JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, touring the damage Thursday following Hurricane Milton’s destructive path through the state, dismissed claims that climate change is increasing the intensity or frequency of hurricanes making landfall.
He also slapped down outlier theories that the storms are somehow engineered by humans.
“I just think people should put this in perspective,” the Republican said while addressing reporters in Fort Pierce. “They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” he said. “This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history. It’s something it will continue to deal with.”
Florida is coping with its second major hurricane in two weeks. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 storm, causing major damage to the state’s Big Bend region before causing catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee.
Milton made landfall in the Tampa area late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. The surge and wind damage were less severe than predicted.
Mr. DeSantis said Milton was hardly the most intense hurricane to strike the state and dozens of past storms in Florida have made landfall with lower barometric pressure, an indication of higher intensity.
The most powerful on record in the state occurred in the 1930s in the Florida Keys.
“It totally wiped out the keys. We’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida.”
The deadliest hurricane in the state occurred in 1928 near Okeechobee, killing more than 4,000 people, he said.
Mr. DeSantis credited better preparation and warnings about modern storms for preventing massive casualties, but said storm impacts have increased as the state’s population ballooned to 23 million people.
“A storm that hits is likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago, and so the potential for that damage has grown,” he said.
Mr. DeSantis was asked about claims by some, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, that the government is engineering the hurricanes and steering them to hurt specific populations.
Mr. DeSantis joked about having the power to ensure Florida’s weather remained 78 and sunny and equated the theory of engineered hurricanes to those insisting human behavior is influencing the intensity and frequency of storms.
“You kind of have some people who think government can do this, and others think it’s all because of fossil fuels,” Mr. DeSantis said. “The reality is what we see. There’s precedent for all this in history. It is hurricane season, you are going to have tropical weather.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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