Bill Nye’s fight against climate change persists, and he’s come out swinging in the face of the catastrophic Louisiana floods that have left the state reeling. Indeed, the most recent Baton Rouge Area Chamber analysis reflects that the estimated damage to homes within nine parishes will cost $20.7 billion. Up to 110,000 homes in the Baton Rouge area may have sustained damage or destruction, and 22 schools in the area are too flooded to even think about opening next week. Those numbers don’t include the thousands of businesses that cannot currently operate, which will place people’s livelihoods in jeopardy.
While visiting with CNN’s New Day to discuss the destruction, Nye’s message was that people had better get used to this chaos because this will happen again. He also thinks the intensity of these recurrences will grow worse. The culprit, he claims, is global warming, which shouldn’t be surprising for Nye observers. For many years, he’s poked fun at his own obsession with climate change and previously explained Texas flooding by adding an odd cigarette analogy to the mix. But with these Louisiana floods, Nye explains the matter in a straight-up way:
“For us, on my side of this — this is a result of climate change. It’s only going to get worse … It almost certainly will get worse. Everybody — as the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands. Water gets — the molecules spread apart and then as the sea surface gets warmer, more water evaporates. And so it is very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects. So what will probably happen is people will move.”
Nye then said other problems (beyond the physical damage of flooding itself) would occur, including increased unemployment due to damaged businesses being unable to reopen. And he believes “all that copper wiring and plumbing” in abandoned houses could eventually be salvaged, but more likely looted, which he claims “will lead to all sorts of criminal activity.” Nye’s eye on the far-reaching consequences of natural disasters is to be expected. He also believes climate change (in the form of water shortages) is responsible for terrorism, or at least the variety that sources in Syria.
The bowtie-loving scientist then took a shot at a disbeliever on staff: “And you know, here at CNN you have, essentially, a climate-change denier meteorologist. Knock yourselves out, but this is a big problem and it’s not going to go away.” Mediaite points out that Nye is probably talking about Chad Myers, who once called climate change a hoax. Well, Nye is not impressed. His remark doesn’t quite qualify as shade, but it comes close.