Washington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today released the following statement after President Obama delivered a speech this morning before the U.N. climate change conference in Paris blaming climate change for recent flooding in Miami, Florida. The president stated, “You go down to Miami and when it’s flooding at high tide on a sunny day, the fish are swimming through the middle of the streets, there’s costs to that.”
Chairman Smith: “The president’s statement that Miami flooding is linked to climate change is entirely false and in fact disputed by meteorologists at the National Weather Service. The experts have reported that the lunar cycle and wind patterns are to blame for unusually high floods in Miami, not climate change. The fact is there is little evidence that climate change causes extreme weather events. The president is ignoring the facts and misleading the American people in order to advance his extreme climate change agenda.”
Witnesses testified before the Committee that there is little scientific evidence linking human-made climate change and extreme weather. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is “high agreement” among leading experts that long-term trends in weather disasters are not due to human-caused climate change.