Jon Pepper undertakes a formidable task in his new book, Hostile Climate. How to dissect the most underreported near-miss of a climate-related disaster in America’s largest city?
The uncertainties of climate science are very complicated to explain, the political motivations behind knowingly backing bad policy are dangerous territory in our cancel-culture world, and the engineering technicalities of supplying light and heat are bland.
Yet, the near certainty of this weather event recurring means that the next occurrence could lead to the self-inflicted crippling of New York City with global impacts.
Pepper handles it in an easy and quite entertaining way, using a technique that educators, historians, and scientists have relied on for centuries: telling a great story.
Follow the drama within the fictional Crowe Power Company and you will enjoy recognizing the prominent players in the real-life climate change debate, the shallowness of the motivations of people out to “save the world”, and the insights as to what it takes to make NYC habitable. And you will laugh, too.
But Jon Pepper would like you to think about whether we are on the right climate change path.
What if the factual Winter Storm Elliot of Christmas 2022 turned out differently? I hope there is another novel in the writing that is as engaging, entertaining, and enlightening as Hostile Climate.
Ron Barmby is a professional engineer with a Master’s degree in geosciences and had a 40-year career in the energy industry that covered 40 countries and five continents. Barmby is the author of “Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria”, a proud member of the CO2 Coalition, and a signatory to the World Climate Declaration.
Top image via USA Today/YouTube screencap
