During his brief visit to Florida to survey the damage of Hurricane Idalia, President Joe Biden indirectly blamed the devastation in the state’s Big Bend region on climate change.
Biden, who actually spent the day in Live Oak, some 65 miles from where Idalia made landfall, told reporters on Saturday, “Nobody can deny the impact of [the] climate crisis. There’s no real intelligence to deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore.”
“Just look around the nation and the world for that matter. Historic floods, intense drought, extreme heat, deadly wildfires … that cause serious damage like you’ve never seen before.”
In the news :Florida Gov. DeSantis Highlights Private Sector Contributions To Hurricane Idalia Recovery
But as was shown someone can deny such an impact.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday questioned whether climate change was the culprit.
“There was a storm that went on this almost exact track in 1896. It had 125 mph winds just like this one,” DeSantis replied to a reporter who asked about Biden’s comment, according to a clip posted Sunday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, by the account DeSantis War Room.
DeSantis also pointed out that Labor Day weekend is the anniversary of the most powerful storm to ravage the Sunshine State. It hit in 1935 and packed sustained winds of 185 mph.
“The notion that somehow hurricanes are something new, that’s just false,” DeSantis continued. “We’ve got to stop politicizing the weather, and we’ve got to stop politicizing natural disasters. … Sometimes people need to take a breath and get a little bit of perspective.”
“The notion that somehow if we just adopt very left-wing policies at the federal level, that somehow we will not have hurricanes, that is a lie,” DeSantis added.
The governor also said it was simply wrong for climate activists to push their agenda on the backs of people who are suffering.
In the news: Biden’s Post-Idalia Visit To Florida Exposes Two Weaknesses GOP Could Exploit In ’24
DeSantis may have given conservatives an avenue for resisting the climate activists.
For example, last month Hurricane Hilary, a Category 4 storm, ripped through California.
As the Los Angeles Times noted, Hilary was the first hurricane to pummel California in 84 years.
In response, conservative commentator Matt Walsh noted that while Hilary was rare, that 1939 storm was actually a precedent.
Meanwhile, California made news with a different weather event earlier this year.
While Biden and others were lamenting climate change causing “extreme heat,” during May and June, Los Angeles went at least 59 days without recording temperatures above 80 degrees, the longest such streak in the city’s history.
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