tonight on "nightline," nature's wrath. with floods and wildfires, killer tornadoes and a record-breaking winter, severe weather seems to be the new normal. but has our climate really changed? we investigate. single with crown. yes, william is now off the market. but prince harry is far from the last royal bachelor. we go on a hunt for eligible princes and find some living right here in america. and, mobile home mogul. his films have grossed almost $2 billion. so, why did tom shadyac give up his fabulous mansion and private jet? he tells us about the knock on the head that changed his life. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran and bill weir in new

york city and cynthia mcfadden in london, this is "nightline," april 26th, 2011. >> good evening all, i'm bill weir. and you know we live in interesting times when even the weather is a wedge issue. but in this political climate, few terms are more loaded than climate change. after months of epic droughts and floods, blizzards and heat waves, some are seeing proof of warnings past, while others refuse to believe that man could ever wreck god's planet. but neither side can deny that we are having one hellacious spring. >> this thing is right over my head. >> reporter: there is nothing unusual about tornadoes in april. but this many? this deadly? it is more than unusual. because it's not just happening in tornado alley, where midwesterners know all about spring twisters. no, funnel clouds have risen in sobering numbers from mississippi to maryland. >> there goes the roof off a

house. >> reporter: if you average the past three years, april typically brings two killer tornadoes that take six lives. this april has produced 13 killer tornadoes that have taken at least 43 lives. and then there are the floods. >> completely under at our house. >> reporter: with swollen rivers and bursting levees adding to the missouri misery. all of this the result of rains and melting snow pack that ate chicago -- >> i don't know if i'll suffocate, i don't know what will happen. >> reporter: and new york. >> everybody's tired of it. exhausted, okay? it's been out of control. >> reporter: and most of the rest of america. and, of course, we are not alone in tasting ma nature's recent fury. the crushing heat waves in china and russia and europe last summer came in some of the hottest months ever recorded. hot air holds more moisture, which brought flooding that

killed hundreds in pakistan. but shifting rain patterns led to droughts in the amazon. typically one of the wettest places on earth. add it all up, and it looks an awfully lot what this man called a nature walk through the book of revelations. >> and so, as the surrounding water gets warmer, it speeds up the melting of the ice. >> reporter: but is today's tornado or flood real proof of al gore's doomsday predictions? well, even those scientists who agree with him, even they say it's not that simple. >> it's very tempting to connect the dots, because it's all weather, but you have to be really quite disciplined. you have to be very, very careful about what you can say. >> reporter: dr. gavin schmidt is a nasa scientist specializing in the incredibly complex world of climate modeling. he says there is no denying that the planet is warming and by burning carbon we are helping raise the temperature.

>> by the time you get to 2050, 2070, 2080, you are starting to see patterns of warming put us really in a different planet. >> reporter: but blaming a tornado in st. louis on climate change? that is a leap too far, he says. think of it this way. weather is what happened lately. climate is what has happened forever. lately, the area north and west of that line has been oddly cold and wet while the south and east has been hot and dry. but that has a lot more to do with the la nina cold water patterns in the pacific and how they affect the jet stream. and drastic changes that are happening in, say, alaska, may not be happening at the same rate on ron's farm in new jersey. so, as a guy who lives off the land, literally, is the climate changing? are you seeing patterns now that you didn't see 40 years ago here? >> well, i'm not a geologist and i'm not a scientist, but i am

outside 365 days a year. and i'm usually outside not under cover. and i can tell you, over the years, the only thing that is constant is change. it is always changing. and i don't think that the, our climate is necessarily changing drastically because there's something we're doing. it's changing because mother nature is just stretching a little bit, maybe just moving a little bit. >> climate change is a chronic issue. it's one of those things that, you know, every year, it gets a little bit worse. like me putting on weight. every year i put on a couple of pounds. i think, oh, i should do something about that. but you know, it's off in the distance and one can forget. but if i broke my arm, i'd go to the emergency room straight away, right? that would be an acute problem. a tornado hitting an airport is an acute problem. climate change is a chronic problem. and we don't deal well with that. >> in the near term, best you can do is get a weather radio

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with bill weir. >> well, time to class up the joint. with an old world detour. let's head to london, where my friend and co-anchor cynthia mcfadden is reporting all week on a wedding you may have heard something about. cynthia? >> reporter: good evening, bill. i'm outside westminster abbey tonight where people are already staking out their sidewalk positions for friday's royal wedding. prince william will, of course, marry catherine middleton. a happy day for the young

couple. but a dream-dashing one for those hoping to become a modern-day princess. though it doesn't have to be. of course, there is still prince harry, but he's not the only eligible royal out there, as andrea canning discovers. there are other princes for those cinderellas who are still looking. it's all in tonight's installment of the "nightline" wedding crashers, the royal edition. ♪ someday my prince will come >> reporter: rainier and grace. charles and diana. and now, william and kate. royal weddings never fail to fascinate. after all, a girl can dream. but hold the tiara, honey. eligible princes seem so few and far between niece days. or are they? look, here's one now. what does it say about you that you drive around in this particular limousine? >> i don't really like to show off. i think pulling up to a restaurant in new york city in a rolls or a bentley is a little much. i'm not a ferrari type of guy.

i like, i don't really like attention. >> reporter: prince lorenzo borghese. the descent dent of a pope and napoleon bonaparte. his last name adorns signs all over italy. the family holds no official position anymore. what's the most princely thing you do every day? >> i get little chocolates left on my pillow at night before i go to bed. and i guess that's pretty princely. >> reporter: though he says he's an everyday single guy, he lives in a five-star hotel in manhattan and is christened the 17-year-old limo he drives around in charming. >> i would love to have the prince of rome and have a castle and have villa borghese back. but that's not the case. >> reporter: instead, he uses his royal title to sell his line of pet products on hsn. >> it's your choice of lavender, cashmere, honey and oatmeal which is not here, or coconut and vanilla. >> reporter: and he was "the bachelor" for season nine. >> do you like cheese burgers?

let get on to something serious. >> love them. >> love them? >> i love cheese burgers. >> some of the royals are trying to lead normal lives. or relatively normal. but i any they are trying to lead slightly celebrity-ish lives. minor celebrity-ish lives. >> reporter: it turns out there are plenty of available princes in the world, other than william's younger brother harry who actually has groupies known as harry hunters. check out this orlando bloom lookalike. prince carl philip. second in line to sweden's throne. he loves car racing and was a commander in the navy. >> he's going out with someone who is in a swedish reality tv show. i think once they're going off to reality tv contestants, the holiness of the monarchy has a slight problem. >> prince wenzeslaus is known as wenze the prince. he once dated this victoria's secret model. >> that is pretty small place. a bit like being a prince of a ski resort. >> reporter: prince andrea and pierre are the sons of princess caroline of monaco. andrea has taught children in

africa and has a master's in international affairs. pierre is a college dropout. grandmother was grace kelly, a hollywood star. when prince rainier fell in love with her, they broke the tradition of marrying within european royal families. >> bringing grace kelly into the gene pool was a stroke of genius because there are only five people in monaco. so, you know, you were actually otherwise going to have to marry your sisters. >> reporter: surprisingly, some princes are strapped for cash. and who do they turn to for financial aid? other princes. where are the broke princes? >> one from samoa. randomly he e-mailed me and asked me if he could borrow money for his wedding. there was a prince from india. we were shopping in amsterdam. he said, oh, my gosh, i can't afford this. he has a palace in india, he has servants. but he doesn't have money. >> reporter: but there are other princes who still throw their wealth around. prince azim of brunei is known for generous gifts to his famous friends. >> at his 25th birthday party, the goodie bags included a

kenyan safari and a dental makeover. who wouldn't want to be with that guy? >> reporter: so, is the royal life something girls should still aspire to? >> my daughter is 2 and got her first princess dress. should we really be condoning this princess obsession? >> i think the story about the princess is this beautiful story about goodness. about love and about romance. at 2, she's not thinking about money. she's not thinking about how much power this person has. she's thinking about a beautiful life. i think it's a great thing. i think it becomes not great if you're 16, saying, i want to marry a prince. >> reporter: do you think that might be the biggest fear for a prince? is that the woman is with him because he's a prince? >> i think if she wants a prince just because he's a prince, there's a big problem there. >> reporter: but just in case you want to ignore that royal advice, there are two other princes living right here in the u.s. 24-year-old prince philippos of greece who works in finance in new york city. and prince teo of italy.

35, an artist living in los angeles. and, of course, there's lorenzo borghese himself. still driving around searching for his princess. for "nightline," i'm andrea canning in a modern carriage in new york. >> actually, the souvenir vendors are already on the case. they're selling coasters like this one that say "calm down, you can still marry harry." on a more serious note scotland yard announced today 5,000 police would be dispatched for royal wedding duties. any criminals attempting to cause disruption will be met by robust and proportional response. we can only hope that won't be necessary. bill? >> cynthia, thank you. see you tomorrow night. coming up next, the majorer of "ace ventura," tom shadyac was a very rich man. so, what made him decide to give his life of wild luxury away? we used to bet who could get closest to the edge.

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the story could be one of his movies. a man achieves wild success, gets everything he ever wanted but then he's conked on the head and suddenly realizes he wants to give it all away. tom shadyac hasn't given it all away, but he's made a good start. here's neal karlinsky. >> reporter: watching tom shack yak, he looks more like a hollywood hippie than a heavy

weight. but the man on the bike is one of the most successful directors in town. his resume, pure slapstick success. >> come to me, jungle friends. >> reporter: from "ace ventura pet detective" -- >> there you go again. >> reporter: to "the nutty professor," "liar liar" and "bruce almighty." >> holy cow. >> reporter: films that pay the bills and then some. >> my films have grossed just short of $2 billion, so, i made a fair amount of money, you know. and when you made that kind of money, it was just acceptable that you bought a house that reflected that success. >> reporter: and so he did this astonishingly huge estate. private jets for all his travel. but even the super wealthy sometimes go for a bike ride. and when he went over the handlebars and crashed his bike, the results were life changing. >> i developed a concussion

which turned into post-concussion syndrome which is torturous. the symptoms of the concussion don't go away. >> reporter: so, what were you going through? >> hell is one word. it was brutal. >> reporter: a headache that never ends but worse. >> i had to black this out. >> reporter: daylight pierced his skull like a hammer. he showed us how he survived a month's long stretch he thought would kill him. >> this is the closet i slept in. >> reporter: you slept in there? >> yeah, on the floor. for awhile. because it was dark. i would shut the door. good night. and that would keep literally 9 % of the light out. >> reporter: it may sound like an ah-ha moment right out of a screen play, but when he finally recovered and came out into the light again, he decided it was time to rearrange his priorities, and he actually started giving everything away. money, possessions, everything but the basics. >> i don't need a lot of clothes.

i don't buy a lot of things. >> reporter: he went from a castle to a 1,000 square foot mobile home. he doesn't even carry a cell phone anymore. >> this is kind of it. this is -- this is the one area. >> kitchen, sort of living room and little den. >> reporter: and for the first time, in years, his home isn't walled off and he actually knows his neighbors. >> what's up? >> what are you doing? >> how you doing, brother? i almost brought you some chicken wings the other day. >> reporter: he financed a documentary to explore his feelinfeel g feeling s. it's called "i am." >> there i was standing in the house, and it made me no happier. >> reporter: the film examines the notion that greed and ambition at all costs might be just everything that's wrong with the world. along the way, he interviews everyone for a film that is spiritual and searching and about as far from tom shadyac's typical fare as you can get.

a lot of people might say, listen, it's easy to say money's not important when you don't have the to worry about money. >> i agree. when it buys you out of the burdens of hunger, homelessness, money can make you much happier. but that's it. >> reporter: today, shadyac is on tour with his film, to spread the word. he's not done making main stream hollywood movies, though. even silly ones. but says he'll no longer keep all the money he makes. are you happy now? >> i would say 100% more so than i was when i was speaking more of the philosophy and living less of it. >> reporter: happier? >> absolutely. >> reporter: and he's not ruling out downsizing even more, in a quest for happiness from a simpler life. i'm neal karlinsky for "nightline" in malibu, california. >> his film "i am" is out now. thanks to neal karlinsky. thank you for watching abc