I originally said this about the Cheeto-Faced Shit-Gibbon, but it’s an ideological truth about an entire class of Republicans … as we’re now seeing in Texas:
Trump’s view of government and America is a bit like this: say we slowly but surely removed the requirement for every single safety and emissions feature ever required for motor vehicles since the advent of the automobile.
Cars would get lighter. Cars would get faster. Cars might get better fuel economy. Cars might get cheaper, but our air quality would get steadily worse, and accidents and fatalities would inexorably rise.
One of my cousins lives in Texas, and she just moved there a few years ago. She moved there right after she got her PhD to join the team researching the Ebola vaccine. She grew up in Chicago. She’s coping with a toddler and a newborn right now, and no power, although she and her husband watched the news reports, and bought bottled water a couple of days before the storm actually hit, and they happen to have both a fireplace and a gas stove.
I still worry.
She says she had no idea how truly unprepared Texas was for this. Having grown up in Chicago, she at least knows how to drive in snow, and because she visits family in Chicago and out east, they have winter coats, boots and hats. Her daughter is loving playing in the snow.
I still worry.
I know she has a PhD now, but I changed her diapers, rocked her to sleep, and took a picture of her face down in her first birthday cake. I worry.
She wasn’t there when a lot of the decisions were made that resulted in what is happening now.
She’s paying attention now, though. Because she grew up in Chicago, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that she assumed people took care of this-- and because this is freak weather for Texas, it is understandable that Texas was this unprepared.
I do have one question, unrelated to my cousin: is the fact that this hit Texas (and from what I understand, parts of Mexico, too) so hard, a result of global warming? I know that seems counter-intuitive, since it’s called “global warming,” but isn’t a lot of freak weather in general, of all types, attributable to it?
While global warming is a perfectly cromulent descriptor of the climate crisis, things like this situation in Texas are then used as “proof” that global warming is a myth. That’s why many use the much broader descriptor, climate change, which includes all of the aspects other than just average temperature increases, such as wind patterns, precipitation, storm severity, etc.
As for whether it was the cause of the Texas issue, I don’t think it’s possible to state that as an absolute, but it’s certainly valid to say that you can expect those types of things to occur at differing frequencies, severities, and geographies than traditionally expected, thanks to anthropogenic climate change, as @Darren_Garrison noted.
I’m listening to one of her audiobooks now. I’ve missed her through the past four years of Trump – she would have devastated him (look what she did with George W.).
For this she’d have written one of her more serious columns. As a Texan she knew what was going on, and had the position to be able to tell it straight. But she’d have a barb at the end of the piece. And she’d follow it up the next day with a column skewering Abbott, Cruz, and ERCOT in no uncertain terms. And be hilarious doing it.
There are already a couple of good responses to this. What I’ll add is that it’s never a good idea to attempt to link any specific weather event to global warming, because weather is inherently chaotic and the best that you might be able to say is that climate change increases the likelihood of some particular type of event. OTOH, it’s definitely true that climate change is affecting global circulation systems (atmospheric and oceanic) and is driving both higher probabilities of extreme weather events as well as potentially long-term changes to some regional climates. Those changes can include unseasonable cold in some places, even when overall global temperatures are rising.
Already a number of good responses. Just wanted to add that this is a weather event, which is episodic. Climate is what occurs over an extended period of time. Chances are, Texans will experience one of the all-time hottest summers on record in a matter of months, and if not this year, then it will experience one of its hottest summers on record sometime in the next 2-5 years. That’s a fairly safe prediction given the amount of carbon that is in the air and the amount of heat it has trapped.
That late, great, and insightfully funny proud Texan, Molly Ivins, who dearly loved her native state, has said much the same sort of thing. Some of my favorite quotes:
“In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor’s] office; it’s mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.”
“Good thing we’ve still got politics in Texas - finest form of free entertainment ever invented.”
“I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.”
“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.”
Give a call back when they get past the “beginning to look” stage…which at this point is akin to “beginning to consider smoke alarms” as the firemen hose down the ashes from your house fire.
I’ve read that because of the Arctic ice melting and the CO2 emissions the polar vortex has become more unstable and more likely to move further south than usual. ISTM that global warming can indeed cause exaggerated winter weather just as it can cause increased number and severity of tornadoes and hurricanes and hotter, longer summers. It’s still the warming that is causing it. It’s just willful ignorance or outright lies that politicians use to say look it’s a snowstorm! Global warming is a lie!
Texas has no one but themselves to blame. They were warned repeatedly that their electrical scheme was unsustainable and they keep electing crony Republicans who are openly hostile to good governance. Why is anyone surprised that a west Texas mayor told his constituents that only the strong will survive and that taking care of citizens is not his job, or that Ted Cruz doesn’t care about his state? Why would anyone think otherwise?
They keep doing the same thing and getting the same shitty outputs.
It certainly could be a factor as increasing global warmth and climate change is likely to disrupt established patterns.
The poles are warming faster than locations closer to the equator, which is affecting the jet stream, and the jet stream moving south is what pulled the polar vortex south. So yes, likely, but not rigorously proven.
Fuck Jerry Jones and the other natural gas providers/investors.
From The Dallas Morning News:
"Supply for next-day delivery at the Oneok Gas Transportation hub in Oklahoma traded at $1250.00 per million British thermal units on Wednesday, according to David Hoy, a trader at Dynasty Power in Calgary. That’s up from $999 on Tuesday, and just $9.00 a week ago
And electricity went from $50 for 1 Mwh of power to $9,000 for 1 Mwh. I’m glad I am on a fixed rate plan. I’m paying $114 per Mwh. The people on Variable rate plans have been totally screwed. One guys monthly electric bill on a variable plan went from $650 last month to $15,000 this month.
Actually first seen in a textbook from 1901 called “Outlines of Physiography” by the geographer Andrew John Herbertson.
“By climate we mean the average weather as ascertained by many years’ observations. Climate also takes into account the extreme weather experienced during that period. Climate is what on an average we may expect, weather is what we actually get.”
