A Google news search for “climate change” this morning found an article by Fox Weather asserting that climate change is causing more power outages across the United States. This is false.
While it is true that the number of power outages across the country has been increasing in recent years, data show weather has not been worsening, so more frequent or severe extreme weather cannot be blamed for rising blackouts. [bold, links added]
The true culprit is climate policies resulting in the replacement of reliable power plants powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy with power from intermittent wind and solar facilities.
The article, “Climate Change Leads To Massive Jump In Weather-Related Power Outages During Past 10 Years, Study Finds,” discusses a study by climate alarmist group Climate Central that claims increasing power outages are due to climate change.
Tellingly, the group’s website describes them as using “science and technology” to create “storylines” for local news, along with “compelling visuals that make climate change personal.”
“Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather that wreaks havoc on our power grid – from wildfire to heat waves and hurricanes,” the study’s authors wrote.
“As (climate) conditions continue to shift, (electrical) systems will be exposed to more extreme weather throughout their operational lifetimes,’ potentially limiting capacity to meet demand,” Fox Weather says.
This storyline is fiction. It doesn’t even have enough “science” underpinning it to be considered science fiction. Data on extreme weather show no worsening trends.
Climate is an average of weather over thirty years. Individual weather events are not attributable to climate change, but trends in weather over decades are.
Climate Realism has discussed the data on extreme weather listed in the article; drought, thunderstorms, hurricanes, and winter storms, for example. None of the extreme weather events discussed shows an increase.
Taking thunderstorms and similar land-originating severe weather involving wind, rain, and lighting, which the article claims are responsible for most of the power outages, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report says there is no evidence that thunderstorms are worsening or that changes in thunderstorm frequency are attributable to human causes.
The IPCC identifies no trends in thunderstorms at all. Similarly, the report found no detectable increase in extreme winds, lightning, hail, or flooding commonly associated with bad weather, despite their finding that “heavy precipitation” over mid-latitudes has increased.
If climate change isn’t causing an increase in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather, then it can’t be responsible for the increasing number of power failures. So, what is?
Among those factors are inadequate grid maintenance and the replacement of fossil-fueled power plants to provide baseload power with unreliable renewable sources.
First, consider the increasing strain on an aging grid that has not been well maintained in many parts of the country.
Downed power lines in California contribute to wildfires, for example, and on the opposite coast, Maine has an electric system that is more than 50 years old, in parts.
A second critical factor behind the decline in grid reliability, arguably the most important one, is the increasing proportion of the electricity supply that is dependent on unreliable, intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
The Fox Weather article cites grid problems in Texas and California as proof climate change is contributing to outages, but they are both examples showing how flawed climate policies are driving most outages.
Climate Realism discussed the problems with California’s increasingly unstable grid, here for instance.
California’s increasing reliance on less reliable energy, along with the push to ban even small gasoline-powered lawn equipment as well as cars, puts increasing strain on their grid because more and more people are using electricity to charge things, even as ever more amounts of reliable power plants are being taken offline.
Texas is hardly any better. As rightly pointed out in the article, Texas suffers from the most power outages, followed by Michigan and California.
Wind power generation makes up roughly 23 percent of electricity generation in Texas, as a result of state and local officials encouraging more than doubling the wind power capacity since 2015.
Simultaneously, several coal-fueled power stations, unable to compete with highly subsidized wind facilities, were prematurely shuttered. Wind power is highly weather-dependent—if the wind is not strong enough, or if it is too strong, no or significantly less power is generated.
The wild swings in generation put a strain on the transmission system, and weather-related outages occur when turbines freeze, as in the case of the ice storm of 2021.
More recently, a heatwave and high-pressure system caused winds to drop off, resulting in Texas’ wind facilities producing just 8 percent of their installed capacity.
As a result of wind power’s repeated failures during the peak summer season this year, Texas’ electricity regulator had to issue multiple warnings to conserve power and limit appliance use to specified times. Still, power outages occurred sporadically in small areas across the state.
Although organizations like Climate Central ignore the role climate policies have played in the rising number of power failures, grid operators acknowledge that the rapid pace of shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants is contributing to more blackouts.
These dependable sources are being phased out in favor of predominantly wind and solar.
Climate alarmists are exacerbating the problems that they claim they want to solve by making our energy systems even more weather-dependent.
Is this coincidence or is it further evidence that they are more concerned about controlling how people live than saving the environment?
Data show that weather is not becoming more extreme, but the grid is more easily disrupted by weather due to its age, poor maintenance, and the increase in the use of intermittent energy sources to generate electricity.
Should this trend continue, the weather may very well contribute to an increasing number of power outages.
Fox Weather should have taken a look at the real-world weather data before promoting a propagandist organization’s false claims.
If they had, they might have exposed the illogic of the climate alarmist position and discussed policies that would improve grid reliability.
Read more at Climate Realism
Roger Ailes made Fox News great. He’s gone. Fox is no longer great.
Tell a lie often enough and long enough, it becomes “the truth” .
Guess who claims to defend the truth? The Left, the media and anyone who profits from the “cure”.
The climate alarmists are guilty of exaggeration and hype. 12 years to save the planet? Liar liar…
Fox Weather more of the false weather forcast,s we get from the rest of them all and watch them lose the trust of the American People
Fox Weather failure pushing the climate fraud. And not one network recognizes the enormous benefit of more CO2 to the environment and food production. The environment is painted green from one basic process. All of our carbon based life on earth comes from one molecule – CO2. All of biochemical energy comes from the sun. And all of the oxygen we breathe comes from that same simple process. Life on earth ALL COMES FROM PHOTOSYNTHESIS. Whose basic ingredients are sunlight energy, CO2 and water. Any level of CO2 below an atmospheric 2,000ppm is a starvation level low. The complete failure of CO2 driven climate models prove the failure of the hypothesis that 0.04% of the atmosphere CO2 drives the climate. It doesn’t. Yet television and far too many undereducated grade school teachers keep pushing the fear mongering fraud.