The Solution to Extreme Weather Issues is not to Reduce GHG Emissions

Roger Caiazza

As a meteorologist I find it frustrating that every extreme weather event is considered a reflection of “a “new normal” due to the effects of climate change”.  As a pragmatic environmentalist, it is even more frustrating when a report comes out criticizing New York’s infrastructure resiliency to minimize the effects of extreme weather but fails to pick up the tradeoffs between resiliency infrastructure investments versus reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will supposedly prevent extreme weather.   This article describes an example of this dynamic: the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) extreme weather resiliency plan and recent flooding in New York City.

New York City Flooding

On September 29, 2023, CNN reported that “Record rain in New York City generates ‘life-threatening’ flooding, overwhelms streets and subways”.  Fox News said New York received record rain:

“Friday’s deluge dropped 8.05 inches of rain at JFK Airport, making it the wettest day on record, beating Hurricane Irene’s daily record set back on Aug. 14, 2011, the National Weather Service said. Widespread rain totals of 4 to 6 inches were New York City, Long Island and Hudson Valley, with locally higher amounts in excess of 7 inches of rain.

Tony Heller does a great job documenting historical accounts of extreme weather events.  He found that on October 8, 1903 New York received 10.04 inches of rain.

Ryan Maue checked out the Central Park precipitation data and found that on September 23, 1882 the site measured the highest daily value of 8.28” and that this recent event was the 9^th wettest day at that site.

Nonetheless, it did not prevent the usual suspects, including Governor Hochul from blaming climate change: “This is unfortunately what we have to expect as the new normal”.  She also described the storm as “Mother Nature at her most powerful.”  “This was the kind of rain that was once unimaginable — we called them once-in-a- century storms,” Hochul said Saturday. “But this is the third time since I was sworn in two years ago, I’ve had a once-in-a-century storm.” 

Of course, this storm will also be used as more justification by the same crowd to justify implementation of New Yorks Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero transition.  Because it is generally accepted that climate change caused by GHG emissions did not kick in until after 1950, the higher historical precipitation in 1882 and 1903 conclusively falsify the Governor’s “new normal” and the idea that GHG emission reductions can prevent further similar storms. 

MTA Climate Resilience Upgrades

Flooding caused major disruptions to New York’s subway system, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Agency.  The flash flood caused “full or partial suspension of service on half the lines in the system, with MTA officials saying full service was restored by 8:30 p.m after 20 million gallons of water were pumped out of the subway”. On a personal note, the subway closures forced my grand-daughter to stay with a classmate in Manhattan rather than going home to Brooklyn that day.

A couple of days earlier, the MTA published a 20-year needs assessment report that said “Some 400 miles of subway tracks, half of Metro-North’s Hudson Line and several Long Island Rail Road stations are in dire need of upgrades to stave off flooding and other extreme weather exacerbated by climate change.”  The Resilience Improvement weblink states:

Climate change is here—and we must prepare. Over the next two decades, climate change projections indicate that the New York region will experience more frequent and intense coastal storms, more than twice the current number of torrential rainfall events, and triple the current number of extreme heat days over 90 degrees. Meanwhile, sea levels will rise approximately 2.5 feet by the 2050s and almost 5 feet by the 2080s.

Our infrastructure was not built to withstand future climate conditions. We’ve made significant progress retrofitting, renovating, and rebuilding infrastructure in anticipation of future climate conditions, but climate change won’t wait for us to finish. For our systems to keep running as lifelines through the coming climate-induced crises, we must move faster.

On the same day of the storm, the State Comptroller’s office released “Risk Assessment and Implementation of Measures to Address Extreme Weather Conditions”.   The objective of this audit was:

To determine whether the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) – New York City Transit (Transit) identified potential damage to its system and developed plans to mitigate the effect of extreme weather conditions and flooding. We also determined whether the MTA tested/updated the plans and inspected and maintained the equipment to ensure they can be deployed when needed. Our audit covered the period from April 2009 to August 2022.

The key findings of the report include the following:

To date, the MTA has not implemented one of the most important recommendations of the 2009 Report – the development of the climate change adaptation master plan. Since Superstorm Sandy, Transit has assessed and identified areas of its system that are at risk of flooding from extreme weather events and developed and carried out capital projects to both correct damage caused by Superstorm Sandy and mitigate potential flooding conditions in the Transit system. Further:

• Our review of a sample of 23 of 221 capital projects intended to correct or prevent damage found that projects were often incomplete in scope of work, not finished on time or within budget, or insufficiently documented. Just two of six critical stations that Transit indicated should have been made more watertight and resistant to potential flooding were completed in one project we reviewed. Another project was initiated to prevent flood water from entering 14 fan plants; however, only 11 fan plants were mitigated. Transit officials stated the three remaining fan plants were completed but did not provide documentation to support their statements. (Fan plants are facilities with large vent gratings and fans located atop shafts connected to the Transit tunnels.)
• Transit did not sufficiently document inspections of individual pieces of equipment. Instead, it reported more broadly by subway stations or by rooms in off-site facilities that were inspected. In one instance, because not all rooms were inspected at a facility, we were able to determine that 51 of 72 pieces of equipment in our sample were not inspected between January 2021 and August 2022.
• While Transit has developed winter, hurricane, rain, and extreme heat plans, we found that these plans were inconsistently activated, with no documentation explaining the rationale for decision making. In our sample of 18 weather events, plans were not activated for six events that included tropical storms, hurricanes, or coastal flooding.

I support the concept to identify and address potential flooding conditions. My problem with this report is that it does not recognize the differences between weather and climate, namely weather is going to cause flooding conditions whether or not climate change exacerbates the impacts.  It seems that climate change must be included as part of the marketing to get support for the audit.

Discussion

Response to the 20-year plan included the concern by advocates that no costs were attached to the plans for the improvements that MTA says is necessary.  For example:

“While the MTA’s needs assessment is thorough and shows that our transit system is in dire need of investment, it lacks dollar figures showing exactly how much money will be needed to fix the subways, buses, and commuter railroads,” wrote Rachael Fauss with the good government group Reinvent Albany in an email. “The needs of everyday riders must come first. In an environment of limited resources, it is essential that we prioritize capital projects based on objective measures of need, not politics, to repair the subways, buses and commuter railroads and ensure that they continue to best serve New Yorkers in this era of climate change.”

I think it is important to consider whether the net-zero transition GHG emission reduction measures in New York State will have any material effect on the extreme weather events that caused the problems observed during the latest flash flood.  The answer to that question is no.  As noted previously, the fact that there were days with greater rainfall before GHG emissions allegedly became the driver of observed global warming suggests that GHG emissions reductions would have to go to pre-industrial levels to just keep rainfall rates at the same level as 1882.  That is clearly an ambitious target even if you believe that GHG concentrations are a driver of extreme weather and I don’t believe that.  It gets worse.  New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year since 1990.  Even if GHG emissions in New York were to get to zero, that reduction will be supplanted by increases elsewhere in less than a year.

Conclusion

One of my pragmatic principles is Russel Schussler’s observation that “We can do almost anything we want, but we can’t do everything”.  In this instance the costs of the Climate Act’s net-zero transition should be considered relative to the MTA plan.  The upgrades necessary to prevent extreme rainfall events and storm surge from flooding New York’s subway system will be enormous but at the end of the day those investments would have a measurable effect.  In order to get to net-zero, the costs will be an order of magnitude greater than “enormous” with no hope for a measurable effect on severe weather.  I agree with Rachel Fauss: “it is essential that we prioritize capital projects based on objective measures of need, not politics”.

The disconnect between MTA, the media, and even Fauss in this example is frustrating.  For example, Rachael Fauss noted that the investments are necessary “in this era of climate change” misses the point that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get.  Climate change had very little effect on this event and certainly not enough to cause the storm or materially change its impacts.  Ultimately, throwing away money on a pointless virtue-signaling net-zero transition will likely forestall the investments needed to maintain and strengthen the resiliency of the subway system.  Reducing New York GHG emissions in a quest to minimize  extreme weather issues in New York is not going to work and will be counter-productive for real solutions.

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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  He blogs about the RGGI program because he has been involved with it since its inception and nobody else apparently wants to review it.   This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.