Mo News Fact Check: Climate Change, Weather & Lessons From Hurricane Ian

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Hi everyone,

President Biden and the First Lady will travel to Florida today to survey the devastation left by Hurricane Ian. The death toll from the storm has surpassed 100, as the search for survivors continues.

In this edition, we spoke to meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, who was on the front lines as Ian hit Florida last week. What was it like to experience Ian's wrath? How accurate were the forecasts? How much have they improved in recent years and did authorities have enough info to make earlier calls on evacuations?

Cappucci tells us about his three lessons from Hurricane Ian for anyone living in the Gulf or on the East Coast.

And, we also dive into what the media gets wrong and right about climate change. What changes in our weather can we attribute to climate change, how is it impacting hurricanes, and what is weather just being, well, weather?

Key Quote: "The media, everyone really, wants a perfect yes or no answer these days. Was this hurricane climate change? Yes or no? The media really struggles with having nuanced conversations about science. And I think that alienates people. If you say, 'no, this was not climate change,' that's factually wrong. If you say 'yes, this was climate change,' that's also factually wrong. Climate change is so heavily politicized. I hate seeing climate be a tug of war..... it's a nuanced conversation, and nobody in media or politics these days, wants to talk with nuance. And it's frustrating."

We will get to the bottom of all of it.

☕️ But first, a few headlines this AM before our interview...

🍑 Things aren't so peachy for GA Senate Candidate Herschel Walker (R).

• With just 34 days until Election Day, the former NFL player turned GOP politician is facing bombshell accusations--including from his own son-- that could hurt Walker's efforts to defeat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) in an election for one of the most high-stakes senate seats. ~ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

• An ex-girlfriend of the candidate tells The Daily Beast that Walker, who is running on a pro-life platform (with no exceptions), of paying her to get an abortion in 2009.

• The woman, who asked not to be identified, says that Walker urged her to have an abortion after they conceived a child while dating. She said Walker reimbursed her for it, backing her claims with receipts from the clinic, a signed check, and a “get well” card from Walker.

• Walker is denying the story, calling it a “flat-out lie” and a desperate attempt by Democrats to salvage the critical senate seat. He says he sends lots of people cards and checks and claims he will sue the Daily Beast over what he calls "defamatory lie."

• But Walker’s son responded to his denial on Twitter… and things got even uglier.

• The Georgia Senate race is crucial, the outcome could determine the balance of power in the senate, which is now split 50-50.

🇺🇦 Ukraine's major breakthroughs force Russians into retreat

• Ukrainian troops are retaking more territory in regions illegally annexed by Russia, as Kyiv's forces advance near the key southern city of Kherson.

• Kherson serves as a gateway to Ukraine’s western Black Sea ports and Russian-held Crimea to its south. ~ Washington Post

• Ukraine’s gains are raising questions over Russia's ability to absorb the four occupied regions - Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhizhia - after "annexing" them last week, after an illegitimate election.

• The Pentagon’s International Affairs Chief said earlier this week that Russia’s new losses in Kherson would be considered a “major defeat” that could give Ukraine an advantage going into the winter. ~ Defense News

• Ukrainian troops also moved towards Russian-held Luhansk in the east.

🧐 Elon Musk will buy Twitter after all. We think?

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk has agreed to move forward with his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, nearly six months after making the initial bid - and then bailing. ~ Bloomberg

• Musk’s lawyers made the proposal to Twitter’s lawyers Monday night, and filed a letter confidentially with the Delaware Chancery Court.

• The potential deal comes just weeks before the two sides were set to go to trial on October 17.

• If the parties reach a deal, they can avert the trial and potentially finalize the deal within days. But there is still no guarantee they’ll agree, or that Musk will follow through with his offer this time around. In which case, the trial would move forward as planned.

• But if Musk’s offer goes through, he will be taking over a company that is weaker than it was when he tried to walk away from the agreement nearly three months ago. ~ The Wall Street Journal

Now, to my interview with Matthew Cappucci, an Atmospheric Scientist, Meteorologist, and - most notably - storm chaser. Oh, and did we mention he created his own major on weather science as an undergrad at Harvard?

Matthew's mission is to track down and pursue the most severe storms (tornados, hurricanes... you name it) to conduct research on things like wind speeds, landfall, and lightning. Essentially, he puts his life on the line to help make weather forecasts more accurate. It's where dedication meets the danger zone.

Matt gives us an inside look at what it was like chasing Hurricane Ian - one of the worst storms to slam Florida in a century. Plus, he does a deep dive on climate change: what's causing it, what the media gets wrong about it, how opposite weather events (floods, droughts, and fires) can all be spurred by it, and the impact of climate change on natural disasters… is there a correlation, or not?

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The full conversation about the film will be available later this week via the Mo News Podcast. Apple | Spotify | More Platforms

MOSH: It appears we will have a years-long rebuilding effort after Ian. And looking back at Hurricane Andrew, in some cases, it was more than a decade before certain areas got rebuilt and redeveloped.

MATTHEW CAPPUCCI: I completely agree. You know, I think with this sort of storm, the magnitude, I wouldn't be surprised if people use this as kind of a benchmark for time, either before Ian or after, again, because it really is kind of a big inflection point.

MOSH: I want to talk to you about your experience covering hurricane Ian. If you could take me through your experience during the storm - where you were, what your expectations were, and the aftermath.

CAPPUCCI: I tried to tell my family, who are anxiously watching me, that there's no routine way to go into a hurricane like this when you're going into a high end Category 3, Category 4. There's no 9 to 5. Like, you don't get to clock out. Once you're in it, you're in it. You're off the grid, you can't be contacted. It's rough. It's roughing it for a couple days, and you hope that you maintain your safety and you take steps to mitigate any risks. But the next morning, we woke up about 4:30, 5:00 in the morning to see that the storm had rapidly intensified overnight, instead of being high end Cat 2/Cat 3, was now a high end Cat 4 flirting with Category 5 status.

MOSH: This was Wednesday morning, just hours before landfall?

CAPPUCCI: Yeah. On Wednesday morning, we wake up and we see that everything on the models, everything - radar, satellite, data - just kind of give me a pit in my stomach. I saw there was lightning enveloping the eye, and when you get that enveloped eyewall lightning signature, that shows it's still intensifying. And the eye was clearing out, which is a sign of rapid intensification. A hurricane hunter plane had flown into the storm, and was slammed down 1200 feet by extreme turbulence.

So I knew this was one that you don't really take any chances with unless you really know what you're doing. So that morning, we relocated from Sarasota down to Venice. We wound up going into a parking garage that was a three tiered parking garage with cement. It was about a mile inland. I was feeling pretty good about that location in terms of escaping surge and the worst wind impact. The issue: it was out of the path of the eye. So with about three and a half hours to landfall and conditions really getting worse, we relocated again to the town of Englewood. We found a steel reinforced hotel. It looked pretty sturdy. We were about 10ish feet above sea level, but I knew we'd be kind of out of the surge zone at that point because we're in the northwest side where winds would be pulling water offshore. And we stayed there for about 3ish hours, and I said, no, we got to relocate again. [Cappucci would end up relocating again to Rotonda West and then once more to Punta Gorda as Ian was making landfall. A poll would fall on his tires, leading to 2 flat tires, but he made it through safely.]

MOSH: You talk about relocating, relocating, relocating. What was your goal, as a meteorologist, in terms of picking this perfect location?

CAPPUCCI: For me, the perfect location would be going through the first eyewall, then getting into the eye, then getting the backside. Because when you do that, you go from absolute hell on earth, to a weird oasis of calm inside the eye. And then you get the second edge of the eyewall. And so to me, I wanted to get to a perfect bisection of the storm. Because that would also give viewers a good idea of the storm structure, all the different phases of the storm.

MOSH: It gets me to the core question. I think a lot of people are curious about this. Why do you do this? Why do the reporters put themselves in danger here, when you head out into the middle of storm?

CAPPUCCI: That's a key point in the conversation where. We're doing the things we tell people not to do. And I don't like that. To be honest, it's such a tricky thing. On the one hand, we don't want to be bad role models for the people who we serve. And I feel like in many cases, we're sort of going about it the wrong way. But on the other hand, we know that if we have pictures, if we have video with people that folks trust, i.e. us, the on-air reporters, out in the storm, people will take it much more seriously. And not only this time, but next time too.

So it's such a tricky thing. I think there's also a level of trust – they’re with us for this, we're riding it out together. And I like that element of it. I think there's something distinct about there being someone in a perfectly ironed suit, or a perfectly pressed dress, in a studio somewhere, in a well-lit place, 1,000 miles away from the storm. I like having people in the storm. I think I need to be more safe about how I do it. We all need to be more safe about how we do it.

MOSH: There's been a lot of discussion about what Floridians should have known. What Florida authorities should have known, given the scope of the storm. And the way that it changed trajectory.

Meteorologically, as you looked at the storm and watched it make its way through the Caribbean, up through Cuba - how challenging was this to forecast?

CAPPUCCI: About 72 hours out, we still thought the storm track into the Big Bend of Florida as a Category 2 storm. Big Bend being way north of Tampa, between Tampa and north of Homosassa Springs, in a very rural part of Florida, where the peninsula kind of meets the Panhandle.

Then, it started trending a little farther south and east. But Tampa was always the focus. Fort Myers was kind of on the edge of the cone. And the cone represents about two thirds of the historical error from the National Hurricane Center at a given timeframe, meaning, about two thirds of the time, a hurricane would stay within the cone. It might wiggle a little outside in the left, little outside on the right, about a third of the time. But realistically, the cone does a good job showing historical error from the National Hurricane Center.

MOSH: So if you're in the cone, you have a 66% chance of being directly impacted by the hurricane?

CAPPUCCI: Not landfall directly. So let's say the cone spreads out however far, there's about a two thirds chance the hurricane will stay somewhere within that boundary, and like a one in three chance it'll wander outside that.

Fort Myers was on the very edge of the cone. Historically speaking, if you're in the edge of the cone, I don't want to say it's alright to let your guard down. But if I were there, I would not think that it was coming straight for me, I'd say okay, I'm on the edge, I'm almost in the clear. And that's public perception. The issue is that the cone stays the same size, no matter what. In times when we're less confident like this time. In my mind, it should be widened, and in times when we are more certain, it should be made more narrow. But that's not policy for the National Hurricane Center.

About 48 hours out, things started shifting a little farther south of Tampa. And then 24 hours out was really sort of that big ‘oh shoot’ moment. It didn't weaken at all after Cuba, it was actually strengthening at that point. And it was rapidly intensifying. It was trending further south. And with every model run, the models push it farther south and east, the National Hurricane Center pushes it further south and east, and it was set to make landfall near just north of Fort Myers. And that would put Fort Myers and Sanibel on the eastern side of the storm.

And, keep in mind, these things spin counterclockwise. So that would be the area with the onshore winds, even the morning of, we're expecting like an 8 to 12 foot storm surge, which got hoisted to a 15 to 18 foot storm surge before landfall. And so things escalated quickly. Should Sanibel and Lee County have evacuated? Probably. The issue is confidence versus impact. In other words, if I'm very confident in a minimal impact, that's one thing. If I'm not very confident in a potentially catastrophic impact, as what transpired, what do we do from there? Do we wait? Do we make a decision now and risk another false alarm?

I don't envy the emergency managers at all. They have the toughest job out of all this. We as meteorologists get to sit back and say, here's what we think will happen. But planning for this can be absolute hell. I think Lee County looked at the cone, saw that the cone had it going straight into Tampa and thought okay, 'we're on the fringe, it won't be as bad here.' And they were right--until 24 hours out at which point it was getting a little bit late to mobilize widespread efforts, because, keep in mind now, you can just say evacuate – but that doesn't just mean everyone's gonna get in their car and go away. You have elderly people who have mobility issues. You have the disabled. You have people who can't afford to evacuate. You have tons of procedures you have to implement, sometimes contraflow on the highways. It's a big thing that often takes 48 hours or more, and I think Lee County just realized they didn't have the time for that.

Do I support the decision making they made? Probably not. Could they have done things differently? Yes, hindsight is 2020. I think personal responsibility also plays a role in this too. If I'm on an island and I'm told to evacuate by the National Hurricane Center, regardless of what my local police department says, I'm getting out of there. Especially when I know that there's a good chance folks won't be able to reach me if there's an emergency. So it's a mixture of not great forecast, a challenge of what's personal responsibility and emergency managers making calls that may not have been the best options at the time.

MOSH: Where are we in terms of accuracy of forecasting? And how much of it has improved over the years, over the decades?

CAPPUCCI: We, in 2022, can issue a five day forecast better than we issued a three day forecast in 2004. So we're getting really good actually, all things considered. The average error, if you go about five days out, is 150 miles, which truth be told, I don't think it's that bad. I think that's pretty good. And this time, all things considered, the National Hurricane Center did a decent job with the track, the fact that they could pinpoint that it was going to hit the west coast of Florida, or the Big Bend, five to seven days out. We knew it was going to be a Florida issue. We just didn't know exactly who ground zero would be. So we're pretty good at track.

Intensity is something that we still are not as good at forecasting, because of subtle physical things like land interactions. Will it rapidly intensify after? Oftentimes, these storms are so capricious. They tend to want to do their own thing, evidenced by the fact that it was still intensifying as it came ashore, even though there were multiple ingredients to suggest it should have been trending downward a little bit. The National Hurricane Center, in this case, I thought did a damn good job given the information they had available at the time. That's the key though, what's available at the time.

MOSH: What's the lesson for anyone on the Gulf Coast or the eastern seaboard? What are the rules of thumb, especially as we try to learn the lessons of Ian?

CAPPUCCI: I think there are two or three different lessons.

Lesson Number 1: Expect the unexpected. I used to be a pretty conservative forecaster in how I would expect things to unfold. Nowadays, I almost always take the over, because it just seems like these things are rapidly intensifying much more than they did in the past. I try to almost plan for a little bit worse, because it seems like we oftentimes get surprised by things trending worse than they actually were.

Lesson Number 2: We get so caught up on where that centerline of the cone is, that we forget that impacts oftentimes extend way beyond the cone. The cone only represents where that eye may track. Now the worst surge is actually south of the center. So it's not necessarily where the eye is going ashore. The worst flooding can be well inland. In this case, we didn't really see much flooding at all near or south of the eye. We saw the worst freshwater flooding north of the eye, even hundreds of miles away in Northeast Florida, and we saw tornadoes far southeast of the center. So I think anytime someone is remotely near the cone, they need to expect impacts. They can't necessarily iron out five days out -- what impacts they'll get. But they need to know that surge, freshwater flooding, tornadoes, all are potentials with the storm, beyond just that risk of damaging winds in the middle of the hurricane.

Lesson Number 3: There is a level of personal responsibility, here. People these days hate making decisions on their own. I see this all the time. People ask me for weather forecasts, I'll give them the forecast. Then they'll say, I have a baby shower at three o'clock, should I move it indoors? Should I not? And I'm like, I've given you the information to make that decision on your own. I've given you my best guess. But I think people almost want to distance a bit from personal responsibility and personal decision making by having someone who they deem is more qualified to make those decisions. In the case of emergency management, you have people who are trained to use information to make decisions. That doesn't always mean they make the best decisions, just as we don't always make the best forecasts. So I think people need to know, if they don't feel safe, if their gut tells them to go, then go. If they live five feet, six feet above sea level, and they don't think that they're in a safe place, I don't care what officials say. Get out. You can do it. Sanibel Island. There's not a chance in hell I would ever be out on an island during the hurricane. These days it is about planning for the worst and really hoping for the best.

MOSH: Lets talk about the impact of climate on our weather. Explain the difference between weather and climate.

CAPPUCCI: Climate is your personality, weather is your mood. Climate is what we expect, and weather is what we get. So climate is based on 30 year historical norm. So 30 year average temperatures, 30 year average rainfall. So if you say, I'm coming to DC in October or November, what will the weather be like? I’ll say, I can't tell you what the specific forecast will be. But here's what we are like on average, here's what kind of clothing you should dress for.

Weather is obviously much more random. There's a lot of chaos, a lot of randomness that gets involved. Climate is kind of that that smoothed out chaos, the averages of chaotic conditions. Weather tends to be irregular. When it comes to hurricanes, we know that in any given year, we might see, say, five or six hurricanes somewhere across the Atlantic in about 13 or 14 named storms in general. Of that, one or two might become a major hurricane, so Category 3 plus. And the question always becomes, will they make landfall.

These days, hurricanes, it seems, are intensifying more quickly, are trending stronger and are trending wetter. And I think the media has really taken a focus on, can we tie this to climate change?

I saw some really bad climate journalism. During and after the storm. I saw one TV reporter standing in the storm saying, "There's a 15 foot storm surge coming ashore. This is what the climate scientists warned of." And that's very bad form for multiple reasons. I think it's bad form to attribute, binarily - so yes or no - a single event to climate change.

That said, we can look at data, we can look at historical observations, and discuss how hurricanes are changing overall, based on human influence. So we know that the air is a little bit warmer these days. For every degree Fahrenheit the air temperature warms, the air can hold about 4 percent more water. In hurricanes, that manifests in both heavier precipitation and a greater precipitation efficiency, meaning more of that rainfall can reach the ground. And that can lead to storms that are 10, 15, 20%, wetter. And, more rainfall. So we've seen that with Harvey, Florence, Ida, and a couple other big flooding events over the past five years. And it's something that is not going away anytime soon. Because there's more water vapor in the air, more juice for storms, combined with water temperatures getting a little warmer. We're raising the potential intensity, so to speak, that ceiling, of how strong a storm can get. And subsequently, we're seeing a tendency for more higher end storms Category 4’s, Category 5’s, to form.

We're also noting with the water temperatures, a greater uptick in the frequency of rapid intensification or a storm strengthening 35 miles per hour or more (wind speed) in 24 hours or less. These are all things that we have firm links with.

MOSH: So just to review here - the storms can dump more water, more rain, because the atmosphere is warmer and the water is warmer. That's one. Two is the rapid intensification, that they can go from zero to 60 quicker. And the third, you kind of talked about kind of increasing the speed limit, that on the stronger end, there's more potential for them to strengthen beyond the bounds that typically we're in. So those are the three areas that climate scientists have been able to link, to a certain extent, to where hurricanes are in 2022.

CAPPUCCI: Most definitely. What we don't have a link between, and actually there might even be a negative link, is the number of hurricanes per year. It's very consistent that globally, we should have about 90 tropical cyclones annually. Some years maybe 80, some years 100. But roughly 90 give or take, in all oceans. And we might actually see a decrease in the number of named storms overall over the years, which would be rather interesting.

The other thing is that overall storm size doesn't depend on climate change at all. We're not seeing wider storms. We're not seeing bigger footprints. And yet the media, everyone, wants a perfect yes or no answer these days. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Should I cancel my baby shower, yes or no? Was this hurricane climate change? Yes or no? The media really struggles with having nuanced conversations about science. And I think that alienates people. If you say no, this was not climate change, that's factually wrong. If you say yes, this was climate change, that's also factually wrong. Climate change is so heavily politicized. I hate seeing climate be a tug of war. This should not be a discussion even for news anchors or for politicians - this should be a discussion that scientists lead.

When I saw this one news anchor go on there and say, you know, a 15 foot storm surge, this is climate change, I want to say, No. Florida is the most hurricane prone state in the country. The end of September is the peak of hurricane season. And the peak of when we see homegrown, high-end hurricanes. A major hurricane will always cause a devastating storm surge somewhere, if it makes landfall. Especially if it makes landfall, arguably the most prone place for it to make landfall in this hemisphere. That was not climate change. That's weather doing weather things. This storm was made more likely by climate change. But, you know, a storm surge is always gonna accompany a major hurricane like that. That's how it works till the end of time.

MOSH: Climate change is certainly something the earth is undergoing right now. At the same time, Earth itself, our planet, goes through natural climate fluctuations.

For people who want to get smart on these things, what are the sources they can turn to? What are the things they can say or learn about when it comes to how humans are impacting climate on a planet where climate does fluctuate?

CAPPUCCI: In terms of what people can learn, I'd say the first thing they need to do is figure out how Earth has always changed. Learn about Milankovitch cycles and the shape, and the tilt of Earth. All these little variations in which way we face and orbit can have huge bearings on the climate. And we know there are these 60, 80, 100 thousand year Milankovitch cycles, that influence this.

Even with hurricanes, for example, we know there's like a 25 to 40 year cycles that make for more hurricanes or fewer hurricanes. We don't know much beyond that, because we only have like 100 years worth of good data, if that. So there's a ton that we don't know.

Learn how the climate exists outside of human influence first. Then, we can build up to, 'what are humans doing to nudge Earth in one direction?' What are the repercussions of that?

If we humans disappeared tomorrow, the Earth would be in what we call a state of homeostasis, or a temperate earth, that just exists as is. If we nudge in one direction, though, as we're doing right now, it approaches what we call the hothouse stable state. In other words, the polar ice caps start to melt. You have less white shiny stuff to reflect sunlight away. You have more water vapor in the air, both those things absorb heat even more, and we spiral into getting hotter and staying hotter. And then it's very tough to escape the hothouse Earth.

Same thing with every Ice Age. If you have a little bit more ice, a little bit more snow, that means more white to reflect sunlight away. That means a drier atmosphere. That means a cooler atmosphere.

So Earth has three stable states. We're in the middle right now. We're pushing towards hothouse and human influences are nudging that more quickly. So it's a nuanced conversation, and nobody in media or really in politics these days, wants to talk with nuance. And it's frustrating.

MOSH: Where else are people feeling the effects of climate change? What types of events am I experiencing in the East, in the in the West, across the country right now, that can be linked to climate change?

CAPPUCCI: Everywhere. And, people hate that answer. But it's true. Like consider the northeast, for example. We're seeing a 71% uptick in flooding events in the northeast - New England, New York City.

Now, let's talk about California. There, we are seeing drought that's getting only worse, and extreme fire behavior that's made worse by climate change. You know, 18 of the top 20 biggest fires on record in California have occurred, I think, the past like 15 or 20 years.

People ask all the time, how can two antithetical ideas - flooding and drought be related? And that's a huge source of climate denial, and there's a really simple explanation. As the Earth warms, as the atmosphere warms, the air can hold more water. Where there's water available, like in the Eastern U.S., you get heavier downpours, you get more rainfall, more cloud cover. Where water is not really available, like out in California, that warmer atmosphere just sucks more moisture out of the ground, it gets drier even more. And so you get more extreme fire behavior out there and more fuels to burn. And even though they're antithetical, two opposites, they are two sides of the same coin.

BTW, not everyone is a “loser” from climate change. Some people are net benefiting, like in the plains, we're seeing a little bit less tornado activity over what was conventional Tornado Alley back in the 80s and 90s. Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, slightly lesser tornado activity. The reason being, California's drought exacerbates high pressure out there, which causes the plains to heat up and dry out a little more than they used to. And so that average dry area is pushing like 200 miles further east than it used to. So the southeastern U.S. - Alabama, Mississippi - is now a place where tornado vulnerability is even higher.

MOSH: Well, the media struggles in nuance. We strive for simplicity. And it and unfortunately, I think that only reinforces the distrust people feel for the media, because we try to oversimplify politics, try to oversimplify the economy.

CAPPUCCI: News and media in general is trying to compete with Tik Tok and trying to compete with like, these short little vignettes where, you know, one's attention span doesn't have to be too long. And I think we're underestimating viewers. Viewers are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. I think if we elevated the intelligence of the conversations we have on TV, and if we elevated the type of stories that news reports in general and how they go about it, and added a little more depth and a little more nuance, it would serve this country well.

MOSH: We fall in this difficult situation. Where do you fall on whether to report that climate change equals the world is ending/Armageddon and that everything's gonna melt. The alternative is maybe underplaying it, but potentially at our own peril?

CAPPUCCI: I think you sort of exemplified what we've been facing for years, and COVID exemplified this as well. I think with COVID, you had some people who were like, let's just do business as usual, this is a myth. And other people are like, I'm not leaving my house ever again.

I think that was a microcosm for the issue that we're facing, and climate in general. Obviously, taking extreme approach to any issue is bad. In my mind, the conversation needs to stop being doom and gloom of climate change. We're treating it like global Armageddon.

The conversation needs to be less about doom and gloom and more about infrastructure, meaning conditions are evolving faster than our infrastructure is. 110 degrees isn't necessarily a bad thing on its own. In Phoenix, it's 100 degrees, 110 degrees, like every day in the summer, and Phoenix is alright because their infrastructure is built for it. If Maine or Seattle got to 110, you'd have thousands of people who die because they don't have the infrastructure for it. We saw that last year in Seattle, when they hit 108. Portland hit 109. It was a once in 1,000 year heat event up there.

Honestly, I don't care whether or not people believe that we're causing climate change. I'd like them to be right, and believe that we're influencing climate. But I don't really care. Because ultimately, people are so caught up in bickering about whether or not it's us or if it's the solar cycle. Who gives a damn.

MOSH: It’s happening regardless.

CAPPUCCI: It's happening. Fix the infrastructure. It frustrates me. People will build houses with stilts, or houses on the water three feet above sea level. And it's tragic every time their houses are impacted, but we're not building smart infrastructure. People will build new towns in California without evacuation routes for if there's a wildfire or we'll build new neighborhoods in busy cities that don't have adequate drainage for a 100-year or 1,000-year rain event. We're just not building smart.

It's fine to live on the coast in Florida -- if you build smart. When I was in Fort Myers after the hurricane, I met a lot of people who built really smart. Lee County has strengthened their building codes post-Hurricane Charley, and there are a lot of people who only lost their garage because their homes were up on pylons. That's what smart climate building might look like. And that's what the conversation needs to be. But it's so heavily politicized. I don't think we'll get there anytime soon.

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[Top Banner Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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