contains other provisions which aren’t as directly headline-grabbing or Trump-related. One would require the White House to produce a report for Congress once every five years on governmental plans to combat and deal with increasing storm severity due to human-caused climate change.
Timed to coincide with the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, it was introduced on June 1 as bill number H.R. 7075, by Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX29).
What supporters say
Supporters argue the bill prevents reckless use of the planet’s most dangerous and destructive weapon against a storm, which it probably wouldn’t even prevent.
The bill “makes sure nuclear weapons can’t be used against hurricanes,” Rep. Garcia said in a press release. “Normally I wouldn’t think we’d need to legislate something so obvious, but given remarks this president made in August 2019, apparently, we do. Such use would result in radioactive fallout and cause significant public health and environmental harm.”
“We know that climate change isn’t just warming the Earth, but also changing weather patterns around the globe,” Rep. Garcia continued. “While we must prepare for worse hurricanes in the future, we also need to be planning on how to reduce greenhouse gases that drive climate change and ultimately greater storm intensity.”
What opponents say
These days, it’s basically impossible to find any serious political or scientific defenders of using a nuclear weapon against a hurricane.
In earlier years of the nuclear bomb’s existence, though, its use against hurricanes was proposed by some respectable scientific minds. Francis W. Riechelderfer, director of the U.S. Weather Bureau — the forerunner of today’s National Weather Service — apparently legitimately considered the concept. At the time, the long-term effects of nuclear fallout were lesser known and computer modeling capabilities were far less advanced.
Odds of passage
The bill has not yet attracted any cosponsors. It awaits a potential vote in either the House Armed Services, Energy and Commerce, or ‘Science, Space, and Technology’ Committees.
This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.
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