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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now!’s Juan González in Chicago. Hi, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at this week’s historic bomb cyclone blizzard that blanketed states with snow from Maryland to Massachusetts. In Providence, Rhode Island, more than 37 inches of snow fell, setting a new record for the city. Climate scientists have long warned that climate change will cause more intense and more destructive nor’easters.
We are joined in Philadelphia by Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, director of Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media. His most recent book, Science Under Siege which he co-wrote with Dr. Peter Hotez. Last year, Professor Mann co-wrote a study titled “The intensification of the strongest nor’easters.” It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
I am speaking to you from New York City, Professor Mann. Juan just left on one of the last planes before the bomb cyclone from New York where our huge event was canceled for our 30th anniversary and went back to Chicago because here in New York a state of emergency was declared in the city and in the state by both the mayor and the governor. They were talking about a life-threatening situation. No one was allowed to be on the streets yesterday until noon. Can you talk about what is happening? How this relates to climate change?
MICHAEL MANN: Thanks, Amy, it’s good to be with you. Here in Philly, we saw a fair amount of that snow as well. We got more than a foot. This was an historic bomb cyclone, as we sometimes call them, a nor’easter, which has to do with the fact that these storms are so strong that in one sector of the storm you actually get winds coming from the east, which is rare for a mid-latitude storm.
Now, these storms, unlike most mid-latitude storms, these coastal storms, these nor’easters, feed on the heat of the oceans. Now, we don’t think of the oceans as being that warm in the winter but they are much warmer than the land and they still contain a substantial amount of heat. And like a hurricane, these storms feed on that heat. That’s what leads to their intensification, why they become so strong.
This storm was so strong it actually had an eye-like feature. Now it’s not quite the same as the eye you see in a hurricane but it is often a measure of just how intense this storm was. It was as strong as measured by the central pressure of the storm, one of the metrics we use, nearly as strong as a Cat 3 hurricane. Like hurricanes, they feed on the heat of the oceans. That gives them their intensity. And it provides all of that moisture that is available to dump out in record snowfalls.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Professor, does this indicate that we are going to be facing many more of these nor’easters in the future than we have in the past?
MICHAEL MANN: That’s a great question. Whether we will see more of these storms or fewer of them is a little uncertain because there are a whole bunch of factors that come into that. But what we do know with some degree of confidence is that the strongest storms are getting stronger. We are seeing more intense nor’easters and we are seeing larger snowfalls.
That’s really what does the most harm, the most damage, what poses the greatest risk, are the strongest storms with the strongest damaging winds that produce the largest amount of snowfall. We are seeing in the observations an increase in those intensities and an increase in those snowfall totals. And we expect to see that increase as long as we continue to warm up the planet by burning fossil fuels and putting carbon pollution into the atmosphere.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the country’s ability to respond to these storms? What policies of the Trump administration are making that more difficult in the future?
MICHAEL MANN: It’s a great question. We have been seeing this with recent hurricane strikes, the devastating flooding that we saw in the southeastern U.S. during the hurricane season a year ago or so. What we are seeing is that the dismantling of, for example, FEMA, the lack of resources that they have, is preventing the sorts of assistance that typically would be provided to those in harm’s way.
Moreover, the Trump administration is dismantling our atmospheric modeling capability. Their attack on the National Center for Atmospheric Research, defunding this historic institution. NCAR, as it’s called, does a lot of the extreme weather modeling that is used by NOAA, for example, to predict extreme weather events and to advise risk assessments of those events. And so in a whole number of ways—the defunding of the science, the defunding of the infrastructure for assistance—the Trump administration is truly putting Americans in harm’s way.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Professor Mann, a coalition of public health and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block President Trump’s rollback of the 2009 endangerment finding, which enabled the EPA to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. In a separate petition, 18 children and young adults also sued the EPA, arguing the burning of fossil fuels is denying them their constitutional rights to life and liberty. Can you talk about these extreme measures of the EPA and what that endangerment finding means now?
MICHAEL MANN: Thanks, because that is actually the single greatest assault that we have seen from the administration on climate action, is the effort to, well, now that they’ve at least temporarily overturned the endangerment finding, which was a finding by the Supreme Court. They have been blaming this on the Obama administration. No, it was the Supreme Court that found that indeed the EPA was required to regulate carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuel burning. It was then two years later it was actually codified by the EPA. It is the primary means by which the United States has been able to meet its obligations to the rest of the world when it comes to limiting carbon emissions.
The endangerment finding is basically the policy vehicle that allows for the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. It is the primary vehicle that allows the government to regulate fuel efficiency standards. And it was because of that endangerment finding that the Obama administration was able to keep its promises to the rest of the world, and that was critical for reaching global agreements like the Paris Agreement. Of course we know Trump has even pulled out of the Paris Agreement now. So the Trump administration is doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry that was basically spelled out in Project 2025. They said this was what they were going to do and this is what they are doing.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Mann, we want to thank you for being with us, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Coming up, we go to Mexico where dozens of people have died after Mexican security forces killed the nation’s most powerful drug lord. Stay with us.
