As Louisiana tries to dry out and start rebuilding after last week’s catastrophic flooding, Bill Nye has an ominous message: It’s going to happen again.
“This is a result of climate change,” Nye told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” Tuesday. “It’s only going to get worse.”
The unprecedented floods damaged more than 60,000 homes and killed 13 people. But because the flooding was caused by smaller individual storms, it didn’t attract the attention and response that larger storms — such as hurricanes Sandy, Katrina or Rita — garnered.
Nye said due to the effects of climate change, the region will be hit again by these smaller storms and suffer more catastrophic floods.
“As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands,” he explained. “And then as the sea surface is warmer, more water evaporates. And so it’s very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects.”
Lost lives and damaged homes won’t be the only tragic effects, either. The storms will be just as devastating in the long-term.
“What will probably happen is people will move,” Nye said.
If enough people leave, the population loss would be a huge detriment to Louisiana’s economy. It took more than five years for the state’s population to return to the level it was before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
