Florida Lawmakers’ Climate Denialism Is Pure, Unadulterated Lunacy

October 14, 2024

Climate change will only make future hurricane seasons worse. So why are Florida lawmakers pretending it’s okay?

Residents are rescued from a flooded apartment complex in Clearwater, Florida on October 10, 2024, after Hurricane Milton passed through.

(Brian R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

Hurricanes Helen and Milton were scarier than any Halloween movie you could watch this month. Scientists say both powerful storms were caused by climate change.

But to Florida lawmakers, climate change is as fictional as Freddy Kreuger. This spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis, along with the state legislature, passed legislation that removed most references to climate change from state law.

This disappearing act was sponsored by a dynamic duo Rep. Bobby Payne and Senator Jay Collinswhich I have come to think of as Penn & Teller of Tallahassee. By removing the words “climate change” and “greenhouse gas emissions,” their law made the whole issue a “phew!” It was like the time David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

There’s just one small problem: the Statue of Liberty trick was just an illusion. So it was with this one. Beyond our borders phallus-shaped Capitoliumclimate change, as recent hurricanes have painfully shown, is not going away.

“Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are at or near record levels this year, similar to last year,” said David Zirden, a Florida state climatologist. Zierden directs Florida State University’s Florida Climate Center, which monitors weather and climate data and studies climate change in the region. (I’m happy to report that our legislative morons haven’t yet removed his work as they’ve edited state law.)

The oceans absorb much of the heat from the steady warming of our globe. Hurricanes derive their power from the warmth of the water they pass over, and with the Gulf of Mexico currently at its hottest on record, recent storms have been able to rapidly intensify. How fast? This is the way The New York Times reports on Helen: “In less than a day, Helen went from a Category 1 hurricane Thursday morning to a Category 4 storm Thursday afternoon, making it the strongest ever to hit Florida’s Big Bend coast.”

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Milton followed the same book. In less than 10 hours, it went from barely a hurricane to a massive Category 5 killer. It was “everything you’d want when you’re expecting a storm to go completely crazy,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil told the Associated Press. Klotzbach.

The heat in the water also causes the atmosphere to hold more water, making it extremely humid. That’s how we end up with storms that dump a lot more rain like Helen did, Zirden explained. “That’s part of what happened in North Carolina,” he said.

Finally, Cirden said, sea level rise plays a role in worsening storm surge. “When everyone’s talking about a record storm surge,” he told me, “at least a foot of that is caused by sea level rise.”

Now put it all together: hot water for energy, moist air for heavy rain, and rising seas for strong storm surge. Can you now see that these storms were the creation of our altered climate, as surely as the terrible Creature that Dr. Frankenstein built?

Other scientists came to the same conclusion. in fact, one recently published scientific study found that between 1979 and 2020 there was a global increase in coastal intensification of all types of cyclones, driven by rising ocean heat. The study predicted that this phenomenon will continue to increase – not just in Florida, but everywhere.

All this should not come as a surprise. Sixty federal scientists predicted all this 10 years ago in the Third National Climate Assessment. And despite the strange exceptions of DeSantis and the Legislature, we see evidence of climate change here in Florida all the time. You can observe the alarming signs of our global warming altered gender balance of sea turtle hatchlingswhich is controlled by the temperature of the beach sand where they hatch. You can even discover it in the increasingly acidic seawater quality surrounding Florida.

You can see even more ways this is hurting Florida by checking out a new mapping tool called Florida’s Climate Future. The tool, created by the Environmental Defense Fund, looks at factors such as rising heat, more frequent flooding and rising electricity costs. “We built this because we wanted to make it clear to the people of Florida that we are already aware of the impact of climate on our state,” said Don Shirreffs, EDF’s Florida director.

I was particularly interested to see how climate change is affecting the home districts of our two political Houdinis. Putnam County, home of Representative Payne, who worked for many years at one of Florida’s few powerhouses the coal is still burninglast year there were 85 days when the heat index exceeded 100 degrees. Hillsborough County, Sen. Collins’ home district, had a whopping 107 days above 100 degrees. That’s four degrees hotter than neighboring Pinellas County, where DeSantis grew up and which, along with Hillsborough, was on Milton’s path.

DeSantis has been hesitant when it comes to the subject. As a local outlet Florida Politics It was once noted that its positions “shift like the Florida coastline during storm surges.” When he ran for governor for the first time, he told WLRN-FM“I’m not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me.”

But Dunedin Denialist was OK with handing out millions of dollars in deals to companies tasked with masking symptoms, such as installing pumps and pipes to help waterfront landowners deal with rising sea levels. Don’t touch the fossil fuel in charge though – he’s against it. How he said in 2021“We don’t do any left-wing stuff.”

Then, during his brief presidential campaign—emphasis on “pains”—he took a new line: After all, climate change is real, but the way to fix it is incineration more of what is changing our climate. In particular, he called for power plants rely more heavily on natural gas. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil, meaning it burns relatively less CO₂. But it is still a source of harmful substances for the atmosphere: its burning not only emits CO₂but its production releases a large amount of methane into the atmosphere. It’s like announcing that instead of driving off a cliff at 90 mph, you’re advocating driving off the same cliff at 60 mph.

But the “radical green zealots” who introduced the language into state law in the late 2000s were his fellow Republicans. They didn’t wear shirts with ties and sandals. They wore blue jackets, rep ties and loafers with tassels. These were not empty words either. In 2011, the legislature passed the bill call for the state to implement a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions from energy companies. (Unfortunately, the next governor, Tea Party favorite Rick Scott, stopped it.)

These people saw that rising sea levels and temperatures were becoming a serious threat to Florida. That’s why they’re making it their mission to reduce the use of fossil fuels and encourage clean alternatives like solar. But that thinking died with Trump’s rise to power in the Republican Party.

By the way, Florida’s public utilities are building an unprecedented number of solar power plants right now. Florida Power & Light, one of the state’s top utilities, for example, has the largest array of solar power plants in the country. It opened 78 solar centers in Florida to produce about 5,700 megawatts of energy for 31 of Florida’s 67 counties. We’re finally starting to live up to our Sunshine State nickname.

But don’t tell DeSantis. He doesn’t want to hear it.

During an Oct. 10 press conference, he argued that the association of warmer oceans with the strength of these hurricanes was just the flip side of the tricksters who think the federal government controls the weather. “Some people think the government can do it, and others think it’s all because of fossil fuels,” he complained. “The reality is what we see. All this has a precedent in history. It’s hurricane season. You will have tropical weather.’

With fossil fuel fools like DeSantis, is it any wonder we’re in such hot water?

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Craig Pittman

Craig Pittman is a native Floridian. In his 30s at St Tampa Bay Timeshe has won state and national awards for his environmental reporting. Author of six books, incl Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Affects the Rest of the Country.