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Presidential Election Spine Chilling For Florida Climate Experts

South Miami Beach floods regularly, rain or shine, due to effects scientists say are linked to human-induced climate change. The same experts are worried that President-elect Donald Trump is a climate change denier.
South Miami Beach floods regularly, rain or shine, due to effects scientists say are linked to human-induced climate change. The same experts are worried that President-elect Donald Trump is a climate change denier.

President-elect Donald Trump is on record as a climate change denier, and that’s bad news for the Sunshine State, experts say.

South Miami Beach floods regularly, rain or shine, due to effects scientists say are linked to human-induced climate change. The same experts are worried that President-elect Donald Trump is a climate change denier.
South Miami Beach floods regularly, rain or shine, due to effects scientists say are linked to human-induced climate change. The same experts are worried that President-elect Donald Trump is a climate change denier.

In Miami, streets are flooding on sunny days. And researchers at Florida Atlantic University are worried about how changing rainfall patterns will affect the Everglades and surrounding cities.

But Donald Trump isn’t sold. Here’s what he told Fox News last December.

“I believe strongly in clean water and clean air but I don’t believe in what they say. I think it’s a big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money.”

Trump has vowed to pull the United States out of international agreements limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

But FAU’s Center for Environmental Studies director Colin Polsky says it would be a mistake, and set back years of bi-partisan negotiations. 

“It takes a long time to get such momentum and to lose it based on a claim that the science is a hoax, an invention of the Chinese, would be a real shame.

Trump called President Barack Obama’s trip to Paris last year to attend an international summit on limiting greenhouse gas emissions a waste of time.

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Jim Ash is a reporter at WFSU-FM. A Miami native, he is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience, most of it in print. He has been a member of the Florida Capital Press Corps since 1992.