After Texas power debacle, count your Jersey blessings, read the headline of a New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial by Tom Moran. The article is supposed to tell us why New Jersey is not susceptible to an electricity meltdown like that experienced in Texas because, after NJ’s own “Texas” disaster called Superstorm Sandy in 2012, NJ utility companies took steps to “fortify” the generation facilities and grid. But it’s hard to take Moran seriously when his article starts out this way:
If any consolation can be drawn from the tragedy in Texas, it is that New Jersey is unlikely to suffer as badly during a similar storm.
For one, we learned a lesson when Sandy knocked us on our back and have spent more than $6 billion since then to fortify our electric and gas systems. It was a costly lesson, but New Jersey is now better prepared for the inevitable wrath of climate change.
In Texas, climate change is still a suspect concept, at least to the Republicans who run the state. In November of 2019, a University of Texas poll found that 55 percent of Texas Republicans said the government should do “little” or “nothing” to prepare for climate change, and 44 percent denied that it exists.
So, naturally, Texas did not require its power plants to be well-insulated, or its gas lines to be buried deep enough to escape the frost. Both failed on a large scale when hit with this historically harsh weather.
[My emphasis]
“Climate Change” has become the quasi-religious rationalization for every weather event that is not perfect. Like a traditional religionist who sees God in whatever observation they feel like, so climate religionists see climate change in any weather event they don’t like. But like God, Climate Change is a convenient way to describe something the observer wishes to be true. But that’s all that Moran is expressing -- a wish, or feeling.
Moran blames the Texas cold wave and snow and ice storms on climate change, just as he blames Sandy on climate change. But the weather patterns that brought these extreme weather events are not new. One example is the winter of 1962-1963, when a similar pattern of arctic air plunging into the deep south took hold. That cold spell, which lasted much longer, was likewise caused by a north-south jet stream configuration. That brutal winter, which I remember well, was featured on the cover of Life magazine under the headline “1963: Most Savage Winter of the Century.” The article contained a diagram showing a North American jet stream that surged into the arctic over Alaska, then plunged South to Texas and the tropical Gulf Coast--an almost exact replica of the jet stream that engulfed Texas in arctic air. New Jersey has long been known to be vulnerable to the kind of jet stream pattern that freakishly directed Sandy west for a direct hit on the Jersey coast. The 1993 book “Great Storms of the Jersey Shore”, 1st edition, contains a final chapter about a hypothetical storm that slams the Jersey shore in eerily similar fashion, based on an eerily similar weather pattern to as Sandy, so as to be prophetic (Chapter 8, “The Storm That Eats The Jersey Shore”). In other words, Sandy was long expected by meteorological experts.
More broadly, Roger Pielke Jr. gives a sober analysis of extreme weather history in his book The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change, 2nd Edition. Using widely available data and science, Pielke concludes that weather is by and large not getting more extreme. A report published by the Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters likewise concludes that, according to data, extreme weather was more prevalent in the first half of the 20th Century than in the second half, completely contrary to the narrative peddled by the likes of Tom Moran.
Neither the Texas cold wave nor Sandy were something new “caused by climate change” (which, in any event, is a ridiculous phrase, since climate doesn’t cause weather, weather causes climate). But, hell, these are mere facts. Moran can’t let facts get in the way of his narrative.
Related Reading:
The Religious Faith Behind Climate Change Fear Mongering
The Heroes who Enabled Advance Warning of Sandy -- My article in The Objective Standard
Droughts No Match for Fossil-Fueled Industrial Agriculture
Are Floods More Frequent, as Climate Alarmists Claim? by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul Knappenberger
Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 – An Enduring Conundrum for Wise Policy Advice—Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters
It is therefore surprising to discover that by all the various real world data considered here, the weather in the first half of the 20th century was, if anything, more extreme than in the second half.
It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 years’ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change.
The Truth About Sea Levels—Alex Epstein
Assume 6 Feet of Sea Level Rise: Predict Catastrophe—Useful science or worst case scaremongering? by Ronald Bailey
The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change, 2nd Edition, by Roger Pielke, Jr.
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