Roger Caiazza
I came across a paper that concludes “The US power grid is proven to be highly reliable in general; however, the resilient and reliable grid operation is increasingly challenged by severe weather events–events that are increasing in frequency and magnitude due to climate change.” I have many issues with this paper, but I am only going to discuss one. Apparently peer reviewed papers today require marginal support for claiming increasing severity because everyone knows that climate change affects the frequency and magnitude of severe weather events
The paper in question is “Powerless in the storm: Severe weather driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020” (Flores NM, Northrop AJ, Do V, Gordon M, Jiang Y, Rudolph KE, et al. (2024) Powerless in the storm: Severe weather-driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020. PLOS Clim 3(5): e0000364. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000364)
The only proof cited to “support climate change is increasing weather variability” is the reference to this sentence: “The power grid’s vulnerability to severe weather events becomes even more critical in the context of climate change, which is expected to increase weather variability and prevalence of extreme events (e.g., storms, wildfires, heatwaves, floods)”. The reference included cites the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report: IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Portner H.-O., Roberts D.C., Tignor M., Poloczanska E.S., Mintenbeck K., Alegrı´a A., Craig M., Langsdorf S., Lo¨schke S., Mo¨ ller V., Okem A., Rama B. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 3056 pp., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844
The Other Side of the Story
However, if the authors were to look at the actual IPCC report rather than what they assumed it would say about the example weather events (storms, wildfires, heatwaves, floods) the narrative falls apart.
The CO2 Coalition published a paper prepared by Richard Lindzen, William Happer, Steven Koonin on April 16, 2024 titled Fossil Fuels and Greenhouse Gases Climate Science. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Happer Professor of Physics, Emeritus Princeton University; and Steven Koonin University Professor, New York University, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution reviewed what the IPCC documents actually said about these extreme weather events. The paper explains:
Hurricanes. A deep analysis of the facts reveals that “the data and research literature are starkly at odds with this message” — “hurricanes and tornadoes show no changes attributable to human influences.” Id. pp. 111-12. Further, “There has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones nor has any trend been identified in the number of U.S. land-falling hurricanes.” U.S. Global Climate Research Program, 3rd National Climate Assessment, Appendix 3, p. 769 (footnotes omitted).
Wildfires. There is a powerful new source of data on wildfires, “Sophisticated satellite sensors first began monitoring wildfires globally in 1993.” Id. p. 142.
The result of this new source of data is totally contrary to what is in the news. Unsettled cites NASA data and others that show the global area burned by fires declined each year from 1998 to 2015:
“Unexpectedly, this analysis of the images shows that the area burned annually declined by about 25% from 1998 to 2015.” Further, “Despite the very destructive wildfires in 2020, that year was among the least active globally since 2003.” Id. p. 142.
Heat Waves. On extreme temperatures in the U.S., we all agree: “The annual number of high temperature records set shows no significant trend over the past century, nor over the past 40 years.” Koonin, supra, p. 110.
Flooding: US data shows “modest changes in US rainfall during the past century haven’t changed the average incidence of floods.” Globally, data from the IPCC shows that there is “low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.” We all agree with the summary in Unsettled: “we don’t know whether floods globally are increasing, decreasing, or doing nothing at all.” Id. p. 137.
Discussion
I have nothing to add to the main point that the authors of this paper just assumed that the IPCC found that extreme weather events were increasing despite evidence in the latest report to the contrary. The peer review process did not call them out on this.
For the record the authors, their roles and affiliations follow:
Nina M. Flores
ROLES Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Alexander J. Northrop
ROLES Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATIONS Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Vivian Do
ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Milo Gordon
ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Yazhou Jiang
ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, United States of America
Kara E. Rudolph
ROLES Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Diana Hernández
ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
Joan A. Casey
ROLES Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATIONS Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
One final point is that my impression of the analysis is that the authors had pre-conceived conclusions in mind and tortured the data to get the results desired.
Conclusion
I have to assume that this is an example of the Climate Industry’ Misdirection Campaign described recently by Kip Hansen. All of the authors are associated in some way with public health departments at universities. I doubt that any of them has any background in climatology or meteorology beyond a possibly a class or two in introduction to Climate Change – The Existential Threat. Today it is sufficient to just note that extreme weather is getting worse due to climate change to hype the results claimed because the peer reviewers know that is “true”.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
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“Environmental Health” looks like the sort of major intended for athletes. No math requirement.
If this is the supposed effect
And this the supposed cause
Given cause and effect…
How exactly will making the population dependent on generation that doesn’t work in bad weather solve the problem created by bad weather caused outages?
You need a distribution system / grid that doesn’t fail in storms and a generation supply that isn’t dependent on favorable weather to function anywhere near capacity for 4 hours a day (in the case of Solar) or 4.5 months a year (in the case of Wind) and can’t show resilience in the case of flood (like Battery)
popular with those who flunk out of underwater basket weaving
“The US power grid is proven to be highly reliable in general; however, the resilient and reliable grid operation is increasingly challenged by severe weather events–events that are increasing in frequency and magnitude due to climate change.”
They are trying to imply that there are more problems to the power grid
because of increasing severe weather events because of climate change, where it’s the climate change policies by the Biden administration, etc. that have increased problems with the grid.
The data is available to everyone, if you just did your own homework.
Seems this piece is contrary to the alarmist narrative and the authors are blind, dumb, and/or stupid to fail to see this.
If the grid is vulnerable, does making the grid more extensive reduce the probability of failure? No. Changes in weather patterns not-withstanding.
As climateers fight to cling to a splintering hypothesis of a CO2- caused apocalypse that has yet to show the faintest scintilla of its existence, they are being hit over the head with a ‘By the way’ renewables don’t work either! Without the the strength to fight a rearguard action on this added nightmare, they’ve artlessly woven the two pitiful pieces together.
“The US power grid is proven to be highly reliable in general; however, the resilient and reliable grid operation is increasingly challenged by severe weather events–events that are increasing in frequency and magnitude due to climate change.”
They don’t get it, that what they have forecast is far more more damning for renewables!! Much more variable and extreme weather; hailstorm have already taken out 100s of acres of solar; the Achilles heel of windmills is extreme winds which makes them a stupid machine already; heavy snows, ice storms, windless heatwaves …
In Alberta the Achilles Heel of wind is the cold. When it dropped below -30 C this year, the wind turbines cut out and started drawing power from the failing grid at a rate of about 150 kW each. There are close to 1000 of them. As the cold continued and the wind cut out (it is about 9% of generation) the supply sank below the demand (because it went to -43 degrees in Edmonton).
Facing a grid collapse, the emergency system kicked in and the southern half of the province received a text message imploring people to turn off everything they could. Three days later it happened again and the whole province was asked to turn things off.
The immediate reduction in demand in the second case was reported to be 100 MW which was not enough to heat the wind turbine nacelles and gearboxes. After about an hour the demand dropped 200 MW from its historic peak of about 12.5 GW.
Wind power does work, if it is not too hot, too cold, too windy or too calm.
In other news the 48″ Trans Mountain oil pipeline from Alberta to the coast started operation. *Not* in the news is that a 38″ gas pipeline from Dawson to Kitimat is nearing completion. How they built is hilarious. Pipelines shorter than 40 km are considered “storage” pipes, not pipelines. They built 80 unregulated storage pipes 39 km each, with the ends facing each other. Now they are welding them together.
Roger,
I hope that people who influence and create public policy will read your article and understand it.
I have often publicised Australian raw temperature data that are inconsistent with the Establishment claim that heatwaves are becoming longer, hotter and more frequent.
Was it worth the effort? I have no evidence that it has affected Establishment jargon. Good luck. Geoff S
Ho! Hum!
Back in the 50s/60s a heatwave was for 5 days with a temperature above (mimimum) 35 deg C.
Now it is basically 2 -3 days above 33 deg C.
Apparently in these “modern times” everyone will melt due to the heat. (snowflakes melt above 25 deg C/ 70+ deg F apparently. Dear darlings.
I don’t remember any one in the 50s/60s melting due to the heat These also was no air-conditioning available for houses then, just ceiling or pedestal fans.
Let’s not add the concerns of harmonising of temperature vales either..
As it is here near the top of Spencer Gulf, SA, I have not seen a huge number of heatwaves, or excessive temperatures in Summer. It has all been mild.
This Autumn/Winter is a pain I have had to run the heater most days after 1600 hr as it gets cold.
Just to upset greenies its a gas heater.
We were all tougher in those days, don’t you know.
We had box fans for the windows. Called them air conditioning units.
G’Day nhasys
“These also was no air-conditioning available for houses then, just ceiling or pedestal fans.”
Back in the 1940’s, Brisbane. It’s hot? Open all the doors and windows.
(Except for two hours on Sunday afternoons, when a neighbor practiced playing his cornet. A Salvation Army bandsman. Then we sweated.)
SA?
South America?
You can’t change the mind of cultists with facts.
Geoff,
Reluctantly I have concluded that “people who influence and create public policy” don’t read anything outside of their bubble and are mostly innumerate. Only when the general public starts asking why costs are increasing and reliability is getting worse will the influencers and creators change their ways.
Only if it affects their 10% cut.
“the resilient and reliable grid operation is increasingly challenged by severe weather events–events that are increasing in frequency and magnitude due to climate change”
…not due to climate change; due to weather dependent generation technology.
The grid has always been challenged by weather, not even necessarily severe. Ice, snow, hurricanes, tornados (all forms of weather). What I find ironic is the hardening the climanistas want to be done in response to climate change actually helps the grid to stay operational during weather events.
I suspect that there are detailed reports documenting outages and the reasons for the outages buried somewhere in Public Sevice Commission reports. I am also pretty sure that the results from that work would contradict this effort.
I read an article a few months ago where the grid operators in the U.S. were warning that the various grids might suffer brownouts and blackouts in the near future, and they gave the reason as being because 2.3 percent of their coal-fired power plants had been retired.
What wasn’t mentioned was that this loss of generating capacity was going to be supplied in the future by unreliable windmills and solar.
So the real problem isn’t that they retired 2.3 percent of their coal-fired power plants, but that they replaced this capaicity with unreliable wind and solar which will fail when the weather conditions are right.
Wind and solar are now making too much of an inroad into our grids and are putting all of us at risk of brownouts and blackouts as a result.
The more wind and solar our lunatic politicians add to the grid, the more certain it is that the grid is going to fail.
Wind and solar are not fit for purpose. We should stop using them if we are smart.
Note that only one of the authors hs expertise in writing (drafts). The remaining authors review and edit.
And none of them seem to have any sort of maths or science or engineering background.
. . . as is typical for, oh, about 95% of CAGW alarmists.
Except one (and not from Columbia):
Yazhou Jiang
ROLES Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing
AFFILIATION Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, United States of America
Potsdam
Potsdam.
One of the most crazy climate activist “institutes” in the world..
Elctrical and computer engineering.. what’s that got to do with “climate”, I wonder.
Glorified computer gamers ?
I see a most of these alarmist authors are associated with Columbia University & the last couple of weeks have shown us what kind of sociopaths that cesspool of marxism produces…
You can’t deny that the New York electricity grid is headed for trouble considering that they shut down Indian Point nuclear power plant, won’t allow new natural gas pipelines to increase capacity from this fuel and high interest rates are making wind generation too expensive. Inevitably, climate change has to be scapegoated for poor policy decisions as the state pursues the electrification of everything.
That dross like this gets published tells you all you need to know about the present day abuse of science. That anyone would even consider trying to get stuff like this published tells you all you need to know about the state of climate science today.
They’ve assumed the grid has been static while the climate has been getting worse. While in fact, the greenies have been destabilizing the grid. This is like claiming sea levels are rising while pretending land is static and never rises or sinks or changes in any way.
Policy-based evidence-making at it’s finest.
Absolutely right. You beat me to it.
I like that description!
This is the standard pap added to any news story about “studies” in order to get it published.
Rudimentary logical thought reveals that climate change must be a result and therefore cannot be a cause. The “events” they talk about is the weather. Weather causes climate change, not the other way around.
People who write this pap are idiots as they automatically reveal that they cannot determine between cause and effect.
Both climate and weather have underlying causes (some are the same, some different), but neither weather causes climate, nor climate causes weather.
Both climate and weather are defined using parameters such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, insolation, wind speeds, etc. as well as variability of these values on a certain time scale.
Weather is the short term variability, climate is the long term average of the same parameters.
An average value is not the cause of variability, but neither variability is the cause of the average value.
Weather causes climate.
Climate, under modern definition, is a 30 year average of weather.
The weather today replaces the weather in the average from 30 years ago.
An entity cannot cause itself.
Weather causes climate change, not the other way around.
Thank you!
The paper misses a significant point.
It will not be the ”Climate Change” with their perceived storms being more frequent, it will be the simple fact the grid is not designed for the Nut Zero push for all electric home appliances, EVs and other silly ideas.
So it really doesn’t matter what actual scientific studies conclude, it only matters what media writers and talking heads WANT the studies to conclude.
“Heads I win, tails you lose.”
Expected to? not terribly convincing- another way of saying “could”
But more of a definitely could…
New congress with Republican majority.
Call in EVERY US “scientist” who has written that storms are more severe, etc. due to climate change.
Put them in a big room, take away their phones.
Bring them into the committee chamber one at a time. The committee to meet in a massively Republican voting county.
Ask them one question about their claim. Is this true? Yes or no.
If they answer YES, dismiss them and arrest them for perjury as they exit the meeting room. If they answer NO, have them explain WHY they lied in their paper and the committee to vote that that individual shall NEVER get any federal funding in any form forever.
Must be HUNDREDS of “scientists” and they must be collected up and sequestered until they are asked the question so they cannot change their story and will end up in jail for the perjury.
After the “truth tellers” testify their claims in their papers and in the news were LIES, have the DOE and other federal agencies run adds on all major leftist networks showing their tapdancing about their false proclamations. Use the US government to bolster the anti-insanity narrative, i.e. the truth.
If they claim attribution to other articles/peer reviewed papers, and do not say the claim is true and claim they did not actually verify the attributed paper, again ban them from any federal funding for any research, or for any teaching position at an institution that accepts federal student loans or grants due to gross incompetence.
Then use the testimony to sue facepalm, false tube, google, etc. for their influencing the public perception by skewing the searches and blocking truthful content. Prosecute them for in kind contributions to the Democrat party. Collect up ALL the executives that had a part in the obstruction of truthful content and cage them in another far right county. Conspiracy to influence federal elections.
4 years of pure hell for leftists, using every part of the government possible.
ANY federal employee who bucks the directives to be terminated. not eligible for rehire. Of course remove any federal employee from union protection. No unions allowed, to include any state or local agency that gets federal funds, especially school teachers. The “supremacy” clause will make all local laws requiring state or local employees to pay union dues null and void.
THEN, after the teacher’s unions are broken, give every US citizen child a voucher for primary and secondary education so school choice will be instituted nationwide.
Why MY animosity for teacher’s unions? I have been a member of 4 different unions and “associations”. When the Clark County teacher’s union built their offices, they used ALL non-union construction companies. They care nothing about unions, or student education. See the current contract demands of the Chicago teacher’s union.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chicago-teachers-union-under-fire-for-50b-demands-as-academics-plummet-most-radical-agenda-yet/ar-BB1lUGkv
Just sayin.
Mr. Caiazza has pointed out that the IPCC does not support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is responsible for increasing floods or droughts. Climate change is supposedly a global phenomena caused by the 50% increase in carbon dioxide levels in air occurring over the past 100 years or so. Many claim that this change causes increased air temperature, increased water vapor in the atmosphere and increased rainfall and floods.
According to https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/precipitation/, global rainfall over land averages 46 inches per year. According to https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation, global precipitation over land has been increasing since 1901 at a rate of 0.04 mm (0.0016 inches) per decade or about 0.00016 inches per year over the past 120 years. Compare this 0.00016 inches per year to the average annual rainfall of 46 inches per year, an increase of about 0.003 percent. I expect that global rainfall data for a large part of the 20th century is rather iffy, but accepting EPA’s statement, it seems to me that this tiny change in global precipitation could not possibly be the cause of worldwide changes in floods or droughts.
Clearly, if rain or drought are increasing or decreasing in some area, it must be because of changes in local weather patterns. Perhaps some climate scientist could research local floods and droughts to determine whether there are some local changes that the people or their government could make that would improve the situation. Clearly reducing carbon dioxide levels would do nothing.
That would require work, actual field work, and science, actual science.
They make their bucks contrary to that proposition.
With propaganda it’s always the narrative that over rides the truth/data.
Kudos to Roger Caiazza, author of the above WUWT article, for revealing the glaring deficiencies in the “Powerless in the storm: Severe weather driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020” paper.
Special thanks to him for pointing out that 7 of the 8 co-authors of that paper are associated with Columbia University, with the eighth co-author being associated with Clarkson University . . . both universities located in New York state.
As the saying goes: “follow the money”.
And as for “peer review” of that paper: pffthpthfftp!
If weather variability is increasing, reliability engineering says don’t install weather dependent solar and wind – problem solved.
But it passed perr review. No doubt because of the alarmism the editors expect.
Very nice Roger. It is dreadful that the CAGW clowns are so sloppy that we can use the IPCC findings to prove them wrong. That is pitiful.
I suppose none of the researchers and editors had read the IPCC report. They were forced by circumstances to assume what the report contained. After all, the New York Times has said things are getting worse hundreds of times so it must be (sorta) true. True enough to get published, anyway.