Introducing the Applied Economics Clinic Blog! Every week, we will be sharing a couple short pieces related to energy, environment, and equity. This first post covers the recent cold temperatures seen in Texas and the important differences between climate and weather.
With the below-freezing temperatures and unprecedented ice storms that blanketed the interior United States last month, it seems like a good time to remind climate naysayers and fossil fuel opportunists of the differences between global warming, weather and climate change.
Global warming: There is undisputed evidence that the average world temperature has been rising for decades and an overwhelming majority of scientists predict that temperatures will continue to grow higher for many decades to come. The cause? Excess carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels for transportation, heating, cooling, lights and electronics.
Weather: The atmospheric conditions (temperature and precipitation) in any one spot or at any one time around the world may be the same or different than in past years. Isolated cold weather conditions, however, do not offset the trend of average global warming—across the world, most temperature readings are higher than the historical average rather than lower.
Climate change and “weather weirding”: That is not to say, however, that climate change has no impact on weather. On the contrary, climate change leads to a widespread phenomenon sometimes called “weather weirding”: It shakes things up. With climate change, historical weather patterns and local climate conditions can no longer be counted on. Cold places may have milder winters or hot summers. Hot places may have milder summers or cold winters. Rainy places dry up and dry places are flooded. It’s a mess.
The entire State of Texas shut down by cold conditions not found in the historical weather record? That’s weather weirding. Climate change acts to shift weather patterns, sometimes in dramatic and sudden ways. The impacts of an abrupt shift in expected weather patterns can be—as we saw last month—extremely dangerous. Texas power plants, water pipes, and heating systems were not built with the possibility of reaching these low temperatures in mind and cannot perform under these conditions: electric service shuts down, water service shuts down, piped gas delivery shuts down, and regardless of whether homes are heated with gas or electric, heating systems cease to function. No ready solutions are at hand to aid in serving immediate needs because the problems are outside of the range of past experience. And the long-term solutions are very expensive: Going forward, Texas will need energy and water systems that can withstand not only very high temperatures but also very low temperatures.
Texas’ hardships highlight another important thing to remember about global warming, climate change and weather weirding: The worst impacts are visited on those who are least able to protect themselves. The rich can afford back-up heating systems and electric generators, have water delivered, or just take a vacation, while poor families—including those made newly homeless or otherwise destitute due to the pandemic—stand in line for supplies, light air-poisoning fires or bring carbon monoxide-emitting equipment inside their homes to keep their kids from freezing, and dread the loss of paycheck that will come for wage laborers who are out of work from all the businesses closed by the freezing temperatures.
Weather is a problem for today: pick the right coat to wear, bring an umbrella, stay at home for a snow day. Climate change is the larger pattern of problems that need systematic, cooperative solutions across communities and across the world as a whole: rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emission, infrastructure that can withstand sometimes dramatic shifts in climatic conditions, and protection of basic needs for vulnerable communities.
