TRUMP WASN’T FIRST TO SUGGEST NUKING STORMS TO STOP THEM: GRIST

During the surprise 10-minute discussion about climate change near the end of Tuesday night’s “debate,” Biden emphasized the toll that the overheating planet has taken on Americans — from flooding to super-charged hurricanes — and pointed out one of Trump’s plans to handle extreme weather was to nuke it. 

Trump denied this claim, but reports show that the president has floated the idea during meetings, arguing that a detonation might disrupt storms before they hit the United States. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting,” one source reportedly told Axios of a White House briefing. “People were astonished.” 

“The idea of weakening a hurricane with nukes was originally floated in 1961 by Francis W. Riechelderfer, the head of the U.S. Weather Bureau at the time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration devotes a whole section of its site to debunking the notion. Essentially, hurricanes are way too powerful to be blown apart by nuclear weapons — and the radioactive fallout would be devastating,” Kate Yoder reported for the environmental online magazine Grist. 

“There’s a long history of the U.S. government brainstorming ideas to tame monster storms, starting in the late 1940s. Over the years, people have suggested plenty of other half-baked ways to kill hurricanes, such as flying planes in a clockwise circle around a storm to try to “unwind” it, dragging Arctic icebergs in the Atlantic to cool down the warm waters that feed hurricanes, and shooting lasers at them, because why not?” Yoder added.

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