The Los Angeles Times (LAT) posted an article, “California’s iconic Highway 1 is fighting a losing battle against climate change. Can it survive?” claiming recent landslide damage to portions of Highway 1 is further evidence that climate change is ruining civil infrastructure. [some emphasis, links added]
This is false. Weather and natural disasters have always damaged highways, especially along the famously violent Pacific Coast.
The LAT admits that “turbulent climate always has been the nemesis of Highway 1’s splendor,” listing landslides, flooding, wildfires, and coastal erosion as frequent causes of damage to the picturesque highway.
A recent closure “raises new questions about how the highway can survive amid increasingly strong and unpredictable storms, seas, and fires.” They attribute this to “the intensifying effects of human-caused climate change.”
The problem is that storms, seas, and fires are not becoming stronger and more unpredictable due to climate change. They are not becoming stronger or less predictable at all.
The LAT’s claim that there are “wetter, more volatile atmospheric river storms that trigger landslides” is simply false.
Atmospheric rivers are not new, as Climate Realism has had to explain to the LAT in the past, like in the post “No, Los Angeles Times, Climate Change Is Not ‘Supercharging’ the Latest Winter Storm,” among others.
California’s pattern of drought and deluge is not historically unusual; it is the norm. Massive swings between large flooding events and long-lasting drought have happened in California for as long as records exist.
It is true that warmer air can hold more moisture, which is the basis of most alarmist claims that rainfall is becoming more severe.
But data reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not show any increase in severe rainfall events, as shown in Table 12.12 on Page 90 – Chapter 12, of their Sixth Assessment Report. (See figure below)
Also highlighted on that screenshot is another point that LAT tries to make, which is that climate change is making coastal erosion worse. This is simply not demonstrated by any data, and how would it be? Coastal erosion is ongoing everywhere in the world, and the Pacific Coast is particularly prone to violent waves.
This is because of the long fetch of the Pacific Ocean, which means wind has longer distances to push up large waves uninterrupted, but also because of the steep continental shelf. Pacific coastlines, especially in California, have steep drop-offs to deep water, which make them famously good for surfing.
Steeper drop-offs allow waves to stay larger as they approach the beach, compared to the gradual slope of the beaches in places like South Carolina, and the existence of deep trenches along the coast can also contribute to massive, powerful waves.
The erosion along Highway 1 is what gives the road its magnificent views in the first place. Water is the most powerful erosive force on the planet. Those bare-faced cliffs have been formed by the violence of ocean waves over centuries and millennia, as are similar geologic features of coastlines around the world. It’s not new.
Building a highway right on one of the most volatile areas in the region is something that will necessarily come with a lot of upkeep. The California coastline is also famously prone to earthquakes, which contribute to the erosion as well.
The writers at LAT apparently are either oblivious to the fact that California’s coastal infrastructure has always suffered from erosion and failures or, contrary to the evidence, they have chosen to ignore this fact in pursuit of the “climate change causes everything bad” narrative.
One prime example comes from the 1920s, when a developer built beautiful bungalows along the coastline in San Pedro, Los Angeles. By 1929, the homes began sliding into the sea, as the ocean waves undermined the rock and clay cliff face. Climate change did not do this; the natural actions of coastal erosion did.
The LAT also says wildfires are burning “hotter” and becoming worse, creating the conditions needed for later mudslides, because of climate change. This is again false. The LAT provides no data supporting this claim, because there are none.
Climate Realism has covered California’s fire history in depth in several articles, including posts here, here, and here.
A combination of factors, especially mismanagement of the land and the government’s refusal to clear easily flammable underbrush and deadfall, has led to California’s worst modern fires, but again, they are not historically unprecedented. Wildfires are part of the natural ecosystem.
The LAT seems to be blaming climate change for the natural dangers posed to Highway 1 because of its placement along an extremely active coastline.
California’s history is littered with examples of seaside infrastructure being slowly (or quickly) destroyed by the pitiless ocean, long before supposed human-caused global warming could be blamed. Neither storms nor wildfires have measurably worsened during the recent period of modest warming.
If LAT were interested in the truth, they would report on the fact that coastal infrastructure takes a lot of upkeep naturally, and that maybe some types of structures, say highways and palatial mansions, shouldn’t be built in some locations historically prone to certain types of natural disasters.
When nature is nature and man-made structures fail as a result, blame human decisions for siting those structures there, not nature for behaving as it always has, or claim that nature has changed, when it hasn’t.
Top image via Fig. 1 by UCal/YouTube screencap.
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