Florida Governor Ron DeSantis mocked a reporter during a press conference on Thursday for suggesting that global warming was responsible for the recent series of extreme weather events that have hit the state.
DeSantis made the remarks after the state was hit with two hurricanes over the last couple of weeks and dozens of tornadoes.
“I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history,” DeSantis said, noting that the most recent hurricane that the state faced, Hurricane Milton, was not that powerful compared to the most powerful hurricanes the state has faced in its history.
The governor noted that Milton hit with a barometric pressure of approximately 950 millibars when it made landfall.
“If you go back to 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric, so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is,” he said. “I think there have been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than Milton did, and of those, 17 occurred I think prior to 1960.”
“The most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labor Day Hurricane, barometric pressure on that was 892 millibars,” he continued. “It totally wiped out the Keys. We’ve never seen anything like it, and that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida.”