Surprise: California Blackouts Blamed On ‘Climate Change’

It couldn’t have anything to do with California making it difficult for reliable energy to operate and instead be dependent on so much alternative energy which is unreliable, could it?

Record heat put thousands of Californians in the dark Friday. Scientists predicted this from climate change.

Temperatures shot up over 110 degrees in Southern California on Friday, obliterating all kinds of long-standing heat records, and the lights went out for tens of thousands of customers. Californians were powerless, without air conditioning, in the hottest weather many had ever experienced.

Climate scientists have known this was coming, and it may only be the beginning.

“We studied this a long time ago . . . now our projections are becoming reality,” tweeted Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.

In 2006, Hayhoe and colleagues published the study “Climate, Extreme Heat, and Electricity Demand in California” in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

“Over the twenty-first century, the frequency of extreme-heat events for major cities in heavily air-conditioned California is projected to increase rapidly,” the study said. It warned that as temperatures soared, electricity demand would exceed supply.

In reality, this is nothing unusual. When weather events occur, people can use more energy, and this can cause brownouts and blackouts. In this case, I guess we’re supposed to blame the vast numbers of fossil fueled vehicles that drive around California.

If projections are correct, heat waves will become worse in the coming decades, further taxing California’s energy supply. Hayhoe’s 2006 study concluded a “potential for electricity deficits as high as 17 percent” later this century.

Of course, the Catch-22 is that if cities increase electricity capacity to adapt to a changing climate using fossil-fuel-based energy sources, greenhouse-gas emissions increase, which warm the climate even more.

Well, if every Warmist would give up their air conditioning, fossil fueled vehicles, and pay taxes, we could definitely solve this, right?

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19 Responses to “Surprise: California Blackouts Blamed On ‘Climate Change’”

  1. Jl says:

    “If projections are correct…”. They haven’t been, and probably won’t be.

  2. jefferino says:

    The scientists said it would warm, and it’s warming. Record highs. People dying in Montreal from heat waves!

    You’ll admit the truth sooner or later, or be the last person on Earth denying that it’s warming.

    • formwiz says:

      People are dying because they’re old and left alone by their families who expect the Socialists who push this warming nonsense to look in on them.

  3. Bruce says:

    Air conditioners make cold air for inside and hot humid air for outside. Which makes outside hotter and more humid.

    It is all part of the Urban Heat Island.

    “Projections of future climate suggest increases in extreme temperatures particularly in mid latitudes. In addition, the effect of heat waves, which are becoming a major “summer killer”, is exacerbated in urban areas owing to the heat island effect. Air conditioning (A/C) is a key parameter for health problems in case of heat waves since, on one hand, it reduces mortality but, on the other hand, depending on the heat management, it can increase street temperature therefore increasing the air cooling demand.”

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261912001092

    • drowningpuppies says:

      Interesting abstract.
      Too bad it’s hidden behind a paywall.

      Here’s is what is troubling:

      Results of a meso-scale meteorological model (MESO-NH), coupled to an urban energy balance model including a simplified building model (TEB), are used. Simulations based on a realistic spatial cartography of air-cooled chillers and cooling towers in the city of Paris and surroundings have been performed.

      Models coupled to models including a simplified model and simulations based on realistic spatial cartography?

      Come on, dude.
      They made it up.

      https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

    • formwiz says:

      You don’t live on the East coast, do you?

      We had this back in the 50s when almost nobody had AC.

  4. Professor Hale says:

    California power companies have a state controlled mechanism that controls prices and supply, but doesn’t control demand. The inescapable consequence is blackouts. Just like every other third world country with state controlled supply. I remember seeing this in the news the last time California has plenty of supply, but the price was exorbitant. That’s because the state board bought energy on long term contracts at high prices from out of state because they wrongly predicted the prices would go higher still. So they locked in a stupidly high price. Since then, they passed more stupid laws about demanding percentages of energy from “renewable” sources (I.e. more expensive sources, and fictional sources). Thus… more blackouts.

    Meanwhile, on the other side of the state lines, other states manage their grids by letting power companies build more generation to accommodate increases in demand.

    Things suck in California because things ALWAYS suck when the people running your government think they have unlimited power of the people.
    Take comfort in the fact that some state employee somewhere is going to get a huge bonus this year because his part of the state is going to meet his fictional carbon limit.

  5. Jl says:

    “They said it would warm, and it’s warming.” Whoa-that’s a tough one. Like saying “somebody will win the game, and look, somebody did.” Plus, as far as hot days and records, more of that occurred earlier last century

    • jefferson says:

      Like saying “somebody will win the game, and look, somebody did.”

      Not exactly. It’s more like saying the Cardinals will beat the Cubs, and look, they did.

      Svante Arrhenius said it can warm, cool or stay the same, but predicted it would warm if we added significant CO2 to the atmosphere. Maybe he made a lucky guess over a century ago. But he was right. And others have been right, as well.

      Who’s consistently wrong? The so-called skeptics.

  6. covjefe says:

    The rolling brownouts and blackouts in 2000 and 2001 were largely caused by energy market manipulations to drive up wholesale prices (remember Enron?).

    And in 2016:

    State officials warn that Southern California could face as many as 14 days of scheduled blackouts this summer because of depleted reserves of natural gas caused by the massive leak in Aliso Canyon.

    The canyon in the hills above Porter Ranch is a crucial gas storage facility, supplying 17 power plants in the Los Angeles Basin. But the four-month leak that began in October left the facility at one-fifth of its capacity and new injections of gas have been prohibited until all of its wells have passed comprehensive tests.

    And now:

    Back in Los Angeles, DWP officials said Saturday’s power demand was the second-highest of any weekend day in the city’s history, with peak use exceeding 5,700 megawatts, one day after a July record of 6,256 megawatts was used on Friday, which was the most used for a single day since 2006 when 6,165 megawatts were used.

    • drowningpuppies says:

      Just shows that California has done very little to upgrade and boost their energy infrastructure over the years.
      The state still imports over 30 percent of its electricity from the surrounding states.

      Boo-fvcking-hoo!

      https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

    • formwiz says:

      Oh, yeah, it’s those greedy robber barons and their Wall Street lackeys.

      My God, put down the Daily Worker and find a girl friend.

  7. Jl says:

    “Arrhenius said it would warm…” Wow- tough call there, seeing as we were in an interglacial period. It was warming before then, and it warmed before higher levels of CO2. Arrhenius also predicted “Siberia would become the greatest farming area in the world”. I’m sure you just forgot the spectacularly wrong predictions by your friend…

  8. Jl says:

    Meanwhile, the country that left the useless Paris Accord is reducing emissions, while the idiots still in it are not. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-08/co2-emissions-hit-67-year-low-trumps-america-rest-world-rises

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