Michael Bastasch on September 19, 2018
MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell spoke with former Vice President Al Gore about global warming in the wake of Hurricane Florence as part of a wide-ranging interview that also touched on the upcoming election.
On global warming, Gore repeated to Mitchell the line he uses in nearly every speech: “Every night on the television news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.”
“Not only do we have this massive storm hitting the U.S., but simultaneously the Philippines is being slammed by another super typhoon, Mangkhut, Hawaii’s being hit by Tropical Storm Olivia, we just finished the largest fire in the history of California a month ago,” Gore said in the interview, which aired Tuesday.
Gore made no mention of consensus scientific assessments that find no evidence hurricanes are becoming more powerful or frequent. Florence also tracked over “abnormally cold” ocean water, according to temperature data. (RELATED: Let’s Debunk The Misleading Claims About Hurricane Florence And Global Warming)
One such assessment from 2017 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report found it’s “premature to conclude that human activities … have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”
President Donald Trump thanked first responders and law enforcement for their aiding of hurricane recovery efforts in the Carolinas and Virginia. Trump also expressed his sorrow for the lives lost in the storm.
“There’s been a loss of life and may god be with them and their families. That’s a tough one. It’s tough to understand, but this has been a really difficult period of time for a lot of people,” Trump said in a video address released Tuesday evening.
Florence’s death toll topped 32 people as flooding continues in the Carolinas. Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding.
Mitchell did not question any of Gore’s climate claims, and eventually the interview turned to the 2018 election. Gore admitted that Democrats did not do a good job in addressing the “deep concerns and anxieties” of middle income Americans.
“You’re quite right that the stagnation of middle income wages for more than 40 years has been largely responsible for this wave of populist authoritarianism that is now present, not only in the United States but in quite a few other countries around the world,” Gore told MSNBC’s Mitchell.
“I’m a member of the Democratic Party and I will say both parties have to respond much more effectively to the deep concerns and anxieties that Americans have been expressing and they have not gotten the kind of response that’s needed,” Gore said.
Gore said this failure resulted in Trump’s 2016 election victory. But also Gore said “this experiment with Trumpism is not going well,” adding he believed there Trump voters who wanted to restore “checks and balances” by electing Democrats this November.
“You know, in science and medicine some experiments are terminated early for ethical reasons,” Gore said.
“So these elections this November may turn out to be the beginning of a course correction,” Gore said.
