During her MSNBC show Now on Monday, Alex Wagner had on guest Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who took advantage of the blizzard set to strike New York City and New England to invoke climate change and blame the “big oil industry” and Republicans for “voting down science” in a Senate vote last week.

Not to be outdone, Wagner took her own swipe at those who don’t subscribe to the view that the storm was bred by humans and climate change: “[J]ust with the flight delays, the economic impact of travel and travel cancellations, it seems like framing this sort-of changing climate in an economic context is a pretty powerful way to get people to start caring a little bit more about the changes that are happening to the Earth.”

The segment began with Wagner swinging the door wide-open on the topic of climate change by asking Sachs about the role it plays in the “interrelation between extreme heat and extreme cold and extremely erratic storms.”

All too happy to dive in, Sachs agreed and pointed to how “of the ten biggest snowstorms, five of them have come since 2003. So, that suggests we're seeing a lot more of this kind of extreme event.”

Wagner then turned to NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins, who also concurred, but was far more reserved about blaming climate change. While Karins stated that “when you start tying 10, 15 different storms within a 10-to-15-year period, that's when you start thinking,” he cautioned that large storms are far from being a new phenomenon and pointed to photos from “the late 1800s” that depicted large mounds of snow falling in New York City.

Moving back to Sachs, Wagner tossed this softball to him regarding the impact of climate change on humans:

We, of course, don't know what the winter storm Juno is going to do, but just with the flight delays, the economic impact of travel and travel cancellations, it seems like framing this sort-of changing climate in an economic context is a pretty powerful way to get people to start caring a little bit more about the changes that are happening to the Earth.

After harping on the claim that 2014 was the hottest year on record and rattling off some of the recent global weather events, Sachs turned his attention to attacking Republicans and those who “bought the Senate” in the oil industry (emphasis mine):

The cost lives to lives, to safety, to the economy is vast and getting larger, but we have this powerful, big oil industry that has been fighting this and they bought the Senate unfortunately and the Republicans just voted down science again last week. They were given the opportunity to reflect, on the most basic science, that human activity significantly contributes to climate change, and the Republicans voted against that 49-5 in the Republican Party and if you can believe it, but of course, they're just on the take with the big oil money.

This type of rhetoric on MSNBC was far from new as just an hour before that, Bill Nye joined The Cycle and blasted “certain viewers” who will reject his assertion that climate change is to blame for the blizzard.

The relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner on January 26 is transcribed below.