"Hurricane truther" Matt Drudge charged on Twitter that information about Hurricane Matthew was being skewed to support climate change. The idea that weather data has become political was backed up by Rush Limbaugh.
Drudge, the conservative commentator who founded The Drudge Report, created an Internet buzz on Wednesday when he suggested that some information on Hurricane Matthew maybe exaggerated to make a point about the effects of the climate change.
The Drudge Report posted an article from the website Climate Depot in which Hillary Clinton, during a September fundraiser in Tampa, blamed Hurricane Hermine, which affected Florida earlier that month, on climate change.
"Last week's hurricane was another reminder of the devastation that extreme weather can cause and I send my thoughts and prayers to everyone affected by Hermine," Clinton said, according to the website. "But, this is not the last one that's going to hit Florida given what’s happening in the climate.
"… If it affects people who lose their homes or their businesses that took a lifetime to build, it doesn't matter to him. When it comes to protecting our country against natural disasters and the threat of climate change, once again, Donald Trump is totally unfit and unqualified to be our President."
Rush Limbaugh on Thursday accused Clinton of politicizing the storm, pointing to the candidate's plans earlier this week to purchase ad buys on The Weather Channel.
"Hillary has pulled her spots from the Weather Channel. Backlash. I knew it," Limbaugh said, according to his website. "… The weather isn't the weather anymore. The Environmental Protection Agency – not the National Weather Service, the EPA – has just issued a 50-state climate warning. Flood, drought, and insect outbreaks. This is how they do it. Fifty-state climate warning? It's bogus! This is just... It's maddening as it can be."
Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association pushed back against Drudge's observations, telling Popular Science that information it receives from reconnaissance aircraft monitoring Hurricane Matthew is not changed to fit a political agenda.
"We go with our data," said Martin Nelson, with the NOAA's Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch. "That's the end of it. We use the science that we have and that's what we do."
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