Don’t get me wrong – the storm was a bad one. There were heavy snows, high winds, and lows in temperatures for areas that don’t normally see even run-of-the-mill winter cold. Where I live, for example, the dangers from flooding come in the spring when rains combine with winter melt. December’s storm saw raging rivers rivaling the worst of the spring storms, resulting in commensurate damage.
Plus, my internet went down.
But, you see, it wasn’t just a storm. It was a Bomb Cyclone! Attendant are the descriptors such as “historic” and “once-in-a-generation” and similar apocalyptic outcries. Yes, it was a bad storm. But once in a lifetime? Maybe if you are 19, I suppose. Surely, though, most of us have seen such things before.
The 50 inches of snow that fell in Buffalo was record setting (although not, apparently, for inches accumulated). The Northeast saw very high winds, particularly for this season, while the southern states saw cold temperatures, lower than anyone under 30 had ever experienced there. But can’t it be possible to avoid trivializing a dangerous storm while also avoiding the exaggerations?
The “bomb cyclone” terminology (a less scientific version of “explosive cyclogenesis of an extratropical cyclonic low-pressure”) seems designed to strike fear and alarm in the hearts of TV viewers. Much used in recent years, this time around the term was often accompanied by further modifiers. The subtle message was that this was, if not the end, surely evidence that we are hurtling toward it.
Of course, I don’t really understand the root motivations behind the nightly predictions of the weather-induced end-of-times. It does appear to me that we are being “messaged,” as I imply. It is also just as possible that the media organizations are responding to their customers. If viewers eat up every prediction for biblical-level weather devastation by watching 24/7 (including the advertisements), how can Channel 4 not offer them what they crave?
One of the advantages of having my internet out is I missed the media circus in its entirety.
Since my internet came back to me, I’ve been reading the grumbles, especially from some of the older bloggers out there. We recall the cold temperatures, high winds, and snowfalls stacked high above our heads from – oh I don’t know – the 70s. Not only did we survive just fine but I can’t recall that we bitched and moaned so damn much.
One example that I’ve seen shared, I’ll share again here with you. It focuses mostly on cars. We’ve become so used to the technology advances that have occurred in my lifetime, we’ve forgotten (sometimes personally, definitely as a society) what it is like to live in a simpler time. Even as aged as I am, I never consider that my car might not hack the cold snap or that a winter’s drive might actually threaten my life. These days, cars just work. They handle cold, ice, snow, and other adversities without the driver having to think much about them.
But we really must think about these things – particularly if we’re caught in a bomb cyclone.
The author (Karl Denninger) makes note of the number of “bomb” deaths to carbon monoxide poisoning. At least one story, reported in the Journal, told of a woman who decided to wait out the storm (and the arrival of help) in her car and died* because snow blocked her exhaust. It’s also possible that some people were burning something inside their houses in a way that their houses were never designed for. Did that result in deaths or injuries? Denninger goes on speculating about people who might rely on the heat-generating feature of gas-powered automobiles without considering the implications of having “upgraded” to an electric vehicle. Was home heating more of a problem for those who have recently “upgraded” to all-electric heat?
This last point is not his focus, but it will be mine. Would, for example, Nashville have handled the below zero (F) temperature if the grid wasn’t already stressed by the imposition of green mandates? Let’s remember, too, that “system reliability” issues can induce local problems as a result of remote causation. It’s worth recalling that New York City’s multi-day blackout in 2003 started with a generating plant failure in Michigan.
I’d say the situation has become far worse since 2003.
My northern, rural state legislature tried to ban wood stoves. They failed, but many states have succeeded. Personally, I try to keep my “food, clothing, and shelter” as low-tech as possible. I have a wood stove that requires no electricity and will burn anything. My water heater is unpowered, using a pilot light to stay available. If my electricity goes, I do not need to worry that I’ll asphyxiate myself after running my camp stove indoors. I’ve got candles, a wood stove, and big ol’ pile of logs.
Related, the storm and its reporting was followed up on Thursday by a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, A Quiet Refutation of ‘Net Zero’ (paywalled, almost certainly). The author discovered two industry/government reports, one from an industry consortium and another from a quasi-government agency, both which he terms** “secret.” The reports baldly state the impossibility of meeting the climate change movement’s goals, the exorbitant costs associated of even trying to meet them, and the real and present danger to “reliability” that these attempts threaten.
I used to work in this industry. Outsiders should not see “industry” associated with the likes of EPRI and NERC and interpret these organizations as pro-energy lobbying organizations. These are the primary “think tanks” for America’s power infrastructure. These are the people who we all trust to understand the big picture and the long term.
To me, the scariest of these warnings is the third. If you fail to meet your goals, you shrug your shoulders and set your sights on something else. If you run out of money – well – happens all the time, not the end of the world. But degrading reliability? Once you realize how much trouble you are in, it is already too late to dodge the bullet.
Non-techies probably see phrases like “system reliability” and figure it’s some inscrutable factor from an engineer’s pointless equations. Maybe it takes a storm like the one on Christmas Eve to bring the phrase in the focus. An “unreliable grid” doesn’t just mean rolling blackouts and more frequent outages, although these things are bad enough. What it means is that, if your very life depends on having electric power and/or heating fuel, you may or may not have access to it. You may become dead.
What we saw in December was not Mother Earth’s warning about the terrors of global warming. What we saw is her warning about sacrificing our traditional values (reliability, affordability, efficiency) in favor of virtue-signalling our collective concern for human environmental impact. Our willful self-immolation is not sustainable, or at least it shouldn’t be. I guess if the masses can be convinced that people froze to death in Nashville because they were not dependent enough on the electrical grid, it will continue to get ever worse.
It makes you wonder whether the perpetrators are just stupid or actually evil. Was it truly unforeseeable to them that creating a fair-weather infrastructure might result in foul-weather catastrophes? Did they believe their own press that snowfall would be a thing of the past after year 2000? Or is it possible that someone in power deliberately wants people to severely suffer the ill-effects of storms in the hopes that the masses can be persuaded to do “something, anything” when asked, as long as it is to alleviate (or maybe just to atone for causing) that bad weather.
Game pairing: The Long Dark.
*Also notable in that horrible incident is that the woman, driving home from work in a winter storm, was wearing only scrubs and crocs. Another man wore only a track suit when he left his car to find emergency shelter. He froze to death.