Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Sydney Morning Herald claims that Exxon Mobil contributed to the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. Since Exxon is headquartered in Texas, SMH seems to think the suffering of Texans affected by the storm is self-inflicted.
Houston, you have a problem, and some of it of your own making
Peter Hannam
Yes, Houston, you do have a problem, and – as insensitive as it seems to bring it up just now – some of it is your own making.
Let’s be clear upfront. I unreservedly wish that all of your millions of citizens get safely through Tropical Storm Harvey, and the biblical-scale deluge and floods that are forecast to swamp your city in coming days.
But, as the self-styled “world capital of the oil and gas industry”, there’s a connection between rising global greenhouse gas levels and the extreme weather now being inflicted that some of your residents have understood for decades and had a hand in.
…
In fact, as an important research paper by Harvard University researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes released last week showed, the largest of them – ExxonMobil – deliberately told the public a story at odds with their own research.
By stoking doubts about the climate change consequences of burning fossils, the behemoth misled voters for four decades, successfully stymieing demands for action in the US and abroad, including in Australia.
Although ExxonMobil is headquartered in another Texan city, Dallas, it bases many operations in Houston. The company has picked Houston to host a sprawling new campus north of the city that will reportedly house 8000 employees.
…
When the clean-up eventually begins in Houston and other regions battered and drenched in this week’s tempest, questions about what protection will be needed for the next big storm will no doubt surface.
Given its unusual dependence on fossil-fuel industries, though, it will be interesting to watch if Houston queries – tactfully and delicately – its own contribution to the catastrophe.
This desperate chain of maybes is like the magical thinking of the dark ages. Can anyone imagine such mush being written in a mainstream newspaper a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago?
Certainly it should be no surprise that Houston has flooded…
The warnings have been there for some while.
this piece is from June this year.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/19/houston-will-experience-increasingly-catastrophic-flooding-coming-decades-will-residents-industry-respond/
“While Houston, Texas, is already regularly home to some of the worst flooding events that occur within the US, the reality is that, thanks to rising seas, increasingly extreme rainstorms, and increasingly powerful hurricanes, such events will actually become considerably worse over the coming decades.”
[it was a stalled hurricane extended rain event, and had nothing at all to do with sea level, sheesh… this is probably the stupidest attempt at trying to convince people of AGW effects you’ve ever made here -Anthony]
Griff,
I have lived in Houston, for 54 years.
I am active in flood control and infrastructure issues.
There is no slr issue contributing to flooding problems in Houston. A quick study if reality Shows why.
Houston is over 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and many miles from Galveston Bay.
The flooding came from inland waterways, bayousvand creeks and rivers.
The increased frequency of flooding us directly related to the failure of local governments to control development of agricultural land into neighborhoods and commercial/industrial properties and the ensuing changes in rain runoff. Added to this is negligent care for and expansion of flood control infrastructure.
Your pathetic obsession on climate is not only ignorant (as is typical of you) but infuriating since you are seeking to use the suffering of myself and my fellow Houstonians to advance your religious mania regarding CO2.
The problem with people like Griff, in the UK, and Hannam, in Australia, is that at some point in time they run into someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Well done hunter.
Seems like several flood prone areas, Somerset in the UK and Brisbane in Australia have been similarly allowed to urbanise at the same time letting flood mitigation measures falter. Water will go wherever it wants without proper management and control. Many people simply cannot comprehend that a cubic metre of water weighs a metric tonne. 1 tonne moving at say 30- 40kph contains a massive amount of energy, we can even calculate that. Multiply that by many thousands of cubic metres…the water can, literally, move mountains.
Thank you, Patrick.
The wicked stupidity and willful bad faith of climate creeps like Griff, or the editor behind that perverse anti-science claptrap at SMH, to Mann and Hansen, is vile untrue and hurtful.
And distracting.
+1
In a discussion with a friend last night we agreed that what will bring down civilisation is not carbon dioxide, nor yet will it be peak oil.
It will be instead peak stupid.
Quite simply clever men and women have built a society that is so complex and machine dependent that it takes a team of highly trained technocrats to run it, which would be fine, if only the exact same society hadn’t become prey to the parasites of any society – the liberal and arts and humanities people – who with time on their hands and being skilled at expostulating the ultimate in bovine excrement, have now subverted the political process and taken control of the reins of power without even the faintest idea of what to do with them.
And then in a bid to cement their power base, have infiltrated the schools and replaced selection of the competent with no competition, so everyone gets full Marx.
In short the people who have the ability to succeed in politics today are the worst possible people to actually run a technological post industrial society.
And the tenets and dogma of cultural Marxism – the emphasis on social justice, fairness and parochial care for the stupid, by the stupid, is the worst possible ethos to develop strong able and capable men and women with a sense of responsibility towards society.
The world needs savants, not sociologists. Artisans, not art students. Skilled leaders and planners, not sheep who bleat if anyone dares proclaim themselves as leadership material, but who will meekly follow any charlatan who promises them almost anything.
There is no cure. Civilisation will collapse precisely because it has been so successful it has taken the challenge out of life, and accidentally bred a generation of complete nincompoops.
In Britain, our equivalent to Clinton is Jeremy Corbyn, dyed in et wool communist, now polling enough to put him into power, and here is our electorate:
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/acolytes.png
+10. It seems clear from posters like Griff that stupid is very likely to overwhelm everything.
The stupid left Houston vulnerable to Harvey.
And is apparently fixated on destroying the Presidency, as they have most important institutions.
Leo: It’s lucky for you Brits that there is no equivalent to Hillary, she is pure undiluted mendacity in pants (suits). If Corbyn tangled with her, he would be found after the apparent suicide, shot 5 times with 3 different guns, and the coroner (who just got a nice part time position with the Clinton Global Init.) would confirm suicide. It’s lucky beyond words for us that she came in second.
Per ERSSTv5, northern gulf warmed +0.2C since 1950. Also SST cooled by hurricane prior to tropical storm rain. AGW signal likely doesn’t rise above the noise.
Obviously the attempt to link Harvey, higher rainfall and increased hurricanes explicitly to CAGW after a 12 year “drought” is ridiculous. When it supports CAGW it’s climate, when it doesn’t it’s weather.
But the thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that advanced industrialisation (enabled by cheap/reliable energy, largely from fossil fuels) is a key reason why Texas has only seen around 40 deaths from Harvey – which is amazing from something so devastating.
Before major industrialisation Galveston in a Texas had 27K deaths from a Hurricane. The Phillipines with a far lower GDP and less sturdy buildings had 6K+ from Tyhpoon Haiyan only 4 years ago.
How did the NOAA satellites get into orbit? Solar?
Where did all the concrete & plastics come from in Texas for buildings and temporary shelter? Biomass?
What fuels the rescue boats and helicopters, and creates the GDP necessary to build and run them? Wind?
If we lived in the environmentalist “utopia” where we have hardly any energy and no industrialisation, even on their terms we’d be about 1C lower temp, but tens of thousands would be getting massacred every year from the climate and “Mother Nature”.
…well reducing humans, like making omelettes, requires breaking a few things.
And CAGW proponents seem to believe in breaking the eggs and we never even get the omelette…
It seems more and more likely that the AGW adherents are on a diet of stupid pills. I still expect, any day now, for them to say hang nails are caused by climate change.
Articles such as Hannam’s display both a profound ignorance as well as an evil quality. In true Climate Cult fashion, he not only capitalizes on other’s misery, but actually blames them in broad-brush fashion, for their own misery. CAGW once again, rears its ugly head of lies and humanity-hating. We truly do live in a dark age.
At its heart, as Griff and so many other believers demonstrate, climate fanaticism is profoundly anti-human and pro destruction.
Their dark hearts hate us and want us to suffer.
Every event is lied, spun, cherry picked to accomplish the heartless desire.
Any facts counter to their evil vision are ignored.
Peter Hannam is a total fracking retard.
There are many types of metrics for one weather event. It is likely rather than not likely someone will find a metric out of many to declare that a record has been broken. It is the intrinsic nature of the multi-metric beast, not because of external driving forces be they up or down during the plateau peak of an interstadial period.
Texas has THOUSANDS of wind turbines. Obviously, the writer does not care. One drop of fossil fuel and you become the fanged, evil planet destroyer.
Texas is the largest wind producer in the nation.
The climate creeps don’t care.
They only want ideological purity.
And what does Mr Hannam make of this in his own backyard if you can call a continent that-
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/onslow.shtml
Can you see any hand of Exxon Mobil, etc in the tropical cyclone capital of Oz you miserable, ignoramus scold?
‘increasingly extreme rainstorms, and increasingly powerful hurricanes’
Except that there’s no evidence of that is there Griff?
Grift knows that perfectly well. No one can visit this site regularly and NOT know, unless you’re just here to sell snake-oil.
In which case, you’re just pretending not to know anyway.
Yes. Exxon Mobil contributed nearly a billion US dollars to Hurricane Harvey to encourage a direct strike on the Valero refinery. Had to be that.
That, by the way, is sarcasm. I shouldn’t have to say it, but in the internet world I must.
The chance that this would not be exploited by warmists was zero.
I wish Vegas had a betting line on it, because it’s so rare you get a sure thing.
Peter Hannah’s hot air is significantly more responsibile for hurricane damage than any oil company.
I have felt for some time now that this whole green movement and its spokespersons have become a religious cult, at least in their behavioral patterns. Now they are claiming that weather is punishing the “deniers” for their sins. Absolutely ridiculous!! The climate is changing, just the same as it has for 4 Billion years. The changes we are seeing today are a mere ripple when contrasted with the changes the earth has undergone in the past 700 million years. Remember, these “scientists ” now want to jail people who deny their doctrine of CO2 caused warming, a matter of scientific debate still today. Crazy people”Climate Zealots” per se ……
Seems a bit hypocritical for people who use gasoline in their cars, natural gas and heating oil to heat and power their homes and offices, lubricants in all their mechanical devices, and plastics made from petrochemicals in every aspect of their lives to blame Texans for being willing to do the work of manufacturing these essentials and delivering them to those who then say Texas somehow deserved Hurricane Harvey….