- 17 hours ago
Chris Hayes and Michael Grimm consider climate change in the wake of Superstorm Sandy; M. Sanjayan interviews top climate scientists.
主持人 Chris Hayes 追踪斯塔滕岛议员 Michael Grimm 在桑迪飓风后一年对气候变化的看法；保护主义者 M. Sanjayan 走访全球（含圣诞岛）采访顶尖气候科学家，解读揭示地球气候变迁关键数据...
主持人 Chris Hayes 追踪斯塔滕岛议员 Michael Grimm 在桑迪飓风后一年对气候变化的看法；保护主义者 M. Sanjayan 走访全球（含圣诞岛）采访顶尖气候科学家，解读揭示地球气候变迁关键数据...
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I
00:31there is a wake-up call here and there is a lesson to be learned there's a reality that
00:36has existed for a long time that we have been blind to and that is climate change extreme
00:44weather call it what you will and our vulnerability to it it is undeniable today
00:52for years scientists have been saying that a warming planet rising seas would bring more
00:57extreme storms is superstorm sandy proof of what they've been predicting we don't have radio
01:03communication how many people answer that question seems to have more to do with politics than science
01:09it's true sandy was a freak storm a bad luck confluence of a number of low probability events
01:14that could conceivably have happened in some alternate climate that wasn't warming but this
01:19climate our climate is warming and as it does low probability events like this will become more
01:24probable and more intense i work at msnbc cable news channel whose core audience is made up of
01:33liberals and i see all the time how deep the divide is between the left and right when it comes
01:39to
01:40climate change even here in new york across the river from manhattan where i work is staten island
01:46it's new york's most conservative borough and the hardest hit by sandy the storm killed 23 people here
01:54more than anywhere else in the city let's see if the the best western in bay ridge has already
02:00signed up to accept fema if they haven't let's get that done i got someone going to home depot now
02:06to get as much stuff as we can staten island's congressman republican michael grimm is a former
02:11marine who served in the gulf war but he says this devastation is unlike anything he's ever seen
02:17we will help you absolutely that's that's what that's what we do this is what we do grim is also
02:24a skeptic when it comes to climate change and every time we have a flood it's worse and worse
02:29last year we had a flood three feet of water this time well we've 11 feet of water and then
02:34what's
02:35going to happen next time 20 feet of water but is it possible this storm could change his mind
02:51i'm a biologist by training i've spent my life studying the natural world but lately i've had to
02:58start focusing more on human nature rather than mother nature that's because people are having an
03:06unprecedented impact on the planet and everyone wants to ask me about it from evening news anchors
03:13cbs news science and environmental contributor m sanjan is here to tell us more about the mega fire
03:19phenomenon to late night talk show hosts we have been living on a changing planet for a long long time
03:25this change is going to happen fast after superstorm sandy lots of people are wondering if human
03:31activity is making the weather more extreme and i'm on my way to meet a scientist who studies just that
03:42her laboratory is an island in the middle of nowhere more specifically it's in the middle of the pacific
03:49ocean near the equator where some of the planet's most extreme weather is born every few years an unusual
03:58band of warm water spreads across this part of the ocean and disrupts weather patterns around the world
04:05the phenomenon is called el nino and it's linked to severe droughts flooding storms
04:14and fire the death toll is still rising tonight from the latest bi-coastal double shot of el nino driven
04:21storms in the worst el ninos ocean temperatures can rise a startling 14 degrees above average
04:28and partly because warm water expands sea level can increase by as much as a foot el ninos are natural
04:37the question is could man-made climate change be making them more severe
04:55it is five o'clock and the timing of landfall of the storm could be just an hour away we've
05:01already
05:01been feeling the effects of hurricane sandy for hours now and the tide is up above the pier
05:07which is scaring the shit out of it
05:13if you want to get off the island uh you're not going to take the ferries this has been shut
05:18down
05:22on the night of hurricane sandy patricia dresh her husband george and their 13-year-old
05:27daughter angela decided to stay inside and ride out the storm then the wind started picking up that
05:32afternoon and trees started falling this one tree from across the street just like peeled like up
05:37banana and my neighbors took a picture of george that afternoon in front of the street angela was
05:44with one of my neighbors and they were on the beach and she was taking pictures and that was it
05:48and then
05:49we had dinner after dinner i looked out my front door and i saw the big waves coming then i
05:55went in my
05:55dining room and the floor was starting to lift up what went through your mind when you saw that
06:00that we had to go up when we got upstairs we went in the closet and we had to get
06:05out of the closet
06:05because the water was coming through the wall and it's on the second floor yes so there was water high
06:10enough and it was coming through the wall george said oh the house next door is gone that's what
06:27water around us you can't get out the door if they have a young kid would have a 13 year
06:30old with them
06:31also what's your sister name patricia dresh we went to the bathroom and then when we went into the
06:38bathroom i held on to the faucet what is angela saying at that point what's what george said she said
06:45mommy hold me i'm scared and i did i held her and i had her in front of me and
06:50then a wave started
06:51coming up over me i felt the water rising and then all of a sudden my stall shower came apart
06:58and then the whole wall broke loose and we went out into the yard when i got thrown out of
07:04the wall
07:06something slid off the roof hit us in the head and we went under and i knew i lost her
07:11immediately
07:12because i knew she couldn't get up again it was just too deep for her i went down way down
07:23deep and
07:24as i was getting unconscious floating down i said i'm not gonna die like this i can't die like this
07:29they're not gonna find me like this i got myself back up and i grabbed the phone cables that's how
07:35high
07:44up it was i still can't believe she's gone and he's gone i don't know it's very hard life was
07:55cut
07:55too short i'll never see her get married i'll never see her grow up
08:03i don't want to go see her in a grave she doesn't deserve he doesn't deserve to be
08:07i don't want to see them in a grave
08:20see where that storm surge basically pushed right across the beach right through these
08:24neighborhoods and has basically inundated these streets we'll count them off one two three
08:29four five six seven eight nine ten again close to 12 blocks inland so again that's a pretty far
08:37distance here in the u.s superstorm sandy left over a hundred people dead most of them drowned in the
08:46record storm surge here on staten island some people face down a wall of water 16 feet high
08:55after the storm patras spent a week in the hospital now that she's out she has to bury her husband
09:02george
09:02and daughter angela and daughter angela the loss is felt by the whole community
09:10so
09:32this was the perfect storm high tide full moon everything came together and converged
09:37in a way that and it happened you know i heard story after story and i said to people why
09:43didn't
09:43you leave they said congressman everything was fine it was a little windy a little rain all of a sudden
09:48out of nowhere i see water coming down the block like a movie i grabbed my kids and ran
09:54as if godzilla was coming that type of thing like all of a sudden there's the monster when did you
09:59first
10:00hear about pat trash and her her family later that day um i don't choke up easily my eyes were
10:09welled up
10:09because all she kept saying to me begging me find my husband because at that point
10:16they had recovered her daughter's body but not her husband's i don't think ever trained to see
10:22your friends and neighbors in total despair hopelessness and it just hit me harder one of
10:30the things that was interesting the governor said this was a wake-up call about climate specifically
10:35when after this happened and i'm curious just what your reaction is to that the climate overall has
10:40changed but let's leave out the part of whether it's man-made or not because i don't think
10:45the science is there to tell us what's causing it i think mother earth evolves and patterns change
10:51every so many hundred years a thousand years and we're in part of a process of changing but i don't
10:56want to get into the political debate of what's causing it at first grim's answer doesn't surprise me
11:02i'm used to politicians especially republicans dodging questions about climate change but the more i
11:08think about it the more ridiculous it seems super storm sandy just destroyed part of his district
11:14doesn't michael grimm want to get to the bottom of what caused it
11:38christmas island is one of the most beautiful places i've ever been to
11:43but there's something else that's brought me here besides the beaches this remote place may hold
11:49the key to one of the world's most dangerous climate phenomenon el nino i've traveled thousands of miles
11:57to come here to meet a renowned climate scientist who's studying it georgia tech professor dr kim
12:04cobb good to see you thanks for having us it's a whole science village here well yeah we're turning
12:14into that yeah we have gear scattered around the entire place so um to be honest i didn't expect
12:22literally fat truth hunts kim tells me she started out studying medicine but the more she learned about
12:29climate change the more convinced she was that what was happening to our planet is a bigger threat than any
12:35disease and for the past 17 years she's been studying how climate change is affecting el nino
12:42el nino is a natural climate phenomenon it's it's born in the tropical pacific it's born where we're
12:49sitting right now and it's a change in water temperature that's very dramatic and it lasts for
12:55about six months or so and what that does is it reorganizes the entire global atmospheric circulation
13:02sure during that time period and so droughts in some places in some places mud slides and others
13:09when el nino happens the largest signal happens along the equator because an ocean circulation that
13:15typically brings cooler waters to the equator as a function of these winds we're feeling right now the
13:21trade winds shuts down completely during el nino events and so the ocean which is normally bringing
13:28up this cool water along the equator that stops and this place gets extremely warm
13:41to figure out if human activity is making el nino worse now kim first had to figure out how bad
13:48they used to be she needed a window into this island's past something that would allow her to look at
13:54climate here going back thousands of years she began her search underwater in the coral reefs
14:02the corals they grow very fast and very reliably and as they grow they are recording environmental
14:10information into their skeleton and they create this wonderful year by year by year
14:16her archives so you're using coral as a thermometer into the past that's correct
14:32kim takes me below the surface to show me how it works
14:36coral adds layers each year in much the same way a tree adds rings
15:00a month after sandy there's still a long way to go before staten island is back on its feet
15:10no single event has ever consumed more of congressman michael grimm's time we're going to break up into
15:15two groups one of the uh groups has two locations uh with two elderly women that but for this help
15:22they probably wouldn't know what they're going to do the fact that it's a month later and they still
15:27haven't cleaned out speaks volumes in and of itself i see it in their eyes that a lot of people
15:33are losing
15:33hope a lot of people are thinking that they're not going to get through this and they're starting to feel
15:38the
15:38people forgetting about them that they're not forgotten okay your hands are freezing yeah it's
15:42it's cold it's cold a little while okay and it's going to be years and i know that and it's
15:48hard and
15:49uh so we just want to make sure they understand they're not alone they're not forgotten
15:54his office is overwhelmed with calls from storm victims if you want i can help walk you through the
16:00process my staff has been unbelievable i mean they've been on the phone register a lot of my staff
16:06live in these neighborhoods are you still living on bard what needs to be done here it's the scope of
16:12that is tremendous in fact sandy is turning out to be one of the most destructive storms in history
16:19and it's leading to a big battle in congress over how much to spend on the recovery i think grim
16:24is
16:24teaming up with republicans and democrats from the affected states to get billions of dollars in aid for
16:29sandy victims like pat trash we're not that much different republican democrat jersey new york
16:34when your people are hurting we all want to do the best we can for our community
16:38and ultimately for our country pat's home was completely washed away by the storm
16:45for now she's staying in temporary housing provided by her church
16:53i'm not used to this being by myself
16:59things like it was yesterday i still have nightmares
17:04there's not a day that goes by that i don't relive that last half hour with my family
17:11our last dinner together
17:15i relive that whole experience with the water coming up over us in the house how we got pushed out
17:21of the
17:21the wall when i lost her
17:29my husband was always there for angela
17:33and now he's gone
17:36it's very hard
17:40she touched so many lives
17:48if angela dresh had survived this is the high school she would have attended
17:53so all of you guys were here during sandy right
17:57it was very scary my house was shaking we stayed upstairs on the second floor
18:02the whole night i lived in great kills and the harbor was completely destroyed there were boats
18:07in houses and it was just it was absolutely insane
18:10actually with all the talk about climate change following the storm these students have some
18:15questions two climate scientists dr radley horton and dr heidi cullen both columbia university phds
18:22offer to help just by show of hands how many of you guys believe that global warming is actually
18:28real the temperatures are increasing so unanimous agreement the temperatures are rising how many of
18:35you think that it's our fault okay so we got some questions
18:40gabriella right where do you kind of think it's not us i know that we contribute because
18:46we have been burning fossil fuels but i don't think that we're doing it enough so that we're causing
18:53climate change like the earth i feel like naturally does it then the earth has to go
18:57through its cycles i still i don't believe it yeah well natalie what do you what do you tell
19:03gabriella when she says that she doesn't believe she's crazy
19:07well because i don't know i feel like since the industrial revolution fossil fuels have been
19:13using at an extreme rate like cars heat i think humans definitely play a major role in well you
19:20know and it's fascinating because there were scientists who kind of made this connection that
19:24carbon dioxide was this thermostat right you crank up carbon dioxide you crank up temperature you crank down
19:30carbon dioxide you crank down the temperature and i think for me as a scientist what really pushed
19:37me over the edge was when i began to understand you can actually chemically fingerprint the co2 in the
19:43atmosphere to different sources multiple lines of evidence do allow us to track it back to fossil fuel
19:51burning and one out of every four carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere today was put there by
19:59us but i don't think that us we are contributing to it so much that it we're causing sandy and
20:05i don't i
20:06don't believe that right right so i'm kind of agreeing with gabriella on that point but i don't
20:11know i feel like human impact maybe played a role in that but also the the high tide with the
20:16moon
20:17definitely made the severity of the storm much worse that's a great thing to talk about what aspects can
20:22we attribute to human activity um and and what can't we there are all these different elements that had
20:28to come together to make this terrible storm surge but one of them was an extra foot of sea level
20:33that
20:33had had over the last century largely as a result of climate change what seems like a little bit one
20:38foot can actually have a huge impact on how frequently we get extreme events it's like if
20:45you think of a basketball analogy it's the equivalent of like raising the floor of a basketball court by one
20:50foot without changing the height of the rims at all you're just going to get that many more slam
20:55dunks in the form of coastal flooding and it did make sandy worse right i mean there were some areas
20:59where that extra foot absolutely made a difference a detailed analysis by the research organization
21:07climate central shows how global warming made more homes vulnerable to a storm like sandy
21:13without sea level rise flooding from sandy would have reached about eight feet above high tide
21:18when you factor in that extra foot of sea level most of which is due to climate change the differences
21:24seem small at first a block here a few houses there but over miles of densely populated coast
21:31it adds up in new york city alone climate change put the homes of some 75 000 additional people
21:40in the path of the storm surge and it's only going to get worse scientists say that by the end
21:45of the
21:45century some parts of the coast could see sandy level storm surges every single year
22:03we're about to use this 100 pound drill to collect coral samples
22:09kim started studying these reefs 17 years ago to test a theory that by analyzing this coral she
22:16could measure the severity of past el ninos and find out if they're getting worse but just moving around
22:24down here is a challenge let alone trying to operate the kind of equipment that really belongs
22:30on a construction site so that's what we're going to drill into this is our first candidate
22:37at first everything seems to be going wrong hoses are getting caught ropes become tangled
22:49then the drill breaks down and kim has to make repairs on the spot
22:54you guys can you check the water outside and see that it's not sucking air we're getting air out of
23:00the drill doctor but despite all the hurdles she's getting the job done okay let's turn the drill on
23:17when the drilling starts the water suddenly clouded with what looks like mucus
23:23kim says it's actually living coral tissue so after we're done drilling kim will carefully plug up the
23:30holes left behind so the coral can grow back so this door is pretty amazing you can see all the
23:38banding of
23:38the score counting back year by year looks like 15 or so years it's a time machine actually it's more
23:47like a time capsule
23:50one that can only be opened through careful analysis back in kim's lab at georgia tech
23:56each layer of coral contains a wealth of information about one year of climate kim is most interested in
24:04temperature because high ocean temperatures are a signature of el nino at christmas island
24:11it turns out that coral is an incredibly accurate thermometer the temperature data stored in the
24:17coral lines up with known temperature records almost exactly but kim says if we're lucky we might be able
24:26to see something without all that fancy equipment put it here all right look at that it's pretty good stash
24:36pretty good haul this is the first core we drilled right and um this is probably about
24:4550 i would say 50 years is a reasonable guess so this right here yeah is where the coral essentially
24:52stopped growing right there that it created this this massive disturbance in this core where you can
24:59see a clear what we call discontinuity and this was the 1997 1998 el nino event when this place got
25:07really really too hot for corals for about six months kim tells me it was the worst el nino on
25:16record
25:16and it's eerie to see it frozen in time el nino is being blamed for heavy rains of biblical proportions
25:24in northern california thousands of people were evacuated from their homes wild winter with nearly 90
25:30deaths so far heavy winds caused this helicopter crash in tennessee that killed three people
25:36it spread destruction around the world flooding in kenya mudslides in ecuado and peru droughts and
25:44fires in indonesia the people who live in these little shanty towns have lost everything in the
25:51end it cost an estimated 33 billion dollars in damage the death and damage the rubble mud and flood
25:58are still mounting and killed more than 20 000 people it hit central florida and killed at least 26 people
26:06400 people have been killed 2 000 deaths have been blamed on the flooding rescue workers were still
26:12finding bodies today and here's the million dollar question is an event like this entirely natural
26:20or are el nino's getting worse because of our impact on the climate
26:26to find out kim needed much older coral the sample she drilled underwater only go back 40 or 50 years
26:35and she needed to go back thousands of years problems seemed insurmountable but after more than a decade
26:42of searching kim finally found a solution we all know that human activities are changing the atmosphere in
26:52unexpected and in unprecedented ways this is george hw bush speaking to a global gathering of climate
27:00scientists in 1990 today it seems unimaginable that a republican president would sound the alarm on global
27:07warming the stakes here are very high but he was just continuing a long tradition of republican
27:13environmentalism it was richard nixon who created the epa and signed the clean air and clean water acts
27:20preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge
27:24it's common sense even ronald reagan took action to protect the ozone layer in the early 2000s john
27:32mccain fought for a cap and trade bill designed to curb co2 emissions the first national legislation of its
27:38context mr president that's the arctic sea that's the arctic sea and you look at the red line the boundary
27:46of it in 1979 look at it now you can believe me or your lion eyes and in 2008 when
27:54mccain was the
27:55party's nominee for president addressing climate change was part of the official republican platform
28:00there seemed to be a growing consensus between democrats and republicans on the issue we don't
28:05always see eye to eye do we newt no but we do agree our country must take action to address
28:12climate change
28:13and it seemed like washington was taking action a climate change bill actually passed the house
28:18in 2009 but the energy sector led by fossil fuel companies spent half a billion dollars in lobbying
28:26and campaign contributions to fight it drill all of america's oil mine all of america's coal
28:33by the time it reached the senate not even john mccain would support it soon gingrich flip-flopped
28:40that's probably the dumbest single thing i've done in research and the tea party with lots of oil and
28:46gas money behind it helped elect people like michael grimm i personally am one of the guys that has
28:52been skeptical of global warming from the beginning the jury is obviously still out on it suddenly
28:58saying you accepted the science on climate change could cost you your seat just ask bob ingles a
29:05conservative who says that climate change is real now that is an unusual zoo animal right a sixth term
29:12congressman from south carolina ingles was the most vocal republican member of congress calling for
29:17action on climate change a lot of people are elected based on coal money on oil money i mean how
29:24do you
29:24break through that if well it's tough uh it's real tough but i mean we just can't keep this out
29:32in 2010 he lost his seat to a tea party candidate in the republican primary i had done some things
29:38that were clearly uh problems politically but the most enduring here is he was just saying that climate
29:44change is real and let's do something about it since leaving congress ingles is traveling the country
29:50pitching a conservative solution to climate change it would tax companies that emit co2 but give a matching
29:57tax cut to other companies and american households and he's trying to convince republicans that despite
30:03what happened to him they can't keep denying reality forever the worst thing in the world is not losing
30:08an election the worst thing in the world is losing your soul when you know there are things you
30:14believe in and you're not willing to stand for them michael grimm is exactly the kind of republican
30:26ingles is trying to reach and grimm agreed to sit down with him but will it make a difference i
30:32was
30:32from maybe the reddest district in the reddest state 93 american conservative union rating 100 christian
30:38correlation 100 national right to life a with the nra so pretty conservative guy right when i was first in
30:44congress i totally poopoo climate change i said his nonsense al gore's imagination had a great press
30:50conference one time where i absolutely tore al gore apart but then my kids were growing up my oldest
30:57who just turned 18 when i was running again in 2004 said i'll vote for you dead but you're going
31:04to
31:04clean up your act on the environment um problem for me was his four sisters agreed uh and his mother
31:10and so i had this new constituency that could change the locks on the doors yeah that's the
31:15most important situation i had to respond to this constituency you know so that was part of it for
31:20me and then the other was i got on the science committee when i got back to congress went to
31:23the
31:23south pole saw the ice core drillings saw the evidence what do you think it is that we republicans
31:32have gotten in this spot of basically distrusting the scientists you know i'm not i'm not so sure that it's
31:38distrusting the scientists what republicans are afraid of is if we give more credence to
31:46climate change that it's going to be you know the the the call the the cry for more rules more
31:55regulations yeah i agree completely we're trying to change the conversation we want to change it away
32:00from the apocalyptic visions that uh rightly signal conservatives here it comes a big old water
32:07regulations and a tax increase we want to change it to conversation about reasonable risk avoidance
32:12you know um 98 doctors tell you to treat your son this way two say no this other it's not
32:21conservative
32:21go with two um and that's really sort of where we are in climate science right we've got about
32:2698 doctors that say it's for real and it's human cause and we got two say no it's not it's
32:35sort of
32:36an odd place i believe for us as republicans to be that we listen to the two i mean we
32:41actually not
32:42even listen we seek out the two we call them to hearings we want to hear from them the two
32:48right
32:49of course in a way i'm i'm i'm the worst person to try to convince you because i mean look
32:55what
32:55happened to me right right i mean is that's the politics though yeah if republicans start coming
33:00out and and and let's say that that they they did agree with the science and they were were bold
33:06enough
33:07and the political courage that you had if they believed it to go forward and then they lose
33:14well how many others are gonna they're not all lemmings okay they're not gonna just go right
33:19off that cliff so the political constraints i think are a lot bigger than most people would would
33:25would understand and they're very real but you're also in a place that's had a different experience
33:31you've had people that have been inundated with the storm surge that some of them may have this sense of
33:39need of addressing a problem um that may affect that may give you some room to move that others don't
33:49have
34:01kim spent years looking for the biggest and oldest coral she could find
34:06she was trying to trace the history of el nino back thousands of years but she couldn't find
34:12corals older than 60 years then she realized the solution was right under her feet we were over here
34:20scouting for bigger corals one day to survey the rest of the island and we just walked up to this
34:25beach and i just looked left and i looked right and i just said click click wow this is a
34:33game changer
34:37all these fragments of fossilized coral washed up onto this beach over millennia there's more
34:43corals here right now than are probably growing on the reef today and how old are some of these
34:49blocks that would have been brought up here i mean roughly up to up to 6 000 years old
34:546 000 years old we're looking for something pretty special i have to find a pretty special piece and
35:09i'll show you okay what we're looking for these fossils are from dozens of different species of coral
35:15and we're looking for just one the same type we drilled so kim can make an apples to apples comparison
35:25it's a little rare but you'll get the hang of it this is not what you want no no no
35:30no plates
35:32plates no no no plates no plates oh how about this that looks cool no no no come on you
35:38do the great
35:38science with this oh here's one got it here's one all right now i told you i told you this
35:48is the same
35:49species that we drilled underwater the other day believe it or not how do you know how old this piece
35:55actually is well right now i have no idea this could be 50 years old this could be 6 000
36:03years old so we
36:04have to take them all back and we date them we use a very fast screening dating method radiocarbon
36:10dating method to date them then you can tell me how warm the ocean was on a particular year 4
36:18000
36:18years ago that's right and i can tell you how many el nino events happened in this section it really
36:23is
36:24and if i have enough of these i can give you a very accurate estimate of climate during that around
36:29this
36:29ocean yes fantastic each coral sample is a piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle and they'll be shipped back
36:38to the united states where they're dated and put in order by age to create a continuous record of
36:44ocean temperature going back thousands of years we're throwing a lot of samples and a lot of data
36:53at this question what happened to climate at christmas island in the recent past and we're getting a lot
36:59of samples telling us their story and that story is a frightening one
37:17hey bob here hey bob now i'm here yeah so the next item on the agenda is is about the
37:26next trip to dc
37:27and we really need to discuss this because that's coming up on monday florida senator marco rubio is a
37:40rising star in the republican party he's also a climate change denier but a few years ago he wasn't
37:47and bob inglis wants to convince him to come back around i have no idea what his position is on
37:53this
37:53but i'd like to talk to him about it um they have agreed um it won't be so ruby himself
38:00um yeah
38:12so um what do you what do you think should the the one argument is to wait until there might
38:20be an
38:21opportunity with senator rubio yeah no i think that's right i think he's he's a clearly occupied of
38:40this stuff so um if you lose in politics it's sort of like everybody knows
38:52and so so sort of a pulling away you know sort of like uh you know avoid him and it's
39:01continuing
39:03and you know it hurts because people think that i've sort of gone to the other side that i've crossed
39:08to
39:08the other tribe um it's pretty painful it continues to be you know there's sort of a sense that uh
39:16you
39:16can't go home
39:25uh we're gonna fold it this way and then turn it on its side
39:32yeah that'll go the other way all right yeah sorry not a problem today michael grim plans to
39:40surprise pat dresh he's been helping her get a new home but the process is dragging on
39:45so in the meantime he's replacing a family heirloom lost in the storm an american flag commemorating her
39:51father's service in world war ii we obviously can't give the exact flag but this flag was flown
40:02over the capital oh my god okay in washington dc this was done um on behalf of your dad
40:10so it is his flag okay i i actually folded it myself being in the marine corps i've i've learned
40:17how to
40:17hold the flag but it's been a while so it's not folded exactly i'm going to refold it before i
40:22put
40:22it in his service and his dedication will always be remembered and i just want you to know thank you
40:29mom thank you so much
40:32oh my god
40:39let me get you back at home back home that's what i want that's what i want that's what you're
40:44going to
40:47wait i can't wait to hear the words here's the keys stop moving and that's my dream to hear those
40:54words
41:07hey how's the vote schedule look michael grim has been working feverishly to round up votes for a 60
41:13billion dollar relief package for sandy victims but under pressure from the tea party the same
41:18movement that helped get grim elected the bill is suddenly abandoned the 60 billion dollar aid
41:24package without any explanation whatsoever house speaker john boehner decided not to vote on before
41:29the 112 congress ended the decision occasioned a rare full-scale full-spectrum mutiny from new jersey and
41:37new york republicans i don't agree with his call to delay this to delay the vote i don't uh i
41:43don't
41:43support it at all i think it was the wrong call this is now this delay is not what we
41:46wanted it is
41:47absolutely inexcusable it means pat dresh and thousands of other storm victims will have to wait
41:53even longer to start rebuilding their communities and their lives when that vote didn't happen i got
42:11to tell you i i was a little broken
42:15it's very very personal for me to deliver on the on the relief package
42:20you know and it is a fight every day i go to work i'm fighting with someone whether it's the
42:30the
42:31mayor's office or whether it's the administration in washington or whether it's sometimes my own party
42:35but it's always a fight
42:49after years of tracking back and forth between christmas island and her lab in atlanta kim's
42:55research on coral is yielding clues about human impact on el ninos it suggests that in the 20th
43:02century el ninos are as much as 20 percent more severe than in the previous 7 000 years
43:10in the past few decades the trend is especially clear there's something different about these 30 40
43:16years in the recent past larger events more frequent events in the last 30 40 years now the big question
43:24then is why the inference in uncovering an unprecedented behavior in climate in the last 30 40 years
43:35as opposed to the natural variations last 6 000 the strong inference is that that's causally linked and
43:43that that's related to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
43:48carbon dioxide that's been on the rise as a result of human activity
43:56and it turns out that the very thing kim is studying climate change is threatening the very
44:01place where she's conducting her research this coral island is slowly falling victim to the rising seas
44:09so how long before the rest of christmas island you know the bits with the trees on end up looking
44:15like this well i mean you want my educated opinion about it um i would say about one meter in
44:24a hundred
44:24years i would say a lifetime of your grandkids yeah that most of christmas will be having serious
44:32problems with sea little rise it's a disappearing country hurts my heart being in love with this place it hurts
44:39my heart
44:47two months after superstorm sandy congress has taken the first step to give financial help to
44:53the many families and businesses in the storm zone that are still suffering today congress gave the okay
44:58after delays and politics slowed down emergency aid as the months dragged on michael grim continued
45:05to help pat trash through the process of getting a new house we still haven't done enough and there's
45:10a lot to do so that has not been lost but at the same time we do have to reflect
45:14on monumental
45:15steps forward and and this is this is a big step forward the city to start accepting applications to
45:21get people's lives back together and that's what really this is about but for pat it would still
45:26be months before she finally had a place she could call home
45:33it's now august 10 months since superstorm sandy slammed into the eastern seaboard
45:39it affected millions some people's lives were changed forever but one of the most surprising things
45:44is how it changed michael grim last time you and i spoke you said the jury was still out on
45:51the climate
45:51science do you still feel that way you know after speaking with bob english it made me do my own
45:57research you know i looked at some of the stuff that he sent over my staff looked at the vast
46:01majority
46:02of respected scientists uh say you know that it's conclusive the evidence is clear so i don't think
46:08the jury is out the basic story of we're putting carbon in the atmosphere the planet's getting warmer
46:13that's going to make the sea levels rise like the basic story of that you're you pretty much agree with
46:17right sure i mean there's no question that um you know the oceans have risen right and the climate
46:23change part is is a real part of it the problem that we're going to have right now there's no
46:30oxygen
46:31left in the room in washington right now for another big debate that's the reality you know between
46:35immigration but tax reform i don't disagree but it's not going to take front stage but i want to
46:41there's a study coming out because this this this gets precisely if you take just the amount of sea
46:47level rise and you factor it into what's what the sandy storm surge was this study says you got about
46:5325 square miles of flooding that wouldn't have happened so my question to you is if in three years
46:57from now there's another one of these storms that takes out another 70 000 homes it's like at what point
47:03does this become the priority washington is not real life you see you're talking the substance and the
47:09science right and my point to you is irrelevant right right irrelevant you have to first get them
47:15to the table to say let's work together so then what's your role in getting them to do that if
47:21you
47:21told me there's too much other stuff going on in washington right now we can't get sandy relief
47:25you would say sorry excuse my language bullshit right and what i'm saying to you is the people that
47:31live on this island are going to get there's going to be more storms and they're going to be worse
47:34unless we get our act together i mean can you literally can you sit down with fellow republicans
47:39and say look come to my district we had water that in places it shouldn't have been yes but not
47:46while everyone is saying immigration taxes and members of congress don't want to talk about anything
47:52else and 20 years from now you and i are going to have a conversation where we look back i
47:57really
47:57believe this and it's like what do you what do you think about when you think about that conversation 20
48:03years from now about where you were where your personal voice was of leadership what i'm telling
48:06you is it's it's it's much bigger than me i don't think that humans in america americans have the will
48:13to do it but that's a terribly depressing statement it may be but it's true but we had the will
48:18to settle
48:19the frontier we had the will to land on the moon we have you think my generation or the generation
48:23after me has that i think you're living in fantasyland they don't they don't i wonder how you are
48:29to look back at yourself as a member of the united states congress if history unfolds in the way that
48:34i think the science says it does and makes these distinctions between the people that actually had
48:38the had the fortitude to stand up and say the unpopular thing and those who didn't history judges
48:43those people incredibly harshly it puts them in two categories it puts them in the categories of
48:47people that met the biggest challenge of their time and people who didn't
49:00you know politicians don't feel any support underneath them they they don't leave
49:06the thing that encourages me is i know that they a good number know better god bless stay healthy
49:12all right be well it's good to see you they know that we've really got to pay attention to the
49:17signs
49:22experience experience is a very effective but often harsh teacher
49:31oh my god
49:36that's supposed to be like this
49:46well we are being taught now about climate change
49:50the question is whether that can be coupled with the hope that there's something that can be done
50:16it's not a political issue it's a moral issue next time on years of living dangerously global
50:22warming is real and caused by humans that's an assumption it's not an assumption nobody's presented
50:27that scientific evidence in my opinion anna jane joiner is trying to change the climate debate rick
50:32joiner head of an evangelical empire also happens to be her father if you believe that god created
50:38this planet take care of it more lakes means more blue the lakes cause more warming which leads to
50:44more lakes god that was huge and even more warming why not stop giving out permits for drilling and
50:51looking for more resources in the arctic you don't want to be on the side that said i had a
50:55chance and i
50:57looking for more information and i didn't do anything
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