Outgoing Republican Congressman Bob Turner lost his home on Breezy Point as a result of Hurricane Sandy, which brought unprecedented flooding to the area and sparked a devastating fire that consumed over 100 homes in the tightly-knit neighborhood. Turner was on Breezy Point at the time, having apparently ignored the city's evacuation order, and was lucky to escape with his life. But if you think experiencing such a catastrophe firsthand is going to make the Queens lawmaker reconsider his position on global warming, then you don't know Bobby "Too Hot To Handle" T.
In an infuriating interview with City & State, "Too Hot" talks about his harrowing experience that night, recalling how the fire and flooding created a dire situation for him where "there was really only one way out, which was down the walk past the fire. The tidal surge was such that it would have been impossible to swim against it or wade through it at that height. We walked, after a fashion—swam, walked, climbed." Then City & State's Jon Lentz brings up arguably the most urgent crisis facing civilization, noting that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo have both called attention to the effects of global warming in the wake of the hurricane. Turner responds:
You have two parts of global warming. On one, we have scientific measurements that there is global warming, and there is a both water temperatures and some average temperatures that are up maybe a degree in the past 20 years. Even the smallest of these—and it fits into historical and geological eras, and I am reasonably sure we’re going through a warm period; whether it’s temporary or long-term, I don’t know.
Part B is the anthropogenic, where this is the man-made hydrocarbons that are changing the environment—I don’t know. We’ve spent billions trying to prove that, and the best we’ve come up with is scientific opinion. Now, the reason we have science is we don’t need opinion, but we haven’t been able to demonstrate that yet. And the levels of hydrocarbons are so miniscule that it takes a leap to say this is the cause; so before we rechannel all of our industry and lifestyles, I think we’re going to have to continue to prove the case, and I think all of the abuse and fraud on the part of many people who are getting these grants is a little telling.
Yeah, so what if the National Academy of Sciences has definitively concluded that in "the 20th century, the atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases increased due to human activities." Let's not rush to change our "industry and lifestyles" because off those eggheads. Man-made global warming is just, like, their opinion, man.
