Thread by @RogerPielkeJr

There are many important lessons to be learned from the Texas blackout

But this event is not about increasing extremes, nor about an unstable climate, nor breaking the bounds of predictability

Not everything that happens is about climate change

nytimes.com/2021/02/20/cli…

I’m thinking that “climate deniers” should also refer to people who deny variability in climate

As “climate” has evolved to mean a cause of events we have lost its true meaning, the statistics of weather over decades and longer

And those statistics vary on all timescales

The Texas story is NOT that infrastructure built for a past climate is suddenly out of its zone

It’s that the infrastructure built for documented climate variability is not fit for purpose

Blaming climate change is both wrong & ignores the real culprit: poor decision making

Back in the day I wrote about how the gerrymandered definition of climate change used in policy (not by the IPCC) to ignore variability was a problem — it is still a problem, arguably worse

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…

TL;DR
Here is the key paragraph
If all we care about is change to the statistics of weather caused by human interference, then we will miss most of what matters in building resilient societies to variability AND change

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…

For many disaster planning (“designing future disasters” — memorably by Dennis Mileti RIP) is boring, local, technical, incremental

& climate change is global, exciting, popular, partisan

I get why NYT & others turn everything into a climate change story

It’s still wrong
/END