If you’re wondering if the epic flooding in Louisiana is related to climate change, CNN has your answer.
Bill Nye the Science Guy was on CNN’s New Day Tuesday to talk about the flooding in Louisiana, where at least 13 people have been killed and 60,000 homes damaged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNI3EmMqa94
“For us, on my side of this, this is a result of climate change,” Nye told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands,” he continued. “Molecules spread apart and then as the sea surface is warmer more water evaporates. And so it’s very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects.”
In addition to discussing impacts of climate change, Nye shared what he believes is a solution to the problem of a warming planet.
“The big unexploited renewable resource on the East Coast of the United States, and Canada and Mexico, is wind,” Nye said. “So, I encourage you, I am not a member of this, but I encourage everybody to check out The Solutions Project, a bunch of civil engineers who have done an analysis that you could power the United States, you could power most of the world, renewably if you just decided to do it, right now. There’s enough wind and solar resources, a little bit of tidal and some geothermal, to run the whole place.”
Nye did not just leave the conversation about climate change and renewables, he also called out CNN for having “essentially a climate change denier meteorologist.”
Nye didn’t mention any names, but, according to Huffington Post, he appeared to be referring to CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, who has a track record of making comments on climate change that run counter to established science.
“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said in 2008.
However, on Twitter, Myers said that he has since come around:
not me. Moved to climate change in 2009.
— chad myers (@chadmyerscnn) August 23, 2016
He followed up that tweet with this one:
Ok you got me. Must have been after that. A scientist can be swayed by data and I was.
— chad myers (@chadmyerscnn) August 23, 2016