Campaigning with former vice president and climate champion Al Gore in Miami on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton didn’t hold back about drawing a connection between a changing climate and Hurricane Matthew, which has killed more than 20 Americans and more than 1,000 people in Haiti thus far.

“Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change,” Clinton said. “Right now the ocean is at or near record high temperatures, and that contributed to the torrential rainfall and the flash flooding that we saw in the Carolinas. Sea levels have already risen about a foot, one foot, in much of the southeast, which means that Matthew’s storm surge was higher, and the flooding was more severe.”

Gore went into even more scientific detail when he took the stage to emphasise what he said were two messages – climate change is a core issue at stake in the election, and every vote counts (he should know).

“It spun up from a tropical storm into a category 5 hurricane in just 36 hours. That’s extremely unusual,” Gore said of Matthew. He later added: “Just since Hurricane Andrew, the sea level, and the waters around Florida, have gone up three inches.” Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992 as a Category 5 storm (but a small sized one).

The back-to-back assertions suggest that it has become less politically treacherous to talk about extreme weather events in a climate change context than it was during, say, the time of Hurricane Katrina 11 years ago. And at the same time, Gore’s appearance reinforces that the Clinton campaign views the climate as a winning campaign issue.

That is especially the case in Florida and especially Miami, surrounded by the rising ocean. Neither Clinton nor Gore mentioned Jill Stein, the Green party candidate who threatens to siphon votes away from Clinton in Florida. Yet a subtext of the event was to signal to Bernie Sanders supporters, who might be thinking of voting for Stein, that Clinton takes climate change very seriously – and that such a vote could help elect her opponent, who does not.

But what about these claims about a linkage between some aspects of Hurricane Matthew and climate change?

One climate scientist whom I quickly reached, Michael Mann of Penn State University, called Clinton’s quotation above “absolutely” accurate. Mann added that it “mirrors” remarks he gave in a recent interview with Democracy Now on the subject (link here).

Gore and Clinton are probably on the safest ground when talking about sea level. There’s a broad scientific consensus that the seas are rising, and that a warming climate is responsible. And while there are regional variations in how the oceans are distributed across the Earth, the fact remains that on average, this means a hurricane that strikes Florida or the U.S. East Coast today will be doing so atop higher seas, with more potential to hurl the water inland.

As for Matthew’s rapid intensification, Gore is right to note that it is “unusual,” although he may have pushed it a bit far. As Atlantic hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach noted for Capital Weather Gang, “Hurricane Matthew underwent a remarkable rapid intensification of 80 mph in 24 hours, intensifying from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane. This was the third-strongest rapid intensification in a 24-hour period for any Atlantic hurricane on record, trailing only Hurricane Wilma (2005) and Hurricane Felix (2007).”

In other words, Matthew’s rapid intensification is certainly noteworthy, but not unprecedented. It’s the kind of feature that is worrisome, but it is hard to say it is definitive proof of anything at this point.

If there’s anything wrong with Clinton’s and Gore’s remarks, it’s what they didn’t say – there are many caveats and nuances to this issue. They didn’t note, for example:

That no storm is “caused” by climate change – a common misconception that scientists don’t consider supportable. Neither Clinton or Gore claimed this – but they didn’t debunk the misconception, either.

That while scientists expect hurricanes to become more intense, on average, as the world warms, overall storm numbers may actually decrease.

That scientists don’t fully understand what’s driving hurricane activity in the Atlantic, and whether the signal of a global warming influence is yet detectable in hurricane trends.

Overall, on a scientific level, you can discuss Matthew in conjunction with climate change if you do it the right way. The question, really, is about getting the details right.

Most of all, the event demonstrated that Clinton, clearly, thinks the climate issue helps her win. “We cannot risk putting a climate denier in the White House,” Clinton said.

By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post

Environmentalists have said that, in the cause of controlling use of Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) in Nigeria, some gaps were identified in the provisions of The National Environment Ozone Layer Protection Regulations of 2009, a promulgation of the Federal Government addressing the use of ODS in the country.

At a workshop in Abuja on Expert Review of the Draft Amended National Environmental Ozone Layer Protection Regulations (2009) organised by the Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Dr. Lawrence Anukam, Director-General, National Environmental Standards and Regulations Agency (NESREA), identified some of these major gaps to include: the omission of best practices for the safe disposal, guidelines for ODS destruction, andsubstitutes of ODS in the regulations, among others.

These gaps, he said, have hindered effective compliance monitoring and enforcement, as well as deterred the ODS handlers from complying with the provisions of the regulations.

Dr. Anumka said that, as a signatory to the Montreal Protocol under which substances that deplete the ozone layer are addressed, and as the country tends towards the diversification of its economy through industrialisation, Nigeria cannot be a spectator in global trends on environment and climate change.

“Globally, the adverse effects of ODS have increasingly become a critical issue as a result of the several pollutants which attack the ozone layer. Chief among these pollutants is in the class of chemicals notably known as Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – used as refrigerants and as propellants in spray cans”.

As the ozone layer plays major role in the protection of life on earth by acting as a blanket that prevent harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation of the sun reaching the earth, these pollutants, if not checked, would deplete the ozone layer and usher in more UV rays upon the earth and consequently, exposure to these rays could have serious impacts on human health and the environment.

Dr. Anumka said that it was therefore on that premise that the need to amend the National Environment Ozone Layer Protection Regulations of 2009 became imminent, and that the United Nations, through its agency, UNIDO Nigeria, is partnering with government to develop an effective standard for the safe disposal of the ODS in the country.

He told participants that the outcome of the expert meeting would help in the fulfillment of government’s obligations in the ODS phase-out regime geared towards eliminating the use of critical ODS for the protection of the environment and human health in Nigeria.

In his address, UNIDO Country Representative and Regional Director for ECOWAS, Dr. Chuma Ezedimma, said the United Nations remained committed to the promotion of an inclusive and sustainable industrialisation in developing countries and economies in transition.

Dr. Ezedimma explained that as nations across the world are evolving with measures to protect the environment, and as a partner on Montreal Protocol, it is important for Nigeria to reflect in its laws, disposal of ODS waste, and equally important for the country to begin the adoption and implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) initiative in order to ensure that manufacturers take responsibility for the entire life circle of their products which should apply to refrigeration, air-conditioning and insulation products.

With that in hand he said, Nigeria would be sure to boost energy conservation and eventually the sustainability of the environment.

“Disposal of unwanted ODS has already been initiated in Nigeria through the Demonstration Project for Disposal of Ozone Depleting Substances which began implementation in November, 2013 after the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol approved some funding for the country with the objective of aggregating and disposing 84MT of CFC-12, already identified with companies and chillers. This is to promote a model to manage ODS in Africa and also showcase how ODS disposal can promote other environmental and climate change issues, like energy efficiency, and carbon market co-financing,” he concluded.