Before the Flood Page #3

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City wide.

And of course we're paying

for it by our city revenues.

I had to raise tax revenue,

which you can imagine is not

a very popular thing to

do as a politician.

And this construction

is it going to make

- a major difference.

- Major difference.

And buy you a

significant amount of time.

Absolutely I would

think about 40, 50 years.

That's it?

Yes.

Now one of the things I always

say when people ask me this,

Mayor what about after 50

years, what's going to happen?

Well what we have to do

is come up with solutions,

and unfortunately we have a

governor and we have a cabinet

that doesn't believe that

this is a major issue.

Officials in Florida

were banned from using the words

climate change.

This policy began in 2011 after

Rick Scott came into office.

No one really wants

to talk about climate change,

especially our senator

from Florida, Marco Rubio,

who doesn't believe that

we have climate change

and is not interested in

assisting our state.

I would hope that he would have

gone out and grabbed us federal

funds over the last three years

to help make our cities viable.

I do not believe that

human activity is causing

these dramatic changes to our

climate the way these scientists

are portraying it.

Why do you think there

is such opposition about

the science?

I think it's politics,

I think it so has to do with

lobbying and industry and I

always say one thing, Leo,

I said uh, the ocean

is not Republican

and it's not Democrat,

all it knows how to do is rise.

Satellite data show,

for the last seventeen years,

there has been no significant

recorded warming.

It's supposed

to be 70 degrees today,

it's freezing here!

Speaking of global warming where

is, we need some global warming!

It's freezing.

There's about

as robust a consensus

about human-caused climate

change as there is

for any matter in science.

Be it the theory of gravity.

97 percent of climate scientists

agree, the globe is warming,

our climate is changing, it's

due to fossil fuel burning

and other human activities.

Unfortunately we are fighting

this massive disinformation

campaign to confuse the public.

You look at the

satellite data we actually

have had no significant warming

since 1998 actually no warming.

We have been cooling

in recent years.

If you actually believe

that global warming

is the biggest problem we face,

you're the dumbest son

of a b*tch on the planet.

So yeah, maybe you

could just talk a little bit

about your background, the

studies that you've done.

I was the classic

science and math geek

in high school.

Studied physics in graduate

school and a decade and half ago

my co-authors and I started

to look into climate change

in the more distant past.

We published a curve where

there's this long-term cooling

trend and then all of

a sudden this abrupt warming

that has no precedent

as far back as you can go and

it got named the hockey stick

because it looks like the

blade of a hockey stick.

And once we had published

that graph I had set myself up

for a completely different life.

And why is that?

What did they do

specifically to?

I was vilified

on the editorial pages

of the Wall Street

Journal, on Fox News.

That I was a fraud.

Other German

Scientists have called it

statistical rubbish.

He's been called a

statistical charlatan.

I was being

attacked by congressmen.

They threw

spaghetti up on the wall

and wherever it stuck is

what they put in the chart.

I had death threats

that were actionable enough that

the FBI at one point had to come

to my office to investigate

an envelope that had been sent

to me that had a white powder.

I've had threats made

against my family.

These folks know they don't have

to win the legitimate scientific

debate.

They just need to

divide the public,

and all of that hatred and fear

is in fact organized and funded

by a few players.

Fossil fuel interests, folks

like the Koch brothers finance

a very large echo chamber of

climate change denialism.

The reality is a

lot of climatologists believe

that the science is not settled.

Global warming is

illusory were actually going

through a period

of global cooling.

It's easier to

believe in a benevolent god

the baby Jesus than it is in

some kind of theory about

global warming.

Websites and news

outlets and think tanks.

They find people with fairly

impressive credentials

who are willing to sell

those credentials

to fossil fuel interests.

Dr. Fred Singer,

President of the science

and environmental

policy project.

The weather balloons

around the world show no warming

of the atmosphere in

the last 25 years.

You have all of

these organizations with lofty

sounding names like Americans

for Prosperity

or The Heartland Institute.

These are front groups that are

funded by corporate interests.

Americans for Prosperity

is really a front group

for the Koch brothers.

That's an organization

founded by David and Charles

Koch and good

morning to you Tim.

- Good to be here, Bill.

- Welcome here,

what are you going

to get for your money?

We hope to see policies change.

Koch Industries is one

of the largest privately held

fossil fuel interests

in the world.

And they are doing everything

they can to protect that wealth.

Would you give up

all that industrialization,

would you give up all the

productivity that it's brought

us, all the lives that it has

saved over the last 100 years,

so that the temperature

wouldn't rise half a percent

or a milli percent?

They've lobbied Congress.

We keep hearing 2014 has

been the warmest year on record,

oh here Mr. President

catch this. Mhmm.

James Inhofe is

probably the most prominent

congressional climate

change denier.

Global warming is the

greatest hoax ever perpetrated

on the American people.

He's the chair of the

Senate Environment Committee.

There are some people

who are so arrogant to think

that they are so powerful that

they can change a climate.

Man can't change climate.

It might not be

surprising to learn that

James Inhofe is one of

the largest recipients

of fossil fuel money

in the U.S. Senate.

Fossil Fuel interests

have bought our House

of Representatives and Senate

Environment Committee.

We can't get a climate bill

passed through our Congress

because it's controlled

by fossil fuel funded

climate change deniers who

are blocking any bills

that would attempt

to deal with this problem.

How they're able to

discredit scientists who have

devoted their life to this issue

is kind of mind boggling to me.

It sometimes makes

me want to take a drink right.

I'm sure.

If I was a scientist

I would be absolutely pissed

every single day of my life.

These people are, you know,

engaged in an effort to

lead us astray in the name

of short term, you know, fossil

fuel profits so that we end up

leaving behind a

degraded planet.

What could be more

immoral than that?

Even now, man may be

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