The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article titled “Climate Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say,” written by Coral Davenport. Multiple lines of evidence and examples not only refute this claim as false but expose the sheer absurdity of the claim.
These sorts of absurdly false claims have been tried before, for instance, when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, MN in 2007. An article in 2007 by Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters exposed the claim as false:
A former member of the Clinton administration, and current Senior Fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress, claimed Monday that global warming might have played a factor in the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis last week.
I kid you not.
Writing at Climate Progress, the global warming blog of CAP, Joseph Romm – who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1997 and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 1995 though 1998 – stated in a piece amazingly entitled “Did Climate Change Contribute To The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse?“
Unsurprisingly, the actual cause had nothing to do with climate change at all but rather an engineering failure that used undersized gusset plates that were too thin for the load of the bridge:
The investigation revealed that photos from a June 2003 inspection of the bridge showed gusset-plate bowing. On November 13, 2008, the NTSB released the findings of its investigation. The primary cause of the collapse was the undersized gusset plates, at 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick. Contributing to that design or construction error was the fact that 2 inches (51 mm) of concrete had been added to the road surface over the years, increasing the static load by 20%. Another factor was the extraordinary weight of construction equipment and material resting on the bridge just above its weakest point at the time of the collapse. That load was estimated at 578,000 pounds (262 tonnes), consisting of sand, water, and vehicles.
So, human error and extra weight, not climate change, was determined to be the cause of the bridge’s failure.
Fast forward to the present. The NYT’s article makes similar claims:
Bridges designed and built decades ago with materials not intended to withstand sharp temperature swings are now rapidly swelling and contracting, leaving them weakened.
“It’s getting so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel, those bridges can literally fall apart like Tinkertoys,” Dr. Chinowsky said.
As temperatures reached the hottest in recorded history this year, much of the nation’s infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered. But bridges face particular risks.
Really? The bridges in question weren’t engineered to handle daily temperature swings? A natural event that happens daily across seasons? That sounds like poor planning. Besides the absurdity of that claim, there are two further contradictory points to consider.
First, in the United States, we’ve seen far worse sustained heatwaves before, such as in the 1930s when the July 1936 heatwave hit America’s Midwest, where some places experienced up to 14 days of above 100°F temperatures. This is evidenced by the graph in Figure 1, provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the many reports of the heatwaves in the 1930’s, there is no mention of bridge collapse, which suggests that the linkage to “extreme heat aided by climate change” claim is false. Otherwise, such temperatures in the 1930s would have resulted in collapsed bridges. However, there simply are none from that period reportedly linked to heat.
Secondly, the article says “As temperatures reached the hottest in recorded history this year, much of the nation’s infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered.” But this isn’t true either. The claim NYT uses is about the global temperature, not the U.S. temperature. As seen in Figure 2 below showing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), widely considered to be the most accurate source of surface temperature data, July 2024 was not “the hottest in recorded history.” For example, maximum U.S. temperature was higher in 2012 and 2005 than in July 2024.
Diving deeper into the NYT article, the Times attributes the failure of a railroad bridge connecting Iowa and South Dakota during floods to climate change. Flooding in the rivers and streams across and bordering Iowa and South Dakota have been common for as long as records of such event have been kept back into the mid-1800s. And railroad bridge collapses have happened repeatedly in the United States and around the world, well before climate change ever became an issue. Since data show no increase in the number or severity of flood events across the United States, in general, or in Iowa and South Dakota, in particular, there is no evidence climate change played any role in that particular railroad bridge collapse.
The next claim is that the concrete buckled and broke on a bridge in Lewiston, Maine which NYT blamed on “recent fluctuation in temperature and rain.”
Looking at the weather in Lewiston, ME when the event occurred shows that although high and low temperatures were higher than the normal average for late June, the fluctuations the NYT was so concerned about were less extreme than normal, about a 15 degree change from high to low in June 2024 rather than the historic daily average of about 20 degrees. (See figure 3, below).
The high temperature for the third week of June was 95℉, above the normal maximum for the date, but it was well below the historic high temperature for the city of 99℉ recorded in 1911, 113 years of global warming ago. Lewiston’s 2024 June high was also 10 degrees lower than the high temperature record for the state as a whole of 105℉ set in North Bridgton, ME, just thirty miles away from Lewiston, also from 1911, when that temperature was hit twice.
Because temperatures in Lewiston didn’t fluctuate wildly and were also not record setting, it is implausible for the bridge’s concrete cracking and buckling to have anything at all to do with climate change. It was likely a result of poor construction or, even more likely, poor maintenance, a problem for many bridges and overpasses in Maine and the U.S. as a whole, combined with increased traffic and load, due to significant population growth in the city and the region, using the bridge.
Literally, it takes two minutes of work on Google search to find this data. Apparently, NYT reporter Coral Davenport couldn’t be troubled to seek out the facts. Or perhaps, she just doesn’t know how. This sort of slapdash reporting containing speculative claims rather than simple facts seems like something out of the old TV series The Twilight Zone.
If such an episode aired today, my suggested title would be “Bogus Maximus.” This story was pure science fiction.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
Figures, anything to get paid.
The bridges are falling apart, it’s what happens when corrupt state politicians, who are supposed to be responsible for inspection and upkeep of said bridges, use the money for something else.
Not sure that politicians can be blamed for the very rare bridge failures that occur. It’s usually some combination of defective design, defective construction, or defective maintenance, or as the one in Baltimore, defective ship handling. Politicians don’t manage any of those processes. Highway departments, whether Federal, State or local, are peopled by bureaucrats and professionals, many if not mostly from contractors, and anything built by humans is subject to failure, mostly due to negligence.
“Politicians don’t manage any of those processes.”
But who is going to be responsible for those processes other than the politicians who are obligated to make sure that the engineers on the state payrolls are qualified and do their job? If the engineers then say they couldn’t do their job because the politicians didn’t fund them enough- then it’s back to the politicians being at fault. Here in Wokeachusetts- there is a long history of infrastructure failures. A rather tall library on the U. Mass. campus in Amherst had bricks falling out. It turned out that the state inspectors overseeing the job were not qualified- because way too much hiring in the state bureaucracy is nepotism and cronyism. So who is responsible for a failed civil service system?
The people who are responsible are those individuals who mess up or are corrupt.
Politicians make very few of the decisions in life that cause problems or successes for most people. Life is not about government, life is about individuals making their own decisions. Blaming politicians for everything is simply blameshifting and scapegoating.
To quote Shakespeare:
Except budgets, which are supposed to be used for fixing things BEFORE they become a problem.
How do you think you can conduct a successful “Management by Crisis” program if you always fix things before they become a problem!?
/s
Ultimately these infrastructure fall within the portfolios of politicians whose ultimate responsibility it is to oversee the proper discharge of civic duty by the bureaucrats. The buck stops with them.
Then blame all voters who elect the politicians.
No matter what you or any other commenter here may say, the buck always stops with us as individuals.
Generally “those who mess up or are corrupt” are the politicians that don’t use taxes (and taxes masquerading as “fees”) for the infrastructure maintenance they were supposedly “earmarked” for to keep infrastructure in a state of good repair.
We’re not talking about people blaming “societal” issues on government, just blaming government for NOT DOING what it is SUPPOSED TO DO.
If politicians are not responsible for the government they direct then why do we have them other than comic relief?
First, I didn’t say “failures”, I said “falling apart”. A lot of that “falling apart” has to go on before a bridge “fails”. Politicians tend to kick the can (inspection/Maintenace/Repair) down the road.
“It’s usually some combination of defective design, defective construction, or defective maintenance”
Design and construction don’t happen without heavy state and local gov involvement – if those elements are grossly defective, then it’s because of political corruption. But I think bridges are generally well designed and constructed, and I’d guess 90% of accelerated/anomalous degradation is due to inadequate maintenance and REPAIR.
Of course, the politicians aren’t directly responsible this work, but it happens on their watch.
You are playing with words, making distinctions without a difference. You want to blame politicians for incompetence, negligence, and corruption … but it is the masses of persons who actually do the deeds who are directly responsible. You are conflating symbols – politicians – with reality.
When every negative thing is the politician’s fault, it relieves the individual of the responsibility to do their own job, and to take responsibility for their own performance.
When the politicians sweep taxes (and taxes masquerading as “fees”) into the “general fund” and do not use them for their intended purpose, it isn’t the fault of their underlings who don’t have the “budgets” to do what is needed.
I think you’re also overlooking the role of politicians who hire incompetent underlings to perform the tasks at hand because they are more worried about hiring cronies or relatives or checking some “diversity box” than they are about hiring competent people.
Incompetence, negligence and corruption with respect to something that is THE GOVERNMENT’S JOB to do generally can be blamed on politicians.
I’m pretty sure they can be blamed.
State governments (and for that matter, the federal government) levy taxes on all sorts of things that are *supposedly* to be used for maintenance of infrastructure. Gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, vehicle registration and inspection “fees” (taxes), (added) taxes on tires, motor oil, tolls for use of roads, etc.
But since if they used all that money *supposedly* collected for such purposes to keep our infrastructure in good repair, the politicians wouldn’t be “recognized” for doing so (since if things are kept in a good state of repair, nobody would notice a “problem” that the politicians “fixed”), they tend to abscond with all of those taxes and “fees” (i.e., taxes) *supposedly* earmarked for maintenance of infrastructure and use them for completely different things (generally more pandering for votes in other government “programs” with higher visibility).
Basically, they “defer” (nice way of saying “do not perform”) infrastructure maintenance until things are “falling apart,” which means VOTORS NOTICE. THEN, the politicians “ride in to the rescue” on their white horses with some “new legislation” usually sporting MORE DEBT (“bond issues” which take longer to pay off than the period of time the funded infrastructure improvements will last are a popular one) to “save us” from the “crisis” of our crumbling infrastructure (which “crisis” THEY CREATED by not using taxes and “fees” (but I repeat myself) they *supposedly* collected to KEEP our infrastructure in a good state of repair for their intended purpose).
So unless you are in possession of a complete accounting of all the taxes and “fees”(aka taxes) *supposedly* collected for the very purpose of MAINTAINING our infrastructure in a “state of good repair” which shows EVERY NICKEL of that money HAS BEEN USED FOR THAT PURPOSE, it is absolutely down to politicians not doing their jobs (as usual).
The analysis here follows much of what I have learned from an interest in the bridge failure, with one important exception – corrosion. I watched the start of construction of the I-35 bridge during my last year of engineering education at the U of Minnesota in 1968. All of the houses across the alley behind my house were torn down to make room for the bridge. because of that connection and also a career involving metal fracture, I closely followed the reporting and read several detailed analyses of the failure.
The plate failures were likely exacerbated by corrosion from salt exposure due to winter road salting. Even if the bridge had not been itself salted, salt would easily have been carried to the bridge from vehicle traffic. Minneapolis certainly gets winter weather – in droves. If anything, global warming is reducing the need for salting of the roads.
In their own story ( at the end) the NYT quotes bridge experts who refute the claims
and
Its quite crazy talk from a single engineer professor whos done a database and stuff
he doesnt even seem to be a bridge expert
“Dr. Mahmoud’s current research group is focused on establishing Socio-Physical and Hazard-Integrated Environments (SoPHIE) under the theme of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, focusing on establishing new frameworks for functionality recovery, performance-based design, and life-cycle analysis for the built environment and communities subjected to natural disasters and deterioration with considerations to climate change.’
https://www.engr.colostate.edu/~hmahmoud/
It tells us a lot about Joseph Romm – who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1997 and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 1995 though 1998. With experts like this, who needs enemies?
Romm is another paid shill.
Obviously, any story about bridge failures should be based upon input from actual bridge experts – those that design them, build them, and maintain them.
There should be a rule that if “Climate Change” is sited as a cause of anything the article must have a valid definition of the term. I think it is a statistical construct and cannot be a cause of anything.
Climate is defined as 30 years of weather in a given area. Climate change must then be a change in the weather over 30 years.
Unfortunately, due to repeated news articles that does not reference the definition people think that climate change causes a change in weather. It’s a complete circular reasoning attempt by definition which exposes the logical deficiency of their argument.
Yes. It’s an adage that what is predictable is climate, when it isn’t predictable then it’s weather.
Years ago I remember seeing an episode of “Modern Marvels” about the history of “paint”.
(Yes, there are people paid to “watch paint dry”.) 😎
Toward the end they talked about The Golden Gate Bridge”.
If I remember correctly, repainting the bridge never ends. They start at on end and it takes a year to reach the other end. Then they go back and start over. Been doing that for decades.
Steel and iron corrodes. Paint helps prevent that.
(The episode had to with them experimenting with adding microchips to the paint to evaluate it’s condition. I suppose they can read read like a credit card?)
Bridges need to be inspected and maintained. “Climate Change” or not, exposure to the weather can damage them. “Man Caused” or not.
Since none of the BIG bad climate stuff predicted has happened, the journos turn to the little bad stuff even tho it isn’t climate related. Remember the MSM motto:
”If it bleeds, it leads.”
The government loves to buy things but doesn’t love to pay for upkeep. We don’t pay enough to maintain our existing infrastructure. Maybe stop buying windmills for weather-dependent energy and we could afford to maintain our bridges.
Yes – see my post above. Politicians don’t “get credit” for keeping things in good repair, so they misuse the taxes (and taxes masquerading as “fees”) supposedly collected for exactly that purpose on other things.
Engineering check signed off on drawings before construction began and materials were procured.
The designers and the checkers are all licensed by the state to do the work. All prescribed by state law to protect citizens from faulty engineering and construction.
It’s a failure of state licensing and engineering process control. Incompetents licensed and specified designs done wrong or approved wrong or procured wrong.
Nothing to do with climate. Nothing to do with what “experts” say.
It also says the weight of the bridge had increased after construction, due to the addition of many more tons of surface concrete. So that probably nullified the construction engineering.
20% increase should not bring a bridge down. That is too small of a safety factor. For example, most lifting hardware has a safety factor of four or five. The 12 ton shackle I used today will break at 48 to 60 tons of load.
Yes. There was a hidden design flaw that combined with the additional weight which overloaded a particular steel section. The failure then led to a cascading failure which wasn’t good practice either
Still, when the bridge weight was being increased the safety factor of the entire structure should have been re-examined with that in mind.
Inadequate budget? Cronyism? Diversity hire? All of which bring us back to “elected officials” and their appointees who don’t do their jobs.
They also should have considered the safety factor when parking all those heavy construction vehicles on the bridge.
Has anyone considered the additional weight of battery-powered vehicles?
The thought occurred to me as well.
If 20% additional weight from added concrete wasn’t enough (based on someone else’s comment above), then transient weight from a few more electric vehicles wouldn’t even be close to that.
Maybe the New York Times would rather blame climate change than politicians diverting funds, as with the levee collapses in New Orleans during Katrina?
Katrina was a big, bad storm that showed what happens when protection funds for a major city built below sea level are diverted to other things.
(If I’m not mistaken, didn’t Al Gore blame Katrina (the storm itself) on GW Bush when GW had barely been in office?)
Climate change was about as relevant as Jerry Falwell blaming sexual depravity and God’s Wrath.
The Climate Boogyman is the “god” of the far left.
Or the “sciency version” of feeding virgins to volcanoes to prevent eruptions.
Story Tip:
Mysteries Surrounding The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. CO2 Definitely Not The Driving Factor
According to the NOAA US weather agency, the hurricane season lasts from June 1 to November 30 of each year. During this time, the conditions needed for extreme areas of pressure to build up prevail. First and foremost, the water temperature of the Atlantic is decisive, but so is wind shear.
Science is still far from reaching the end of its knowledge”
QED
Story Tip:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/weather/hurricane-season-atlantic-storms-climate/index.html
“Scientists” were confused about the failure of North Atlantic hurricane activity to match their predictions. But now they know why. And they are certain that the 2024 season “will not end well”. More news later.
Yes they “know” why. Just like they “knew” it was going to be such an intense season.
And when the latest “not going to end well” prediction fails (and what the hell does that mean?! No update to the numbers?!), they’ll have more excuses for their prediction failures.
They blame “global warming” (hello, old friend) for the failure of their predictions thus far, but have the chutzpah to continue to call it a “crisis.”
“Climate change knocks down hurricane season – the “crisis” continues.” 🙄
And Michael Mann predicted 33 Atlantic storms.
Thank you for the link. I don’t watch the channel, nor do I willingly visit the website, so I miss the narrative spinning they have to do.
I live in a hurricane zone, so I follow the Atlantic weather as closely as I can. Along with the Saharan dust that blows across the Atlantic every summer, many of the storms coming off Africa were more southerly than normal. According to the weather forecaster I like to watch, being too close to the equator robs the storm of the Coriolis input that contributes the spin of a tropical system.
While I’m sure the climate change disaster wish casting had a lot to do with the forecast, the El Niño cycle we had for the last couple of years was supposed to fade away by midsummer. That weather pattern aids the Caribbean wind shear that holds down tropical storm development. The absence was supposed to be part of the expected upswing in number of storms. I’ll feel good about the 2024 season once we get well into October, and the temperatures start dropping.
I get this funny feeling that EVERYONE at the new york times use fossil fuels every day, every day, every day…what HYPOCRITES!
NYC is a very high energy city. When walking around it- the idea that it can get all its energy from wind and solar is just absurd.
Bridges designed years, indeed many decades ago, were and are designed to withstand “severe temperature swings” – however that may be defined. Of course there are no severe temperature extremes taking place today … just normal temperature swings.
As long as the bridge materials actually used meet the original engineer’s specifications, and as long as the original engineer’s design is not fatally flawed (it does happen from time to time, though it is rare), and as long as bridges are reasonably inspected and maintained as they are required to be for purposes of long life, they’re completely safe from normal weather-induced temperature swings. Engineering designs take such conditions into account.
The fact is most bridge failures occur because of defective inspections and maintenance, being subject to normal weathering, or due to something – like a ship, for instance – running into the bridge.
The infamously delayed build-out of the Metro Silver Line from DC through Dulles to Ashburn termination was due to many factors: bad (or badly used) concrete that cracked and had to be rebuilt, bad policy making, likely bad engineering samples of the route, faulty construction methods and likely a healthy dose of corruption.
Second Phase Of Silver Line Delayed By At Least 13 Months WAMU https://wamu.org › Story
When I drove a car through both citys’ tunnels I probably was too scared to look up, but I imagine decrepitude like I see beneath 50 year bridges in Denver.
That article above is from 2015.. The Silver Line was finished last year.
If the NYT got the pants sued off em for printing flagrantly false articles it would improve their journalistic accuracy significantly.
story tip
and it’s only gonna cost the taxpayers $147,000,000!
World’s biggest battery coming to Maine — and it could store 130 million times more energy than your laptop
World’s biggest battery coming to Maine — and it could store 130 million times more energy than your laptop (msn.com)
Laptop batteries are now the new metric?
Whatever happened to Hiroshima Bombs?
Olympic-sized Hiroshima Bombs.
Well, at least we know that all the laptops in Maine will be working when the power goes out.
So … should I move to Maine or away from Maine?
If I had a laptop, It’d to want know.
(No need to answer.)
But not for how long…why not express the amount of storage in meaningful terms (how much AND for how long)?!
As the old pickup truck commercial with Joe Namath put it…
“You know why? You know why!”
Omitted – 130 million times what your laptop stores *for five minutes.*
If it’s from the New York Times it is likely grabage.
It is a real wonder that someone hasn’t tried blaming the collapse of Key Bridge in Baltimore on climate change….but there have been some idiots who think that one day soon both the newly constructed replacement bridge and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge will be underwater!
That said, the NYT idiots must have no idea what expansion joints are for on bridges, or perhaps that they even exist…..all bridges from highway overpasses all the way up to huge suspension bridges have them, in all climates. And it doesn’t take much to find that information.
As others have noted, poor design, construction, substandard materials (the Tappan Zee Bridge in NY that the state is suing the builder for using the wrong materials), poor maintenance and of course, accidents like the ship hitting the Key Bridge.
The new bridge or the original? I still call the new bridge the Tappan Zee Bridge, I refuse to refer to it by the name of a corrupt old tax-and-spend politician.
This has nothing to do with so-called “journalists” failing or not bothering to check the facts. They’re paid to ignore reality, and toe the line for “the cause”. It’s that simple. Not attributed to stupidity, but to malice.
Exactly:
Climate bad
Our party fix bad climate
Vote our party
The overlords trying to install a puppet government in the USA this year have been trying to figure out exactly how stupid the electorate is. They must be really surprised at still not having reached the conclusion. I know I am.
American bridges are rusting and failing because of long-term neglect and failure of maintenance not ‘Climate change. Politicians prefer to splash money on trendy topics and not urban essentials. The politicians also profit by diverting these funds to corrupt affiliates or relatives.
DEI and sexual harrassment training is required for ALL government employees and employees of companies with government contracts. Private companies who want to avoid hurt feeling lawsuits impose the training as well. Training must be renewed each and every year to insure compliance with government imposed behavioral standards.
There is only so much time in a workday. When employees are attending those training sessions, they are not performing the tasks they were hired to do, so any scheduled maintenance will wait as well.
Davenport exclusively quotes Chinowsky, PhD engineering, without another source. 30 seconds on his resume shows him to be a biased academic. Neither of the cases cited exemplify his claim that weather is
Null content. Why read past the lede?
I remember this one (while a youngster in western PA at the time):
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wcas/3/3/wcas-d-10-05002_1.xml
The Prolonged 1954 Midwestern U.S. Heat Wave: Impacts and Responses
In the winter of 1968-69 (?) I was in Iowa and experienced my lowest temperature ever: minus 33°F below (I haven’t found a source for that).
I don’t think the author of the NYT article was around for either of these.
She appears to be 25 + or -.
I can imagine sharks with lasers mounted to their foreheads. However, both are fantasy. The true cause of most bridge issues is lack of maintenance. Structural engineers are known for their conservative natures (not politically but scientifically).
Imagine if you will a land where a man named Pete Buttigieg became Transportation Secretary. Imagine that in some far-off language that translated to the title “Man in Charge of Pet Projects that Elevate the Image of the Big Guy”. If you’re still capable of imagining, imagine a project like the one built in Denver, Colorado, a growing megalopolis in the West, where the interstate highway system had split apart a long-abused and neglected populus of poor and unhoused. Split families, extended families… brother against brother, Imagine an important man in Washington with big bucks at hand who could right this wrong. Imaginee a swath of green built as a bridge to reconnect the families, the brothers, the husbands with their wives, the divorcees with their… Imagine a grassy bridge of connectedness where the children could meet and frolic and play croquet. A Man, a Plan, a Bridge, Buttiggigg.
The “hottest temperature” of which they speak is the AVERAGE (global surface temperature). Most of the increase comes from the nighttime LOW temperatures not getting as COLD.
Which REDUCES the temperature DIFFERENTIALS, so it does not INCREASE “temperature swings,” it DECREASES “temperature swings.”
The New York Times is essentially a leftist Babylon Bee without any humor.
But then I insult the Babylon Bee.
Better argument: Climate change is extending the life of infrastructure, because with milder winters less corrosive road salt is being used.
I haven’t researched that (being snow and ice related, which is probably but not necessarily temperature connected), but at least it’s logical, unlike the Times’ stupid bullshit!
Why anyone would believe what they read in the New York Times is a mystery to me. They are no longer a proper news source rather they have an agenda to follow and will pretty much print anything that supports their agenda.
Climate change interferes with nature too so long as all the bridges don’t fall on them-
Good news for some threatened species as numbers rise (msn.com)
Gaia works in mysterious ways.