During a press conference on Thursday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ridiculed a reporter who suggested that global warming was to blame for the recent extreme weather events in the state. His comments followed a period in which Florida experienced two hurricanes and numerous tornadoes.
“I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history,” DeSantis said, noting that the most recent hurricane that the state faced, Hurricane Milton, was not that powerful compared to the most powerful hurricanes the state has faced in its history.
The governor pointed out that Milton made landfall with a barometric pressure of around 950 millibars.
“If you go back to 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric, so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is,” he said. “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.”
“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,” he continued. “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.”
He highlighted that the deadliest hurricane in the state’s history was the Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, which claimed over 4,000 lives.
“So I just think people should put this in perspective there,” he said. “They try 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 will continue 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 that damage has grown, but what’s also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets,” he added. “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 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.”
WATCH: Ron DeSantis absolutely nukes a reporter who tried to tie yesterday's tornadoes from Hurricane #Milton to global warming pic.twitter.com/Pj0nENTilZ
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 10, 2024
