Sorry, Texas Tribune, Texas Is Not Suffering Extreme Weather Because of Climate Change
By Paul Homewood
Repost from Climate Realism:
A search of Google news for phrase “climate change” found an article in the Texas Tribune in which the writer, Erin Douglas, repeats the tired claim that scientists agree human caused climate change is causing increases in extreme weather. This claim is doubly false. First, there has been no increasing trend in hurricane strength, droughts, or that a warmer climate is causing colder winters. Second, there is no consensus among scientists that climate change will necessarily make the weather worse.
In the Texas Tribune article, titled “A year after the electric grid failed, Texas focuses on reliability, not climate change,” its author rightly points out that there are issues with renewable power sources like wind and solar, due to their dependence on weather and consequent unreliability. Despite these drawbacks, Douglas maintains greater reliance on these sources are necessary due to anthropogenic climate change and its alleged effect on extreme weather events.
Douglas writes:
If climate change does not slow, scientists agree that the severe weather that’s already straining the Texas grid is likely to become worse: Climate scientists project increased frequency and severity of droughts, stronger hurricanes and rising overall temperatures, among other effects in Texas.
Emerging science also suggests that climate change may swing cold air much farther south than it might have previously, contributing to severe and long-lasting cold snaps such as last year’s winter storm.
In fact, data show that there is no increasing trend in hurricane frequency or intensity, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says there is “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.” The IPCC’s admission is confirmed by the Hurricane data presented in the graphic below.
Figure 1: Graph showing global hurricane frequency since 1970
Climate alarmists often argue that the modest warming of the oceans will “supercharge” hurricanes in the Gulf, but they ignore the effect of increased wind shear also associated with warming. As discussed in in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, scientists have learned that global warming is likely to cause more wind shear in places where hurricanes form and intensify. Wind shear tends to dissipate and disrupt the formation and continuation of tropical cyclones.
Contrary to Douglas’ assertion, the IPCC is makes clear scientists don’t agree that droughts have been or will increase due to climate change. In its most recent Climate Assessment Report, AR6, the IPCC distinguishes four categories of drought: hydrological, meteorological, ecological, and agricultural. According to the IPCC, there is limited evidence climate change has increased the number, duration, or intensity of hydrological or meteorological droughts, and it has only medium confidence it has “contributed to changes in agricultural and ecological droughts and has led to an increase in the overall affected land area.”
For ecological and agricultural droughts the data is a mixed bag. The IPCC divides the world into 47 separate regions of study when analyzing drought trends, and its data suggest ecological and agricultural drought may have increased during the period of modest warming in 12 of those 47 regions. However, in only two of those regions does the IPCC have even “medium confidence” for any human role in the observed increase. For the remaining regions experiencing a possible increase in droughts, the IPCC has low confidence human activities have had any discernible impact.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also debunks the claim that climate change is causing cold air to dip further south, resulting in record cold. NOAA tracks state-by-state temperature records, and the data for Texas reveals no real increasing trend in cold snaps as suggested by fallible computer models.
Figure from https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/tx/
The debate continues as to what effect modest warming may have on weather patterns, but the available data makes evident there is no strong trend of increasing weather extremes that would necessitate abandoning the reliable natural-gas dominated grid of Texas. Indeed, if weather extremes were becoming more likely, making the electric grid even more dependent on weather being predictable and consistent, as Douglas endorses, would almost certainly result in more frequent and prolonged power failures, like Texans experienced last winter, rather than fewer blackouts. The best way to secure any power grid is to reduce the weather’s ability to affect it. That means maintaining existing reliable electric power sources like coal, natural gas, and nuclear facilities, and building more of them to ensure sufficient electric power for a growing state population.
Linking extreme weather events to climate change is fearmongering, preying on peoples’ natural and reasonable fear of the power and destruction these events display. The data, by contrast, make clear humans are less vulnerable to climate extremes than ever before. Let’s not reverse course now, by giving uncontrollable weather a greater ability to impact our power and transportation systems.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
One interpretation of the Ukrainian ‘crisis’ is that it has dawned on politicians that the whole Climate Change schtick is giving far to much power to pseudo scientists and journalists, so they want to go back having a purely political external threat for the media to obsess about.
Of course the other interpretation is that the Democrats needed a crisis to alleviate what may well b a disaster with the mid-terms.
Not to mention the Conservatives.
I think our wonderful govt. do believe it’s all real, Truss certainly seems to. Personally I don’t, I think it started off as a spiel by the Democrats to look good in the mid-terms, which Zelensky went along with. Putin has used the crisis to test western response to perceived threat. I think he wants the strip of land round the Azov to Crimea, but not the cost of the rest of Ukraine.
I have also long believed that he wants the Baltics, and this crisis has been a useful probing for objective.
As pointed out in a good comment in the DT this morning: Putin wants to occupy Ukraine because he does not want a NATO-affiliated country on his border – but by so doing he will end up with three other NATO-affiliated countries on his doorstep.
Paul, I am aware that sometimes quotes from IPCC SPM can be at odds with the actual body of the WG reports. When we see, ‘IPPC says…’, should we be sure that it’s not just the SPM says…
Harry, Putin wants Ukraine back in his sphere of influence because Russia has never been able to feed itself without the support of Ukrainian grain. Stalin starved the Ukrainians and sold their grain abroad for foreign exchange in the late 1920s and 30s. The Great Famine led to the Ukrainian distrust of Moscow and, to them welcoming the Germans in 1941.
That chart showing “Observed Number of Entire Days Below Freezing” is a bit misleading methinks.
“Entire Days”?
First being, we could have 60 or more occurrences during a winter period where the temperature reaches 32°F or below on a given day, but if the temp during the same 24 hour period reaches even a tic above 32°F (at the measuring station I might add) that day is not included in those totals I guess. Seems like a spin on a trend that does not accurately reflect the trend in its totality. I found chart that displays the number of freezes recorded by year/season, but even that I’d view with a shade of skepticism as sometimes Ft Worth can be covered in ice and/or snow, and we here over in Dallas County don’t get a single flake and may even have clear skies. I don’t know if it “counts” in instances where Ft Worth is frozen but Dallas is not. (or vice-versa)
https://www.weather.gov/fwd/d32data
That’ll bring us to the second thing, which is the Dallas/Ft.Worth metroplex is massive, and the temperatures can vary wildly depending on one is in the city or out in the burbs or out in the sticks. I can recall days where downtown Dallas is reporting a temperature much higher than our thermometers out in the burbs 11.5 miles (18.5km) away. And yes, in this case there is a microsphere of climate change happening there as there’s all sorts of centralize infrastructure in the city that is making the temperatures warmer in the city, but to use the temperatures/conditions recorded only in this little bubble seems a bit short-sighted to me. I don’t think aggregating/averaging necessarily accurately reflects cold weather trends either.
What I’m mainly thinking about there is places like Lubbock are almost 3,000 feet higher in elevation than Dallas, and Amarillo is over 3,000 feet higher in elevation than Dallas. I tried to find a chart on the number of freezes per year in Lubbock and Amarillo but could not find any, nor for Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Tyler, Alpine, Wichita Falls, Lufkin or Brownsville Did find one for Waco (which is about 100 miles south of D/FW)
https://www.weather.gov/fwd/w32data
Oh, and it’s currently 27°F (-3°C) as I sit here and write this. Yesterday afternoon, I had to walk a little over a mile outside, the weather app on my phone said it was “only” 37°F in Dallas, but the winds were probably a sustained 25mph (40kph) and gusting much higher…I froze my junk off. I’m sure 37°F doesn’t seem that bad to someone sitting inside a nice warm office, or for those who only have to walk a short distance from their heated homes to their heated cars, but the reality is that temps even being just a shade above freezing doesn’t mean it ain’t damn cold outside.