Overnight a string of dangerous thunderstorms slamming the Northeast,
[SOUND] washing away cars and collapsing roads.
>> That's insane.
>> 27 million people now under flood alerts across the Northeast,
from eastern New York to New Hampshire.
One person has died and millions are under flash flood warnings as
severe rainfall continues to douse the Northeast.
Now, there's more detail on what transpired over the weekend, but
there is a broader point to make about these severe weather conditions.
We'll get to that in a moment but first this.
Torrential downpours leaving drivers stranded, like this apocalyptic scene in
Orange County, New York, which is now under a state of emergency.
>> Be advised, main street traffic circle's completely underwater.
I've got a car going down the river.
>> Rain totals they are reaching nearly eight inches,
creating hazardous sinkholes in the road.
Drivers dealing with swamped roads throughout the region.
In Pennsylvania, nearly 10 inches of water left to vehicles submerged.
>> But I just left my car and swim away.
>> While parts of Connecticut were hammered by about five inches of rain in
just over an hour.
So the nearly 10 inches of rain that fell just
yesterday in New York's Hudson Valley is actually the amount that usually
falls throughout the entire three months of summer.
So it gives you a sense of just how severe the storms were.
And the area near West Point Military Academy has been hit particularly hard.
CNN reports that rainfall in West Point, New York,
totaled more than 7.5 inches in 6 hours Sunday afternoon, according to
preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That's a 1-in-1000 year rainfall event for the area.
A once-in-a millennium rainfall event is one that is so intense,
that chances of it happening in any given year is just 0.1%.
And people were tragically trapped by floodwaters at the academy at
West Point and had to swim out of their cars to get to safety.
And that's an image showing you exactly what I'm talking about here.
And there has been at least one fatality in Orange County,
which is 60 miles north of New York City.
NBC News reports that the woman who died on Sunday after she was swept
in fast-moving floodwaters in Highland Falls, New York,
has been identified as a 43 year old named Pamela Nugent.
She was fleeing her home with her fiance and
pet when she got swept into the ravine, the governor said earlier on Monday.
So I wanna talk a little bit about the climate implications here and
more importantly, what people are already dealing with,
not just with the destruction of these extreme weather events, but
the lack of insurance companies that are willing to provide coverage for
these extreme natural disasters.
I'll give you more on that in just a moment.
But Cenk, what are your thoughts?
>> So there's one way of thinking about this that gives you a sense of
how intense these storms are.
One inch of rain is about 12 inches of snow.
So if it was, like you just heard,
in one area they had five inches of snow in one hour of rain.
That would be five feet of snow in one hour.
Just think about that for a second.
And over the last day or so, some areas have had 10 to 20
inches of rain, 10 feet of snow, 12ft of snow.
It's unimaginable, right?
The 1000 year storm is based on the percentages they say,
based on what we've seen in the past, 0.5% as Ana told you, right?
So they're not making it out of nowhere.
It's not something that's just hyperbolic.
It's based on, hey, what the patterns that we have seen before.
Except now the patterns are out of whack because the planet's burning up.
So it's not happening once every 1000 years.
It's happening pretty much every other year.
Now, on top of all that, you add in El Nino, which has just arrived.
Boy.
Okay, look, guys, we're gonna tell you about the temperatures in a second,
June breaking all records, right?
But I'm gonna give you some quotes from scientists now when they
see these latest numbers that just came in, quote,
extraordinary, terrifying, uncharted territory.
We've never seen anything like this in our life.
This will just carry on getting worse, and worse, and more, and more extreme.
We don't have a backup planet.
>> Yeah.
>> We're burning this one up.
I mean, wait till you get to the ocean temperatures,
which we'll get to in a second.
>> Right. >> No, guys,
this is not like the other issues.
>> And look- >> We're burning the whole
goddamn thing to the ground.
>> So one trend that is concerning for people across
the country is that as these extreme weather events happen,
as droughts end up taking a longer period of time,
all of that is leading to insurance companies changing their models,
refusing to offer coverage in various states.
So a good example is in California, right,
where droughts have been happening more often.
And when the droughts occur, they last for a longer period of time.
And so with the dry conditions, that increases the likelihood and
the occurrences of wildfires.
Those wildfires, of course, destroy entire neighborhoods, destroy homes.
And so insurance companies,
farmers insurance is a good example in Southern California.
They've decided, you know what, we're gonna stop offering coverage to people
living in parts of Southern California that have a higher risk for
these wildfires.
And again, the wildfires are exacerbated by the incredibly dry,
historically dry conditions, right?
In Florida, the occurrence of hurricanes, the likelihood of hurricanes,
the frequency, I should say, of hurricanes, and
how much more extreme they've gotten, has now led to insurance companies
refusing to provide coverage for that in the state of Florida.
And so the state has had to get involved to offer coverage on behalf of
those insurance companies.
And that has become far too expensive for the state and people living in Florida
have noticed that their premiums have gone up significantly as a result.
I'm giving you those examples to say that it's not just the scientists, okay?
The insurance companies are looking at what's happening and they're like, listen,
this is not gonna help us with our business model.
This is not gonna help us with our profits.
It's becoming more and more expensive to provide coverage to these individuals
because of the frequency of these extreme weather events.
And so they're just pulling out and
they're refusing to provide coverage altogether in some instances.
>> Yeah, look, you can tell based on the money if it's real or not real.
>> Right. >> Because a lot of the right wing,
they'll believe anything Fox News tells them, right?
So they still think like, I bet it's no big deal having it,
was this probably in 87?
No, it wasn't.
Almost every year we break a new record, and
now one of the scientists said something that really sent a chill down my spine.
They said it used to be linear.
Now we're worried that it's not going to be linear anymore.
So linear means you're going up steadily, and that's not a good thing.
But if it's not linear, it's exponential, which means you don't go up steady.
You go like this.
If we hit that, we're all toast.
This is just like the movie, don't look up.
The meteor is about to hit us, and we're not doing anything about it.
So the insurance companies are like, all right, well,
now we won't back you guys anymore.
Meanwhile, the oil companies are still pouring out tons and
tons of oil and gas and all that stuff.
And Biden go, hey, I helped a little bit in the Inflation Reduction Act,
but then I took it away by giving you more pipelines,
the Mountain Valley Pipeline and drilling in Alaska, et cetera.
You're not getting it.
>> Right.
>> We can't have a tiny little gradual response to this.
Now, the numbers went from alarming to hell on fire, planet on fire.
>> And I mean, look, I've covered this recently, but the transition away
from nuclear energy, and look, the concerns about nuclear energy, I get it.
I totally get it.
But as more of these nuclear power plants get decommissioned,
they don't transition to renewable energy they transition to coal, which is like
one of the dirtiest forms of energy, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, right?
And so, look, I really think that given the lack of development on wind and solar,
like it's not where we needed to be, to be fully reliant on that.
We do need to continue relying on nuclear energy
if we want clean energy sources to mitigate the impact of climate change.
So that goes exactly to my point.
So, guys, I've had people who are in favor of nuclear energy on the show as guests.
I've had people who are against nuclear energy, and
it's hard to tell who's got the science right et cetera.
They both are super fervent in their beliefs, right?
And by the way, it doesn't fall neatly into left and right.
>> Right. >> But since it's an absolute planet wide
emergency, what I would do if I was president and I was leading, leading, I
would bring everyone in and go, okay, how do you propose to handle this emergency?
And I would put everything on the table.
So maybe in good times or times that weren't as alarming,
maybe we don't consider nuclear.
Now I'm willing to consider anything and
everything because we got to get the carbon out of the air.
We got to get it out.
If we hit a tipping point, it's not magic.
You can't turn it back.
The Arctic ice caps are almost gone.
Here, I'll give you more facts.
One of the scientists said this is probably the worst going back to at
least 100,000 years on Earth.
And for knuckleheads who are like, yeah, but so what?
The Earth was still around back then.
No, but a lot of animals living on the Earth,
including potentially humans were not.
[INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] >> We
wanna be able to live on this planet.
Look, the planet's gonna be here.
>> Yeah, it will- >> Regardless of what we do to it, right?
The question is, will we be able to live?
Will human beings be able to live and survive on this planet,
given what we're doing to it?
And just to give you some more stats and some more numbers.
So, for instance, last week, the planet's average daily temperature soared to highs
unseen in modern records kept by two climate agencies in the United States and
Europe.
While the records are based on data that only goes back to the mid-20th century,
they are almost certainly the warmest the planet has seen over a much longer
time period, probably going back at least 100,000 years, according
to Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Average worldwide temperature on Thursday reached 17.23 degrees Celsius or 63
degrees Fahrenheit, with records already broken or tied three times this week.
The previous record for average daily temperature was in mid-August of 2016.
So it's not about one day or
one week where you notice that things are getting real hot.
No, it's looking at the long term trends and noticing that
consistently there is a trend upward in regard to the climate warming.
>> Yeah, so let me give you two more stats here, guys.
I hope you can keep up with this math.
I don't think it's that complicated.
Normally, if you have a record, like we had in June, planet wide,
for hottest June ever in recorded history, it'll be gradual, linear.
Like, it'll be 0.01 or 0.02 difference in beating the former record, right?
This time it was 0.5.
So we beat it by about 50 X.
Scientists have never seen anything like that.
Now we need to beat the goddamn panic button.
I'll give you one last one, and by the way, credit to the mainstream media here,
beginning to cover it with the urgency that it requires.
They're beginning to show you the actual facts and stats the scientists have.
So I'll give, quote, CNN in this case.
Ocean heat has been off the charts,
with surface temperatures last month reaching record levels for June.
Parts of the North Atlantic have seen, quote,
unprecedented marine heat wave with temperatures up to five degrees Celsius,
nine degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than usual.
Nine degrees hotter than usual for the ocean.
>> Disaster.
>> This, guys, this is an unbelievable disaster.
And El Ninos are regular.
They're regular occurrences.
Every couple of years they come around and they make the temperature hotter.
But given climate change, it's now a double whammy, and
it's intensifying it so much.
Again, we're very worried about tipping points.
And last thing is when a scientist was asked about, okay, now El Nino combining
with climate change, and their last words were, I'd say, buckle up.
And so that's the state of the planet as we stand now, and
I don't see anywhere near that urgency for politicians in America.