TASK DEFINITION: Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: Now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is questioning the role played by nominee Nancy Beck in the decision to shelve the guidelines. Beck is not a medical doctor and has no background in virology. President Donald Trump has nominated Beck to be chairwoman and commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a position that requires Senate confirmation. Beck is scheduled to appear before the Senate committee later this month. Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Beck was the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s main point of contact in the White House about the proposed recommendations. At issue was a 63-page guide created by the CDC that would give community leaders step-by-step instructions for reopening schools, day care centers, restaurants and other facilities. Beck is currently on detail for the White House with the Office of Management and Budget, where she is coordinating review of pandemic-related stimulus measures, and of the CDC guidance. She has a doctorate in environmental health and has worked as a toxicologist, specializing in the study of the health risks from chemical substances to the human body. “I am deeply concerned by the nominee’s involvement in advocating for the deregulation of toxic chemicals known as PFAS and I also have questions about her potential involvement with the CDC coronavirus guidance,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the committee, in a statement to AP. Cantwell sent a letter of inquiry on Wednesday to Beck, asking for more information. Beck did not immediately respond to questions from AP sent to her via email. Beck’s role in the coronavirus guidance document was revealed in a series of emails from late April obtained by the AP. On April 10, CDC Director Robert Redfield emailed the guidance to a group that included some of the president’s closest White House advisers, including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and counselor Kellyanne Conway, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert. Redfield wrote that he wanted White House review and clearance to post the documents on the CDC website. By the time the administration had released its “Opening Up America Again” plan on April 17, the process had stalled. The emails show that the CDC’s chief of staff, Robert “Kyle” McGowan, emailed Beck on April 26 seeking an update. “We need them as soon as possible so that we can get them posted,” McGowan wrote. Beck responded that they still needed approval. “WH principals are in touch with the task force so the task force should be aware of status.” The next day McGowan checked with Beck again. “I have no word on revisions yet for the rest of the package. My understanding is it is still being reviewed,” she responded. One of Beck’s colleagues, Satya P. Thallam, followed up saying the White House Principal’s Committee had not yet responded. “However, I am passing along their message: they have given strict and explicit direction that these documents are not yet cleared and cannot go out as of right now — this includes related press statements or other communications that may preview content or timing of guidances.” McGowan responded that White House changes would cause further delay. “The comments and edits we get back will have to be reviewed at the CDC for scientific accuracy,” McGowan responded to Thallam and Beck. “We will not be able to post the document we get back from the WH quickly if there are a substantial number of edits.” On April 30, one day before Trump’s May 1 reopening goal, McGowan was told guidelines will “never see the light of day,” according to three sources inside CDC who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. In her letter, Cantwell said the emails raise “serious questions about whether you believe in preserving and respecting the scientific and professional integrity of scientists and health professionals that work at agencies like the CDC and the CPSC.” On Thursday, another committee Democrat cited AP’s story in calling on the administration to withdraw Beck’s nomination. “Nancy Beck reportedly led efforts to thwart CDC’s science-based guidance for protecting public health — exactly the wrong credential for a nominee to lead the CPSC, and clear reason her nomination should be withdrawn,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.  An OMB spokesperson said the initial submission to the office was the “start of the deliberative process, not the end, and everyone knows that,” and added the White House appreciated that Beck continued “serving her country by helping the government respond to this pandemic while her nomination was pending.” Before joining the Trump administration, Beck was a senior director for policy at the American Chemistry Council, the primary lobbying arm for U.S. chemical manufacturers. In that role, she frequently testified on Capitol Hill against stricter safeguards to protect human health and the environment from toxins. In 2017, she joined the Environmental Protection Agency as a top official in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. She oversaw efforts to block or weaken Obama-era regulations on harmful substances including asbestos, and at the White House was involved in a rewrite of limits on PFAS. Those are class of chemicals used in making nonstick cooking pans and raincoats, and the chemicals have been linked to birth defects. Democrats and environmentalists have opposed her nomination to lead the consumer agency. While she awaits Senate confirmation, Beck has been assigned to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which consults with the president on matters of economic policy. On May 7, the day AP ran a story about the administration shelving the guidance, McGowan emailed Beck and copied Redfield. “When can we expect OMB comments on the rest of the guidance? We would really like to get these moving,” he wrote. Late that afternoon, the White House called the CDC and told the agency to resend a series of detailed “decision trees” that had been shelved. Emails showed staff working on the guidance said they would “stand down.” At a Senate hearing Tuesday on the coronavirus, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., asked Redfield about the status of that guidance. Redfield replied: “Soon.” ___ Dearen reported from Gainesville, Florida. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP investigative reporters Jason Dearen at http://twitter.com/JHDearen and Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck Claim: Emails: Trump nominee involved in shelving CDC virus guide.

SOLUTION: A former chemical industry executive nominated to be the nation’s top consumer safety watchdog was involved in sidelining detailed guidelines to help communities reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, internal government emails show.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The Miami-based hurricane center issued a tropical storm warning for islands including hurricane-hit Abacos and Grand Bahama, saying the system could become a tropical depression or storm before making landfall as early as Friday. Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas on Sept. 1 as a Category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record to hit land, packing top sustained winds of 185 miles per hour (298 km per hour). The tropical cyclone was not expected to bring anywhere near that level of devastation, but was capable of winds of 30 miles per hour and 2 to 4 inches of rain through Sunday, according to the hurricane center. Aid groups rushed shelter material to residents living in the shells of former homes or whose homes had been stripped of their roofs. “We’re seeing plastic tarps go out all over the islands, and that’s extremely important because now you’ve got another tropical storm coming,” said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs for U.S. relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. The prime minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis, on Wednesday said the official death toll was 50 but was expected to rise. Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said he believed “hundreds” were dead on Abaco “and significant numbers on Grand Bahama,” the Nassau Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. Minnis said there were problems coordinating aid due to the level of devastation and he was trying to remove “bureaucratic roadblocks.”  With 1,300 people still missing, according to the Bahamian government, relief services are focused on search and rescue as well as providing life-sustaining food, water and shelter. Officials have erected large tents in Nassau to house those made homeless by Dorian and plan to erect tent cities on Abaco capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people. A flood of aid has caused bottlenecks at docks and airports, creating “a lot of delays” in relief supplies, said Nat Abu-Bonsrah of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, the global humanitarian organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Due to a shortage of functioning vehicles and facilities on Grand Bahama, the group turned to church members to lend their cars and kitchens for its program providing hot meals to over 400 people a day in Freeport. “We’ve not been able to reach them as much as we want,” he said of efforts to get hundreds of hygiene kits to survivors. Groups like Samaritan’s Purse, with their own aircraft or logistics chains, said they had not encountered issues with coordination or government red tape. “I think we’re accomplishing our mission, any roadblocks we have right now are our own,” said Dennis Clancey, a field operations manager for relief group Team Rubicon, which has deployed mobile medical units to treat patients. Claim: Tropical storm warning issued for Bahamas; 1,300 still missing.

SOLUTION: A tropical cyclone was forecast to move across the northwestern Bahamas in the coming days, potentially bringing more rain and wind to islands already devastated by Hurricane Dorian, the U.S. National Hurricane Center warned on Thursday.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Scientists are quick to note that local protection of reefs can help damaged coral recover from the stress of rising ocean temperatures. But the new research shows that such efforts are ultimately futile when it comes to stopping bleaching in the first place. “We don’t have any tools to climate-proof corals,” said Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Australia and lead author of the study being published on Thursday in the journal Nature. “That’s a bit sobering. We can’t stop bleaching locally. We actually have to do something about climate change.” Across the world, scores of brilliantly colored coral reefs once teeming with life have in recent years become desolate, white graveyards. Their deaths due to coral bleaching have grown more frequent as ocean temperatures rise, mainly due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The hot water stresses corals, forcing them to expel the colorful algae living inside them, which leaves the corals vulnerable to disease and death. Given enough time, bleached coral can recover if the water cools, but if the temperature stays too high for too long, the coral will die. Preserving coral reefs is crucial, given that human depend on them for everything from food to medical research to protection from damaging coastal storms. Scientists and policymakers have thus been scrambling to find ways to prevent bleaching. Last year, for example, Hawaiian officials proposed several measures they hoped would fight bleaching on the state’s reefs, such as limiting fishing, establishing new marine protected areas and controlling polluted runoff from land. The question was whether such efforts could provide the corals any resistance to bleaching, or just help them recover. The researchers conducted aerial and underwater surveys of the Great Barrier Reef, which has experienced three major bleaching events, the worst of which occurred last year. The scientists found that the severity of bleaching was tightly linked to how warm the water was. In the north, which experienced the hottest temperatures, hundreds of individual reefs suffered severe bleaching in 2016, regardless of whether the water quality was good or bad, or whether fishing had been banned. That means even the most pristine parts of the reef are just as prone to heat stress as those that are less protected. Prior exposure to bleaching also did not appear to provide any protective benefit to the coral. The scientists found that the reefs that were highly bleached during the first two events, in 1998 and 2002, did not experience less severe bleaching last year. Ultimately, the study concluded, saving reefs from the ravages of bleaching requires urgent action to reduce global warming. “I think it’s a wake-up call,” Hughes said. “We’ve been hoping that local interventions with water quality and fishing would improve the resistance of the corals to bleaching. We found no evidence that that’s actually true, at least during a very severe event.” The study shows that older ways of thinking about reef management, such as reducing river runoff, are now moot points when it comes to preventing bleaching, said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist and coral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “It all seems so quaint now, really,” said Cobb, who wasn’t part of the study. “A future that we thought was decades coming is basically here.” The research also illustrated the gravity of the situation facing the 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) Great Barrier Reef. The team found 91 percent of the reef has been bleached at least once during the three bleaching events. Even more alarming, Hughes said, is that a fourth bleaching event is already underway. Corals need years to recover from bleaching, so back-to-back events increase the possibility that the bleached coral will die. The study shows that very intense coral bleaching events are no longer isolated and are happening more regularly, said coral reef scientist Julia Baum of Canada’s University of Victoria. That assertion has been further bolstered by the Great Barrier Reef’s latest bleaching event, which began a few weeks ago and which Baum says has stunned scientists. “None of us were expecting the water to be heating up again right now,” Baum said. “I think it’s beyond what any of us could have imagined. It’s our worst nightmare.” Claim: Study: Stopping global warming only way to save coral reefs.

SOLUTION:
Reducing pollution and curbing overfishing won’t prevent the severe bleaching that is killing coral at catastrophic rates, according to a study of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. In the end, researchers say, the only way to save the world’s coral from heat-induced bleaching is with a war on global warming.