DeSantis Schools Reporter Trying to Tie Tornadoes to Climate Change

Reporter: “It’s the future of global warming.”
DeSantis: “Tornadoes?”
Reporter: “Yeah, there’s an increase in tornadoes —“ [crosstalk]
DeSantis: “I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history for sure. And especially, you know, Florida — you know, how does this storm rate in kind of the history of storms? I think it hit with a barometric pressure of, what was it, about 950 millibars when it — when it hit?”
UNKNWON MALE: “Yes, sir.”
DeSantis: “Which, I think if you go back to 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower — the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is. I think there have been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than Milton did. And of those, 17 occurred, I think, prior to 1960. And the most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labor Day Hurricane. Barometric pressure on that was 892 millibars. It totally wiped out the Keys. We’ve never seen anything like it. And that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida. The most deadly hurricane we’ve ever had was in 1928, the Okeechobee Hurricane, killed over 4,000 people. Fortunately, we aren’t going to have anything close to that on this hurricane. But even ones like Ian where you had — you know, wasn’t even close to that. So, you know, I just think people should put this in perspective. They’re — they try to — to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something, there’s nothing new under the Sun. You know, this is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history, and it’s something that we’ll continue to be — to deal with. I think what’s changed is we’ve got 23 million people. A storm that hits is likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago. And so the potential for — for that damage has grown. But what’s also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets. I mean, we never did the pre-staging of power assets until I became governor. Now people, like, expect that, but that wasn’t what was done in the past. That’s why people would be out with power for three weeks when we’d have hurricanes. We thought that that’s not good. Now we have to pay to get these guys to come in, but my view is the quicker you get everyone hooked up, the better off the economy is going to be anyway. So Why Don’t We just do that? Having the different search and rescue, having a state guard, all these different things are just bringing different tools to the fight, and it allows us to respond more effectively. So if we had the tools that we had in 1928 to fight an Ian, or to fight some of these, you would have had higher death tolls. There’s no question about that.”