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democracy. >> christopher wray. he spent much of the morning answering questions from house lawmakers on the investigation into the attended assassination on former president trump. members of the judiciary committee are -- watch live coverage when the hearing resumes on c-span3. >> joining us to talk about climate change and extreme weather events is andrew friedman. he's a senior climate reporter for axios. >> thanks for having me. >> so hurricane beryl, the earliest such storm in recorded history, you say in in an article that this is just a warning of what's to come so what is to come? >> so talking to scientists, really what they are telling me is this formed in an area where

you would not expect a strong storm to form at this time of year. is usually pretty hostile to hurricanes. east of the islands that make up of the lesser antilles in the windward islands it's usually relatively cool, you have dust in the air, dry air this time of year. hurricanes don't really thrive in that environment. however, this season is not like any other that we have seen. there is record warm water temperatures throughout the north atlantic ocean that includes the caribbean and their is a lightning event that's developing in the tropical pacific which further enhances the chances for an above normal -- and hurricane beryl really drove home in the number of records in broke and the type of records that it broke reaching category five.

it's the strongest storm we've ever seen in july and no matter where you look in the atlantic since the start of the satellite era in 1966. it's an exceptional storm in its own right and it is a warning that when conditions are right in the atlantic this season, really exceptional events and really dangerous events can be the result. >> can you tell us a little bit more about the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events? >> yeah, so we are learning more and more every day is climate change has shown up in our daily weather events. -- with hurricanes, we know they are intensifying pastor and jumping greater distances than

they used to in terms of categories. hurricane beryl, for example, set a record for june hurricane, rapid intensification going from category, basically a tropical depression to category four in one day. we also know with great confidence that heat waves are becoming more common, more intense, longer duration. longer-lasting. in some cases, we've even found through studies that climate change made previously impossible events possible for the first time. that's true not just in the united states but around the world. any other category that is pretty high confidence on is precipitation events so if you think about sudden downpours in

certain places, we saw that in miami, we saw that in fort lauderdale earlier this spring. were you get suddenly a couple months worth of rainfall in a matter of hours. but when it warms up, it carries more moisture. it carries more moisture, the gets fed into storms and comes out as precipitation and hurricanes are heat engines. they feed off of the warm waters. so as water temperatures are going up, hurricanes have more of an ability to take advantage of that. >> you mention the extreme heat around the united states. what other extreme weather events are you tracking? >> right now, on the extreme heat front, i would say that there is something remarkable going on and remarkable makes it sound a little too positive. right now, there's about 110 million americans under sometime -- type of heat warning or advisory the south

central states in the south are really baking in high humidity heat. but the more remarkable event, the more severe event that i think we are going to be hearing about more and more in the coming days, it is happening in the west, in california, oregon, eventually up into washington state and nevada. we are going to be seeing about two weeks or more of record high temperatures and higher and escalating wildfire risk. we party seen one destructive fire in california and we will probably, unfortunately, be seeing more, but we're talking highs in inland california. you might feel, sacramento, for example, in the 100 intends for an extended period. that gets to be more dangerous because, as they you know, as

you are exposed to more and more heat, especially if you don't have access to cooling, that can be deadly. if you do not get relief over all of these nights in a row, with temperatures just not dropping below the mid-to-upper 70s, even the 80 degrees. this is uncharacteristic for california, it may set records for long-duration heat and the weather service is putting out some really, really intense wording around this event using terms like potentially lethal, life-threatening, that sort of thing. there's something extreme going on there right now. we are watching to see word ultimately goes. there's a chance that goes into southwest texas as a tropical storm or hurricane, depending how it encounters mexico's yucatan peninsula. >> we are speaking with andrew

freedman of axios, and if you have a question about extreme weather events, our lines are regional this time so if you have the eastern or central -- if you're in mountain or pacific, it's 202-748-7000. you can also text us. we are watching our social media feeds, as well. andrew, i wanted to ask you about what president biden said yesterday. he announced new measures in the wake of this extreme weather events and then get your reaction. >> yeah. the central part. there were two central parts of his announcements. one is, they are really trying to rush through recommendation. a new regulation so the occupational safety and health administration. to try to do federal rules to protect

employee health on the job against extreme heat. there've been a number of states that have actually outlawed such rules at the state level, florida and texas being the two biggest examples and people are dying on the job when it is extremely hot out. so think of culture workers, think of construction workers. and the osha regulations would not apply to first responders, to firefighters, and you know, ents, but it would apply to people who are working in water houses without air conditioning. it would apply to other categories of people and require employers to have plans for cooling, to install certain systems, to give people brakes. and, and allow people to acclimatize themselves to hotter weather on the job,

rather than just throwing into a really scorching situation without getting used to it. that was one pillar of this announcement was that they are putting forward this regulation. it's probably not going to be finalized. we are trying to finalize it during his first term but whether or not it meets legal challenges, legal challenges quite likely. we will see where it goes from here but that is an attempt to, for the first time, have a federal regulation overheat safety. the other one is they announced another billion-dollar tron a program called brick, which is a fema program that is trying to proactively make communities more resilient and they are also trying to get fema when

they are looking at the construction projects to take into account the level rise or a future flooding scenarios and not just base it on the climate of the past, which is what we did for a long time, which is what was a 100 year flood up until this point and that climate is gone. we are in a different so now we will be going into the future, so you that into account for public safety center in a town, et cetera. filling out these across the country. to try and make that more resilient. >> so answer, let's take a look at what the president, the weather events drive home the point that i have been saying for so long. climate change deadly and dangerous and irresponsible. these climate extreme weather

events don't just affect people's lives, they also cost money. they hurt the economy, and they have a significant negative psychological effect on people. last year, the large -- cost over, get this, $90 billion in damages to americans. $90 billion is -- they drove nearly 2.5 million people out of their homes. in hawaii these events also post serious threats to our nation's transportation system. to our power grid, farms, fisheries, hitting our most vulnerable people in the hardest hit communities in the world. look, you know, we can change all of that. it's in our power. that's why today, i'm

announcing five new actions that my ministration is taking to address extreme weather, including heat and other -- hazards. establishing the first ever federal safety standard for excessive heat in the workplace. this includes things like developing response plans to -- training employees and supervisors. access to shade and water. , -- across the country, workers suffer heatstroke or even die just doing their jobs. his new role will substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses and deaths over 36 million workers from farmworkers mike and andrew, the president also mentioned the rising cost of extreme weather events. noaa has this on their website,

a historic year of u.s. billion- dollar weather and climate disasters, 2023, 51 this year billion-dollar alley really -- first of all the $90 billion tally. when you. the california insurance commissioner just did this buddy on seven different heat waves -- this study on seven different heat waves. fire.

>> a number of them are being affected and then is detectable by science. and we are also seeing more and more built structures in harms way. so when you put those two trends together, it makes for a more expensive, it makes for more expensive disaster losses. >> all right -- i was just going to say let's talk to callers now. dennis is in melbourne, florida. good morning, dennis. >> good morning. thank you. mr. freedman. to give you a little bit of a

background, i am a republican somewhat to the right of attila the hun but i'm not a climate denier. i believe in climate change. what i may disagree with you whether it is man-made that is, it's been seen ever since the family that occurred in florida in 2004. they were hit with four hurricanes, which, to my knowledge, was unprecedented in recorded history. it caused a lot of damage, but there was an entire decade thereafter that there were no hurricanes that hit florida landfall. that was the year before katrina in '05, but we had no hurricanes for an entire decade

. yet all of the climate alarmists in 2004 pointed to the four hurricanes and said see, see, this means we are in dire straits, yet nobody ever said or explained why we were -- another decade without another landfall hurricane. yes, there are anomalies like the one occurring now in the bahamas but it is an anomaly and it is climate change. i agree. i disagree that we can do much about it, though we should. another point, yes, there are more people living in harms way, but you have to normalize the cost, for example, hurricane -- in the 60s cause a tremendous amount of damage but property values and the people

living on the coastline were much less than today. >> okay, dennis. let's take that up. >> yes, see you made up a couple of good points. 2004 was a banner year for major hurricanes hitting florida. there was one county in florida that was actually saw the eye go over, you know, the eye of four separate storms go over that county. that was an alarming year, 2005, actually florida was hit by a hurricane, katrina did hit as a category one but we had a gap in major hurricanes, meeting category three or above making landfall in the u.s., what was happening was they were occurring, they were forming, but they were staying out at sea, and there really isn't a way to, when we are predicting the seasonal outlook

to really predict how vulnerable the events are to a hurricane landfall. i can't say that a season it looks as active as this one has higher odds of seeing a major hurricane in the united states and that accounts for the most monetary losses of, you know, hurricane categories but the trends are very clear in terms of hurricane intensities, hurricane rapid intensification, just because, you know, we are not seeing landfall storms, it does not mean that these are not occurring or that they are not affected by climate change. the physics of how human induced climate change would affect these storms are exactly what we are seeing playing out and scientists who, you know, our starting out saying well,

maybe the hypothesis is there isn't much of an impact on these giant storms, like nature's most biggest storms and most intense storms, like how are we really affecting those, and then they look at the data and they all have all come away saying that there are trends. we do expect them to be trends. they are just a sick, you know, bottom line thermodynamics and physics and some of the signal has been a merging a little bit earlier than estimates had previously suggested, at least in the atlantic ocean. i'm trying to remember if there is an additional question that the caller had. >> that's okay. we will -- we will go to paul in indianapolis, indiana. >> hello,. i have a question. i like to keep track of this kind of stuff. noaa said the sunspot activity indicated the amount of solar output this year was, we were

expecting 24 sunspots and they actually had 40, indicating that solar activity was way above what we expected during this cycle, which was supposed to peak next year and then declining. i was wondering if that was activity from the sun actually staffing on some other, on the normal climate change activity this season? the perfect storm, if you will. >> it's a good question and we all saw that massive aurora display occur a month or so ago. with a solar flare. we are at a solar max. however, the impacts on the hurricane season really are minimal, at best. experts looking at this saying

it's really minimal at best in terms of its impacts on the global average temperature trends, and part of the reason for that is that the human signal is overpowering to a huge degree. part of it is just that this timescale >> i was wondering if there's any data regarding how many nuclear testings have taken place in the oceans around the world by the military complexes supporting the different various countries. it seems to me like in the last 20 years, north korea using the

oceans as a toilet to dump these nukes and test them, you have countries all over the world that are doing this and then you wonder why the waters are so hot. you've got nuclear reaction coming out of the oceans with all this stuff. that's got to go somewhere. nothing is ever said about that. you talk about our cars. yeah, they all play a part in that but they are literally poisoning us through the waters instead of the air. i don't know, i have been thinking about this for a while and it justin -- it just doesn't make any sense. >> all right, gary. go ahead, enter. >> most of the test that north korea has done has not been with live nuclear warheads, fortunately. they are mostly to test their ballistic missile capabilities, which is, you know, not great in itself, but it is not having an impact on the oceans overall . the oceans heat up very slowly