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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nScott served two terms as governor of the Sunshine State before getting elected to the Senate in 2018 when DeSantis was first elected governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May, DeSantis signed a law that deleted mentions of climate change<\/a> from official state policy, ended a requirement for state agencies to purchase fuel-efficient vehicles, and repealed several grant programs that supported conservation efforts and renewable energy \u2014 posting<\/a> on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter that he was \u201crejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.\u201d In June 2023, he turned down $346 million in federal funding<\/a> that would have provided grants to lower and moderate-income Florida homeowners \u2014 only to then back down and reverse his decision<\/a> a year later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scott was on Inside Politics with Dana Bash on Friday to discuss the impact that Hurricane Helene had on Florida the night before. The storm made landfall on the state\u2019s Gulf Coast as a Category 4, bringing high winds and a dangerous storm surge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helene was \u201cthe strongest hurricane on record to strike Florida\u2019s Big Bend\u201d region, Bash noted, before asking Florida\u2019s junior senator about the rescue efforts underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was a massive storm,\u201d Scott replied, bringing \u201ca massive, massive amount of water\u201d that caused flooding from Naples all the way past Tallahassee to Apalachicola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some discussion of rescue efforts and the work to restore power that was just beginning, Bash asked Scott about the size of the hurricane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was 420 miles wide at one point, which appears to be part of a trend where storms are simply bigger than they once were \u2014 perhaps because of the changing climate,\u201d said Bash. \u201cWhat are your thoughts on that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re right. Irma was bigger than our state,\u201d replied Scott, referring to a 2017 Category 5 hurricane that caused at least $50 billion in damage and left about 73% of the state without power in its aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was gigantic,\u201d he continued, \u201cand do you know, the other thing that it seems like what\u2019s happening, is the storm surge is getting worse\u201d noting that areas like Taylor County had \u201cover ten foot of storm surge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He praised the \u201cunbelievable work\u201d of the National Hurricane Center for \u201ctrying to educate people, don\u2019t just think about the wind, think about the water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn Florida now, most of what you die from is water and not from wind,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo what\u2019s happening is, is the water coming in and just floods in, and then sucks everything out, including you if you stayed around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo you\u2019re right,\u201d said Scott. \u201cSomething is \u2014 who knows what the reason is, but something is changing, massive storms, massive storm surge. So we\u2019ve got to figure this out, but here\u2019s \u2014 here are the positives. We\u2019re going to do it. We\u2019re going to build more resiliently. We\u2019re going to come back. I live in the most wonderful state, with wonderful people that are very resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you say something\u2019s going on, isn\u2019t it pretty obvious that the climate is changing, and that is changing the size of these storms and making them as big as you just described?\u201d asked Bash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Scott agreed. \u201cSomething\u2019s changed and the climate is clearly changing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve got to do\u201d he continued, is likewhat he did as governor, when he \u201cspent a whole bunch of money on on resilient sea level rise issues and beach nourishment issues and tried to make our state more resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) did not hesitate to agree with CNN anchor Dana Bash when she asked him if climate change was causing hurricanes to become more severe \u2014 putting him at odds with… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"15","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":50256,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/desantis-png.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[9885],"class_list":["post-50255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-gop-sen-rick-scott-tells-cnn-climate-is-clearly-changing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50257,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50255\/revisions\/50257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}