Fact-checking claims made by Vance and Walz on climate change, solar panels, and hurricanes during their vice presidential debate.
With only 34 days until the 2024 presidential election, vice presidential candidates Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrat, and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican, squared off Tuesday night on the debate stage. [emphasis, links added]
CBS News hosted the vice presidential debate in New York City, with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan moderating.
Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, and Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, are relatively new to the political limelight.
Walz, 60, a high school social studies teacher, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2006. After six terms in the House, Walz was elected in 2018 as Minnesota governor.
Vance, 40, a lawyer and venture capitalist, won his Senate election in 2022 after his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a New York Times bestseller.
The candidates’ microphones were live during most of the debate, but moderators exercised the right to mute their microphones at their discretion.
The Vance-Walz encounter was expected to be the last major debate of the 2024 presidential election campaign.
Vance criticized the Harris-Walz plan for remedying climate change with solar panels.
“The issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China,” Vance said, “number one, you’re going to make the economy dirtier.”
Vance said we should be making more solar panels in the United States, noting that the components are made overseas in China.
Vance is correct, according to Erin Walsh, senior research fellow for international affairs in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.
The development of solar energy began in America, then the Chinese developed it further, and now China controls the “entire supply chain, so you can’t be involved unless you’re purchasing some goods from China to make your solar panels,” Walsh said.
China has “taken advantage of the United States because we’ve had this very driven climate agenda,” she said.
The more the U.S. and other nations move toward the use of wind and solar energy, as well as electric vehicles, the more China’s economy benefits and the more America’s economy and national security are put at risk, according to Walsh.
Vance’s statement came after Walz bragged that the largest solar manufacturing plant in North America is in Minnesota.
Last month, the Biden-Harris administration announced $40 million in investments across the solar energy supply chain.
O’Donnell, one of the two CBS moderators, used the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina to ask the two vice presidential candidates about climate change.
“More than 160 people are dead, and hundreds more are missing,” O’Donnell said. “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”
Fig. 1. Source
Although climate change theoretically may affect hurricanes, the concrete claim that burning fossil fuels has made hurricanes worse doesn’t measure up. [See Figure 1]
Fig. 2. Source
Hurricanes should get worse if the climate grows colder, not warmer. [See Figure 2]
“[If] we have colder periods, we will get more hurricane activity,” climatologist David Legates told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in June. “If we have warmer periods, the hurricane activity tends to drop off.”
Legates, a visiting fellow for the Science Advisory Committee in the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware. He co-wrote the book “Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism.”
Legates pointed to a graph showing that global hurricanes have remained within the same general range for the past 50 years, without a clear higher or lower power trend.
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