Hurricane Irma Linked to Climate Change? For Some, a Very ‘Insensitive’ Question<br />“To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced,” Mr. Pruitt<br />said to CNN in an interview ahead of Hurricane Irma, echoing similar sentiments he made when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas two weeks earlier.<br />But Leonard Berry, the former director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University who is riding out Hurricane Irma in his home in<br />Boca Raton, Fla., said policy makers have an obligation to talk about it if they hope to protect citizens from increasingly powerful storms going forward.<br />I’m not sure what’s insensitive about that,” said Dr. Kirtman, who evacuated from Florida on Wednesday.<br />“You spend an awful lot of effort word-searching your document for the words ‘climate’ and ‘change.’ It’s silliness.”<br />That is one reason many scientists maintain it is critical to use the megaphone<br />that the dual devastation of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma has provided.<br />Ben Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine<br />and Atmospheric Science, said he believes failing to discuss climate change hurts Florida and the entire country.<br />“To use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida,” he added.
