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Senate Commerce Committee Comes To West Palm Beach For Climate Change Hearing — Kind Of

Speaking at a Senate Commerce Committee field hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said the existence of climate change should not be a political issue.
Kate Stein
/
WLRN
Speaking at a Senate Commerce Committee field hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said the existence of climate change should not be a political issue.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, is trying to fill in fellow U.S. senators on climate change. So it makes sense that he invited members of the Commerce Committee — of which he's the ranking minority member — to West Palm Beach to learn about increasing temperatures and rising seas from the experts who know it firsthand.

But whether those committee members will ever hear the testimony from the hearing on Monday is unclear. None of the other 26 senators on the Commerce Committee attended.

A spokesman for Nelson, Bryan Gulley, said that’s not unusual for field hearings, and even some hearings in Washington D.C. There are too many conflicting events on senators' calendars. But, Gulley said, a video and transcript will be available for the other senators to watch if they choose.

Nelson said one goal of the hearing was to emphasize that climate change exists and it's not a political issue.

"We’ve got to get everybody to agree to a baseline of what is truth and what isn’t," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of the scientists tell you that the heating up of the earth is real. And it’s only 1 percent or less that will say from a scientific standpoint that this is not occurring. And so what we need to do is to give the facts to people who don’t follow this on a day-to-day basis."

Speakers at the hearing included University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University climate researchers, Broward County's chief climate resiliency officer and the senior vice president of an insurance company. They described the effects of climate change and sea level rise in South Florida and outlined steps they'd like to see the federal government take to offset future climate risks.

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Kate Stein can't quite explain what attracts her to South Florida. It's more than just the warm weather (although this Wisconsin native and Northwestern University graduate definitely appreciates the South Florida sunshine). It has a lot to do with being able to travel from the Everglades to Little Havana to Brickell without turning off 8th Street. It's also related to Stein's fantastic coworkers, whom she first got to know during a winter 2016 internship.Officially, Stein is WLRN's environment, data and transportation journalist. Privately, she uses her job as an excuse to rove around South Florida searching for stories à la Carl Hiaasen and Edna Buchanan. Regardless, Stein speaks Spanish and is always thrilled to run, explore and read.