Watch: CNN anchor tries to tie Harvey to climate change — then scientist shuts him down

By Chris Enloe

A CNN anchor tried to push a climate change narrative on live air Friday while talking to a scientist about Hurricane Harvey, but the scientist was had none of it.

The exchange

CNN anchor John Berman was talking with Bill Read, the former director of the National Hurricane Center, on Friday when he asked if the intense hurricane that was bearing down on Texas was a result of climate change.

“Is there a why to this? Why there is so much water associated with this storm?” Berman asked. “One thing we heard from scientists over the last 10 years is that climate change does impact the intensity of many of the storms that we see.”

Read responded: “I’m not — I’m probably wouldn’t attribute what we’re looking at here. This is not an uncommon occurrence to see storms grow and intensify rapidly in the western Gulf of Mexico. That’s as long as we’ve been tracking them, that has occurred. The why for the big rain is the stationarity. That fact that the storm is going to come inland and not move…while it has happened in some cases, to have a really big storm come and stall like this is really rare.”

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