As a power outage casualty, I returned to this substack expecting this type of article with the usual mocking of climate change as a "leftist" construct, rather than an adult-level discussion of CO2, which traps heat and destabilizes weather with no awareness of political ideologies. By "adult-level" I don't mean what someone reads on a contrarian blog, or some old Limbaugh outtake.
Mr. Cheverton, do you have any understanding of how AGW (anthropogenic global warming, as in man-made) is destabilizing the polar vortex, leading to precisely THESE sorts of storms? No power company could have known this many trees would fall in one event, let alone so densely, as in Beaverton. And suing utility companies for sparking fires likewise ignores why the fires are burning so much hotter now.
This reply will get the usual low-information comments like "Yeah, CO2 may trap heat but the climate's changed before!" (failing to note that we're causing it this time, and ancient periods didn't threaten complex civilizations). Instead of wasting energy on vague bro-science, take the time to actually read articles on the polar vortex without giggling like 12 year-olds and changing the subject to "tax scam!" It makes y'all look as flaky as Transtifa.
Conservatives would have a much better chance of winning elections against progressive crime-coddlers if they'd stop playing dumb with the laws of nature, pretending to have knowledge they don't, and being selectively fine with science until its findings seem to threaten their incomes. Defunding the EPA (Trump's 2016 pitch) is like defunding the police, just with different crimes to protect. Hatred of regulatory authority ties the far left & right together. They don't want to really improve the world, just get their piece of it, or feel righteous.
Remember when the ozone hole was also "fake news" for similar reasons, yet we managed to adapt with different refrigerants? Global warming may not really be solvable, but it can be approached with adult gravitas, not childish denials. Conservatives are supposed to take life as literally as possible, right?
I can't believe PGE's CEO makes 6 million/yr. Surely that's false*, but I don't have time to research it right now - our power was out for 4 days and now I'm dealing with broken pipes. *PGE is a regulated utility, right? How could the board or commission or whatever it is approve a 6M salary? Also, if you have time, I'd like to see how Max Rail and Trimet electric buses did during the cold snap. I doubt if they ran at all...I'm a new subscriber, live in Sandy, and rely on you for Portand news, since I don't watch the news; just substacks.
All ya got to do is google! “Maria Pope PGE Salary”. If you want to dig more 990’s are public! We found it in multiple places. And an update- she made 6 million in 2022 (via 990), and 2023 got a raise, and was paid 8 million.
Thanks. So, the utility commission regulates PGE, holding them to a 'reasonable' (10-12% ?) profit, and requiring documentation of expenses before approving the 18% rate increase, but allows an 8 million dollar salary for a desk job? I wonder how the freezing linemen feel about that...Any chance you'll be writing about Trimet's electric buses?
I must be one of the over-reacting hysterical types who understand we can both “freeze and fry” in the same year and STILL believe the 96% of scientists who tell us that climate change is real. And that it’s causing weather extremes --- events with huge socioeconomic impacts on populations everywhere. And climate change, specifically the warming of our planet, is largely caused by humans. But hey - it’s just hysteria.
Here’s one of only a million articles I found in two seconds that says we’re right to be concerned. But hey, all the pirate journalists got to make jokes about alternative energy and electric vehicles this past week, so that was fun for them.
Thank you for also standing up to Mr. Cheverton's litany of assuming that leftists invented CO2's heat-trapping abilities. You'd think a writer as witty as he would have some brainpower left over to study how serious the CO2 problem actually is. He's probably never really studied it beyond others' contrarian opinions.
The right is adamant that nothing can truly be caused by AGW, just as the left thinks everything bad that happens to blacks must be caused by racism. It's the same tribal myopia.
Many aren't aware that the whole planet would be frozen with zero ppm CO2, and Man has raised it from a stable civilization baseline of 280 ppm to 420 ppm. That's a very big deal. Destabilization of the normally better-contained Artic polar vortex is causing more extreme spells of cold and wind as we saw in Portland metro, so yes, global warming does cause localized global cooling. That concept is apparently too sophisticated for folks like Cheverton, but its really just tribal laziness.
A lot of it stems from the 60s and 70s when smelly hippies were despised by conservatives, but those hippies were usually wise about environmental problems (helping to push the vital EPA creation by Nixon) even if their tactics got annoying, like today's climate protests blocking roads. In other words, if a far-leftist said "Your house is burning (or freezing) and you'd better do something!" would it not be burning simply because they said it?
Yes, fun. Climate Change (a euphemism for global warming) of 0.01 degree every year (if you can believe they can measure global temp that accurately) obviously is connected to and the cause of not just hurricanes, floods, tornados, and earthquakes, but also the worst winter storm we've seen in 40 years. And it's all because of the 0.03% CO2 in our atmosphere. It's "science", you see.
It seems you have a low understanding of this topic. The "small" percentage is not the issue; the potency of its effect is. Think of poisons that require miniscule doses, though that's an imperfect analogy to the atmosphere itself.
If you need CO2 percentages explained visually, see this video showing how much darker ink in water looks with seemingly tiny changes. https://youtu.be/81FHVrXgzuA (it's 13 years old, so the level was 390 ppm or 0.039%)
Thanks to Man's 24/7 burning of carbon, the CO2 percentage is now up to 0.042% or 420 ppm, not 0.03%.
And with zero percent (or ppm) CO2, the Earth would be frozen and uninhabitable for mammals. But that's for different reasons than how AGW is destabilizing the polar vortex, dragging cold air and wind down from the Arctic more often and erratically, knocking down ice-laden trees and causing grid chaos. Do you care to connect those dots just a little or remain a stubborn ideologue?
Observe how the left also ditches context by ignoring the percentage of black crime vs. white or Asian when complaining about the police. If conservatives want to win more public trust, they need to think like adults, not sloganeers.
"the CO2 percentage is now up to 0.042% or 420 ppm, not 0.03%. And with zero percent (or ppm) CO2, the Earth would be frozen and uninhabitable for mammals."
Sorry, I wasn't up to date on % CO2. I don't know if the earth would be frozen without it, but there's always been CO2 in our atmosphere, so it's a moot hypothetical point. I'm not impressed with your analogies or your "science". But I do appreciate your politeness in disagreement, and I appreciate substack's platform for discussion rather then name-calling or worse.
Sadly, Substack is not immune to name-calling and worse. The level of civility of the comments on the Substack platform is determined by each commenter's civility or lack thereof. Having been reading Mr. Cheverton's pieces and commenting on them for quite a while, I can say the commenters here are a respectful group. The same cannot be said for all Substacks. Substack does not appear to prioritize content moderation.
As a power outage casualty, I returned to this substack expecting this type of article with the usual mocking of climate change as a "leftist" construct, rather than an adult-level discussion of CO2, which traps heat and destabilizes weather with no awareness of political ideologies. By "adult-level" I don't mean what someone reads on a contrarian blog, or some old Limbaugh outtake.
Mr. Cheverton, do you have any understanding of how AGW (anthropogenic global warming, as in man-made) is destabilizing the polar vortex, leading to precisely THESE sorts of storms? No power company could have known this many trees would fall in one event, let alone so densely, as in Beaverton. And suing utility companies for sparking fires likewise ignores why the fires are burning so much hotter now.
This reply will get the usual low-information comments like "Yeah, CO2 may trap heat but the climate's changed before!" (failing to note that we're causing it this time, and ancient periods didn't threaten complex civilizations). Instead of wasting energy on vague bro-science, take the time to actually read articles on the polar vortex without giggling like 12 year-olds and changing the subject to "tax scam!" It makes y'all look as flaky as Transtifa.
Here's a start: https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+disrupting+polar+vortex
Conservatives would have a much better chance of winning elections against progressive crime-coddlers if they'd stop playing dumb with the laws of nature, pretending to have knowledge they don't, and being selectively fine with science until its findings seem to threaten their incomes. Defunding the EPA (Trump's 2016 pitch) is like defunding the police, just with different crimes to protect. Hatred of regulatory authority ties the far left & right together. They don't want to really improve the world, just get their piece of it, or feel righteous.
Remember when the ozone hole was also "fake news" for similar reasons, yet we managed to adapt with different refrigerants? Global warming may not really be solvable, but it can be approached with adult gravitas, not childish denials. Conservatives are supposed to take life as literally as possible, right?
I can't believe PGE's CEO makes 6 million/yr. Surely that's false*, but I don't have time to research it right now - our power was out for 4 days and now I'm dealing with broken pipes. *PGE is a regulated utility, right? How could the board or commission or whatever it is approve a 6M salary? Also, if you have time, I'd like to see how Max Rail and Trimet electric buses did during the cold snap. I doubt if they ran at all...I'm a new subscriber, live in Sandy, and rely on you for Portand news, since I don't watch the news; just substacks.
All ya got to do is google! “Maria Pope PGE Salary”. If you want to dig more 990’s are public! We found it in multiple places. And an update- she made 6 million in 2022 (via 990), and 2023 got a raise, and was paid 8 million.
Thanks. So, the utility commission regulates PGE, holding them to a 'reasonable' (10-12% ?) profit, and requiring documentation of expenses before approving the 18% rate increase, but allows an 8 million dollar salary for a desk job? I wonder how the freezing linemen feel about that...Any chance you'll be writing about Trimet's electric buses?
I must be one of the over-reacting hysterical types who understand we can both “freeze and fry” in the same year and STILL believe the 96% of scientists who tell us that climate change is real. And that it’s causing weather extremes --- events with huge socioeconomic impacts on populations everywhere. And climate change, specifically the warming of our planet, is largely caused by humans. But hey - it’s just hysteria.
Here’s one of only a million articles I found in two seconds that says we’re right to be concerned. But hey, all the pirate journalists got to make jokes about alternative energy and electric vehicles this past week, so that was fun for them.
https://climate.nasa.gov/extreme-weather.amp
Thank you for also standing up to Mr. Cheverton's litany of assuming that leftists invented CO2's heat-trapping abilities. You'd think a writer as witty as he would have some brainpower left over to study how serious the CO2 problem actually is. He's probably never really studied it beyond others' contrarian opinions.
The right is adamant that nothing can truly be caused by AGW, just as the left thinks everything bad that happens to blacks must be caused by racism. It's the same tribal myopia.
Many aren't aware that the whole planet would be frozen with zero ppm CO2, and Man has raised it from a stable civilization baseline of 280 ppm to 420 ppm. That's a very big deal. Destabilization of the normally better-contained Artic polar vortex is causing more extreme spells of cold and wind as we saw in Portland metro, so yes, global warming does cause localized global cooling. That concept is apparently too sophisticated for folks like Cheverton, but its really just tribal laziness.
A lot of it stems from the 60s and 70s when smelly hippies were despised by conservatives, but those hippies were usually wise about environmental problems (helping to push the vital EPA creation by Nixon) even if their tactics got annoying, like today's climate protests blocking roads. In other words, if a far-leftist said "Your house is burning (or freezing) and you'd better do something!" would it not be burning simply because they said it?
Yes, fun. Climate Change (a euphemism for global warming) of 0.01 degree every year (if you can believe they can measure global temp that accurately) obviously is connected to and the cause of not just hurricanes, floods, tornados, and earthquakes, but also the worst winter storm we've seen in 40 years. And it's all because of the 0.03% CO2 in our atmosphere. It's "science", you see.
It seems you have a low understanding of this topic. The "small" percentage is not the issue; the potency of its effect is. Think of poisons that require miniscule doses, though that's an imperfect analogy to the atmosphere itself.
If you need CO2 percentages explained visually, see this video showing how much darker ink in water looks with seemingly tiny changes. https://youtu.be/81FHVrXgzuA (it's 13 years old, so the level was 390 ppm or 0.039%)
Thanks to Man's 24/7 burning of carbon, the CO2 percentage is now up to 0.042% or 420 ppm, not 0.03%.
And with zero percent (or ppm) CO2, the Earth would be frozen and uninhabitable for mammals. But that's for different reasons than how AGW is destabilizing the polar vortex, dragging cold air and wind down from the Arctic more often and erratically, knocking down ice-laden trees and causing grid chaos. Do you care to connect those dots just a little or remain a stubborn ideologue?
Observe how the left also ditches context by ignoring the percentage of black crime vs. white or Asian when complaining about the police. If conservatives want to win more public trust, they need to think like adults, not sloganeers.
"the CO2 percentage is now up to 0.042% or 420 ppm, not 0.03%. And with zero percent (or ppm) CO2, the Earth would be frozen and uninhabitable for mammals."
Sorry, I wasn't up to date on % CO2. I don't know if the earth would be frozen without it, but there's always been CO2 in our atmosphere, so it's a moot hypothetical point. I'm not impressed with your analogies or your "science". But I do appreciate your politeness in disagreement, and I appreciate substack's platform for discussion rather then name-calling or worse.
Sadly, Substack is not immune to name-calling and worse. The level of civility of the comments on the Substack platform is determined by each commenter's civility or lack thereof. Having been reading Mr. Cheverton's pieces and commenting on them for quite a while, I can say the commenters here are a respectful group. The same cannot be said for all Substacks. Substack does not appear to prioritize content moderation.