Eye of the Storm

Tales from inside Hurricane Beryl's hurly-burly belly...

(A NOAA hurricane hunter craft flew through the eye of Hurricane Beryl, 2024. Credit: NOAA)

“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.”

~ Louisa May Alcott

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Houston, Texas…

Fierce hurricanes… power outages… modern democracy…

Bearing down upon us, ever ready to menace and disturb, are disasters both of our own making and of the natural order. What is man to do?

We arrived in Houston this past weekend, just in time for an epic display of mother nature’s awe-inspiring energy. Hurricane Beryl was “organizing” in the Gulf, the news informed us. Someone, somewhere, had used a gas stove, or a plastic straw, or driven a Chevy to the levee in the olden days of internal combustion engines. Now, humanity would have to pay. 

“You sure picked a time to visit,” remarked the kindly lady at the rental car desk. “You might wanna take this ‘ere vehicle and jus’ get on outta Dodge!”

“What?” we cocked an eyebrow. “And miss the show?”

She returned a wry smile. “So you’ll be wanting the full, comprehensive insurance then, huh?”

Beryl’s Second Coming

Driving in from Bush International late Sunday afternoon, we could already see the outer bands of the approaching storm, darkening the horizon. We made a quick stop at a local H-E-B market to stock up on essentials… water, flashlights, an emergency case of California cabernet. (Sorry Asia...but your wine still stinks.) Thus equipped, we carried on into the breach.

Our Airbnb seemed cozy enough to us… but dear wifey, something of a hurricane veteran, promptly deemed it unsuitable. Large, exposed windows in old wooden frames… loose floorboards on the wraparound porch… gnarled tree branches growing over the house, knotted with power lines… and a rickety picket fence surrounding it all.

There was only one thing for it, as dear daughter gleefully exclaimed:

“Sleepover at Grammy’s!”

So we decamped to the Museum District, where we holed up in a modern apartment tower, overlooking the Medical Center off in the middle distance. High on the 16^th floor, in good company and fine cheer, we settled in for the evening’s grand spectacle...

Hurricane Beryl made landfall early Monday morning, down on the Texan coast. A belly full of sound and fury, her winds whipped at 75…80…90 miles an hour. Her torrential rains lashed in heavy sheets, cutting across the granite sky. Through the night she barreled, like a drunken sailor through a barroom crowd, crashing over tables, spilling rum and breaking glasses with every awkward lurch. By 4am, flailing and obstreperous, she was in the city’s lap...

This would be something of a second coming for ol’ Beryl. She had already reached Category 5 hurricane status a week or so earlier, when in her rambunctious youth she stormed across the Caribbean, devastating Barbados and Jamaica and leaving the islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines almost entirely destroyed. There, amid a population gentle, poor and ill-prepared to face her foul-mouthed insults, she wrought all the havoc she could. 

After gracelessly trashing the Gulf party, Beryl lay low and surly over the ensuing days, sleeping off her hangover. How would she behave when she showed up in the US, wary onlookers wondered?  

Newsplaining

Naturally, the popular press was on hand to newsplain the state of nature to knuckle-dragging imbeciles who stubbornly refuse to accept The Science™ behind such totally non-complex phenomena as... the planet’s weather. Here they are, lock stock and two smoking brain cells...

Climate change makes hurricanes like Beryl more dangerous - NPR

Deadly Hurricane Beryl Supercharged by Climate Change, Experts Say ~ Futurism

Record-breaking Category 5 Hurricane Beryl wouldn't be possible without climate change ~ Salon

And our personal favorite...

Hurricane Beryl Makes a Mockery of Texas Climate Deniers - Bloomberg

Hmm... Sounds a bit personal, no? As though “deniers” might even deserve their cruel fate, a kind of poetic comeuppance for their obstinate refusal to accept the unquestionable wisdom of an elite media establishment that has spent the past twenty years lying to their face. (Also, does anyone else bristle at the not-so-subtle implication that people who have questions regarding the Accepted Climate Narrative ought to be casually lumped in with holocaust deniers?)

As usual, the story is far more complex than media bobbleheads would have us believe. Even a simple definition of terms appears beyond their collective grasp. As

Roger Pielke Jr.

explains in an excellent post on his Substack: 

“Neither climate nor climate change cause, fuel, or influence weather.”

It’s a frequent misnomer, especially among the journalactivist class. Here’s how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself defines that nettlesome term:

A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.

Climate change is a measurement of a change in weather statistics, in other words, not an underlying cause of such a change. Metric, not mover. Saying climate change “supercharges” hurricanes would be a bit like saying the avoirdupois (pound/ounce) weight system increases obesity. Whatever the causes of obesity (and there are many inputs, to be sure), the scale is not to blame.

And yet, as Professor Pielke illustrates, “the idea that climate change is a causal agent has become increasingly common in recent decades, departing dramatically from its use in the IPCC and much of the scientific community.” Here’s the Google NGrams figure Pielke used to make the point:

“Guess what caused this trend?” wondered Pielke. (Feel free to venture a guess of your own in the comments section, below...)

Worst Comes to Worst

As for our own “position” on the delicate and strangely partisan matter of climate change, your editor remains dutifully agnostic. Lacking both the enthusiastic credulity of the true believer… and the scientific acumen of the so-called “climate deniers”… we profess a kind of skepticism that used to be the bedrock of rational, scientific inquiry. That is, before the conceit of certainty smothered public discourse. Rather, we dare to believe it is not given to man to know his fate… much less the fate of the world and all existing species there upon on it. 

But let us leave mere semantics/definitions of key terms aside for a second and assume the very worst of it.

That is to say, let us grant that Al Gore was right all along... that the summer arctic ice cap did actually disappear in 2016 (it did not)... that the ocean did rise 20 feet since his ridiculous 2006 film (it has risen 8-9 inches...since 1880) and that the number of US landfalling hurricanes is drastically increasing in both absolute number and severity (rather than non-drastically decreasing, as is actually the case, at least according to those “science deniers” over at the American Meteorological Society)...

(Source: American Meteorological Society (AMS); H/T @BjornLomborg)

What to do about our calamitous, though happily hypothetical scenario? Especially for those on the much-discussed “climate frontline,” those sleeping in corrugated lean-tos and shanty towns on vulnerable Caribbean islands? 

How about inviting them over to Grammy’s house? (Figuratively speaking, of course.) That is to say, how about allowing, if not actively helping, these nations to industrialize, to reach a level of resilience taken for granted by waffling do-gooders who enjoy all the comfort and security their carbon-based economies can afford? 

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

Sometime around 6am, we awakened to the mighty tempest raging outside our windows. A lighthouse at sea, Grammy’s building stood firm amid the squall, the violent bursts of heaven thrashing against her pillars of steel and concrete. 

In the distance, the Texas Medical Center (TMC) shone like a beacon, its towering pinnacles illuminated in adamant defiance of Beryl’s wrath and bluster. Employing over 100,000 people and treating more than 10 million patients per year, TMC is both the single largest medical center and life science destination on the planet as well as a modern marvel of human achievement. It is, moreover, a testament to man’s own unyielding nature, to defy his environmental constraints, to forge ahead, shape the world around him, to overcome even the greatest obstacles, “to reach,” as the ancients used to say, “beyond his grasp.”

We watched for hours in quiet awe, not only the storm, but also the lights atop those distant buildings. Never did they waiver. Not once did they falter. 

At its finest, America is a nation of astounding resilience, of innovation and vast industry, of energy and exploration and ceaseless endeavor. And at its core, cheap, reliable, high density energy... to forge its steel, to manufacture and transport its goods, to sow and reap its harvests, to power hospitals in rain or shine, homes in temperatures extreme, to raise its cities to the skies above and to drive virtually every aspect of its roaring engine room below. 

Those who claim to know what they cannot possibly (and demonstrably do not) know wish to deindustrialize the world. They yearn not only for “decarbonization” – a curious proposition, given that carbon is the fundamental building block of life – but for degrowth and depopulation, too. 

Anti-natalist, anti-capitalist and anti-industrialist, theirs is a philosophy fundamentally anti-human. 

In the end, their menacing hand may prove the gravest disaster of all. 

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Three cheers for the free market of ideas!

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