Bill Nye the 'Science Guy' calls out 'climate change denier' on CNN in wake of Louisiana flooding
'You can knock yourselves out, but this is a big problem. It's not going to go away.'
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Your support makes all the difference.Bill Nye the "Science Guy" has warned that the floods in Louisiana “will get worse” as the oceans rise and temperatures warm, and he condemned the network for denying climate change.
“Here at CNN you seem to have a climate change meteorologist,” he said.
“You can knock yourselves out, but this is a big problem. It’s not going to go away.”
Mr Nye, chief executive of the Planetary Society, did not mention any names but was likely referring to Chad Myers, who said in 2008 that it would be “arrogant” to think that humans could affect weather.
Mr Myers responded in an article that he fully accepted climate change in 2013.
In an interview with Chris Cuomo, Mr Nye said the flooding would “certainly” happen again and become larger in scale, even if individual floods were hard to predict.
“As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands. Molecules spread apart,” he explained.
"Then as the sea surface is warmer, more water evaporates," he said. "And so it’s very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects."
He warned that people would move home, and that others might loot the abandoned copper wiring. More investment in renewable energy, like wind and solar, would lessen reliance on oil, he said.
Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes due to flooding in Louisiana and 13 people have died as an estimated 6.9 trillion gallons of water fell between 8 and 14 August.
President Obama traveled to Baton Rouge this week to meet residents and see the damage the flood had wreaked.
“Sometimes once the flood waters pass, people’s attention spans pass,” he said.
“This is not a one off, this is not a photo op issue. This is, ‘How do you make sure a month from now, three months from now, six months from now, people are still getting the help that they need?’”
In an article on CNN, Mr Myers said he started to change his views on climate change in 2010 - the hottest year on record - and fully accepted the human impact on the environment in 2013.
“I was no longer a skeptic,” he wrote. ”Humans were polluting the atmosphere to a point of no return. I had finally excluded all other possibilities. Had I flip-flopped? Well, that is what it would be called in politics. But in science, it is just an evolution of understanding.“
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