House Majority Leader Steve Scalise appeared on Fox Business last week, and made clear that he still, even now, is unmoved by climate change evidence.
“We had hot summers 150 years ago, when we didn’t have the combustion engine,” the Louisiana Republican declared. “But they don’t want to talk honestly about science; they just want to control your life.”
The idea that some nefarious “they” are determined to “control” Americans’ lives is deeply odd, and offered fresh evidence that GOP lawmakers might benefit from actually having a conversation or two with those who accept reality. Honestly, why would those who understand global warming want to “control your life”? To what end? Who thinks this way?
But the rest of the Republican leader’s quote was just as notable. To hear Scalise tell it, to “talk honestly about science” would mean acknowledging that hot summers are routine. But if the congressman is sincere about his interest in an “honest” dialog, there’s plenty of evidence Scalise really ought to consider. As USA Today reported:
Summers are always hot. But this summer is different in some profound ways. Record-breaking temperatures are hitting multiple cities. Phoenix recorded an unprecedented nineteen consecutive days over 110 degrees. Death Valley reached 128 on Sunday. Records are falling everywhere. It’s not your imagination: This is not a typical summer.
And while there are a variety of factors contributing to recent temperatures, the article explained that human-caused climate change is clearly a major factor.
Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, told the newspaper that natural variability still exists, “but we’re starting to see the long-term, human-caused warming signal overwhelming that volatility. At this point, there aren’t any unprecedentedly extreme heat events on Earth that haven’t been exacerbated by climate change.”
I know enough about contemporary American politics to know that no amount of evidence would persuade Scalise, but if he could get over his conspiracy theory about unidentified rascals who want to “control” Americans’ lives for some unstated reason, the GOP leader might realize that an “honest” conversation about science would lead to some facts he prefers not to acknowledge. The New York Times reported last week:
Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware. A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This week, they are happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather, prompting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, to call it “our new normal.”
The same report pointed to research that deadly flooding in Pakistan in 2022, a heat dome over the Pacific Northwest in 2021, and Hurricane Maria in 2017 “were all made worse by climate change.”
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Times, “Climate change is here, now. It’s not far away in the Antarctic and it’s not off in the future. It’s these climate change fueled extreme weather events that we are all living through.” Even if Scalise is inclined to shrug his shoulders in response to all of this, shouldn’t he at least care about fiscal responsibility? From the Times’ report: Weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion in damage are on the upswing in the United States, according to a Climate Central analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1980, the average time between billion-dollar disasters was 82 days. From 2018-22, the average time between these most extreme events, even controlled for inflation, was just 18 days.
“Climate change is pushing these events to new levels,” Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central, added. “We don’t get breaks in between them to recover like we used to.” If the House majority leader wants to “talk honestly about science,” then let’s talk honestly about science.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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