The United States will suffer deadly storms more often and the country needs to improve in its handling of these events, experts said Wednesday as Texas and other states struggled with winter storms that exceeded all forecasts from basic supply companies, governments and millions of terrified citizens.
This week’s storms – and those approaching the east of the country – fit a pattern of extreme events caused by climate change, and show once again that local, state and federal authorities are not going to do enough to prepare for a more extreme and dangerous climate.
At least two dozen people have died this week, some of them from fires or carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to heat their homes. In Oklahoma City, a mass of Arctic air dropped temperatures in the state capital to -25 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit).
“This is a different kind of storm,” said Kendra Clements, one of the people in Oklahoma City who opened her business buildings to house homeless people, some of whom arrived with signs of freezing, hypothermia and candies in her hair. The scene was advancing what social service providers and governments described as an increase in the needs of the most vulnerable according to worsening climate and natural disasters.
Other Americans see themselves at risk. Power systems of all kinds failed in the extreme cold, including natural gas power plants that were left out of service and, to a lesser extent, wind turbines that froze and stopped working. More than 100 million people live in areas under warnings, warnings or warnings for winter weather, and blackouts are expected to continue for days in some parts of the country.
The crisis sounded the alarm for energy networks across the country: As climate change worsens, severe conditions that exceed historical precedents are becoming more common. Texas, for example, expects its energy demand to hit the ceiling in the middle of summer, not in the harshest of winters, as it did this week.
The severe storms came as President Joe Biden prepares to invest up to $ 2 trillion in infrastructure and clean energy over four years. Biden has promised to upgrade the U.S. power grid so that it does not emit carbon dioxide by 2035, as well as insulate buildings, repair roads, and build charging points for electric vehicles.
“Building a resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role” in job creation and Biden’s goal of achieving a “clean zero future”. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.
The storms have drawn a lot of attention this week, especially since in addition to freezing Americans, they have affected COVID-19 vaccinations. But that doesn’t mean they don’t become more common, experts say.
“This was definitely an anomaly,” but one that will probably happen more often due to climate change, said Sara Eftekharnejad, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University.
“Planning probably needs to improve, because we started seeing more extreme weather events across the country,” he said, whether it was an extreme cold in Texas or the intense heat wave that fueled wildfires in California last year. past.
Improving forecasts, both in the medium and long term, would help prevent catastrophic errors such as current blackouts in Texas and other states, as well as large-scale storage systems that can provide electricity when there are peaks. demand and diversify energy sources, have indicated Eftekharnejad and other experts.
Climate change also affects military readiness. The damage caused by a 2018 hurricane at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, and the 2019 floods at Offutt Air Base in Nebraska, caused the Pentagon to send troops to Britain to train.
Another 2018 hurricane that hit North Carolina’s Lejeune Camp, where a third of the Navy’s resources are located, caused enormous damage and affected instruction in general, U.S. military commanders concluded.
The disaster in Texas and other states “is a reminder that our nation’s critical infrastructure is vulnerable to extreme weather events and we can no longer turn a deaf ear to the resilience investments needed to protect it,” said Sen. Tom Carper , a Delaware Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Carper met with Biden at the White House last week.
“The cost associated with tackling climate change and improving our resilience to infrastructure will always be less than the cost of rebuilding or not acting,” Carper added.
Meanwhile, federal authorities are analyzing the operation of the power system during the storm that affected Louisiana states in Minnesota.
In Texas, where wind power is gaining weight, wind turbines are not usually equipped to withstand low temperatures for long, as is the case in Iowa and other cold weather states. Modifying them lightly to withstand freezing temperatures is a necessary step in tackling climate change, said Roy McCann, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas.
Although some Republican politicians, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have tried to attribute the blackouts to wind and solar power, most of the state’s energy is produced in traditional thermal power plants, mostly natural gas. , which were the main problem.
“The whole system was outdated,” said Joshua Rhodes, an associate researcher in energy at the University of Texas.