We love it when Don Lemon makes a bit of a fool of himself on CNN, and this one fits the bill. The CNN anchor had his own agenda he wanted to be reported as Hurricane Ian bears down on the west coast of Florida.
Lemon wanted his guest to blame the massive storm on climate change.
Lemon repeatedly prompted Jamie Rhome, the Acting Director of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, but he continually declined to attribute this storm to climate change.
“Can you tell us what this is and what effect the climate change has on this phenomenon?” Lemon asked Tuesday evening.
“Well, we can come back and talk about climate change at a later time,” Rohme replied. “I want to focus on the here and now. We think the rapid intensification is probably almost done; there could be a little bit more intensification, as it still is over the warm waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but I don’t think we’re gonna get any more rapid intensification. If you look here, you can actually see, pretty interesting for your viewers, you can actually see a second eyewall forming around the inner eyewall, and that’s basically the second eyewall has overtaken the original eyewall, and that should arrest development.”
Lemon obviously didn’t get the script that he wanted from his guest, so he brought the conversation back to climate change.
“So listen, I just, I’m just trying to get the, you said you want to talk about climate change,” Lemon said. “But what effect does climate change have on this phenomenon that is happening now? Because it seems these storms are intensifying. That’s the question.”
“I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” Rohme told him. “On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse, but to link it to any one event, I would caution against that.”
“Okay, well, listen, I grew up there, and these storms are intensifying,” a visually frustrated Lemon said.
He was actually lecturing the hurricane expert. “Something is causing them to intensify,” Lemon whined.
Watch:
This is amazing. Don Lemon tries to blame Hurricane Ian on climate change. NOAA's hurricane director shuts him down. pic.twitter.com/svTjHtE8hl
— Alex Pfeiffer (@__Pfeiffer) September 28, 2022
