Thank you for this excellent analysis and attribution explanation of the tragedy that unfolded in a state that denies climate change is even happening and that continues to suffer the consequences of their mutual “pigheadedness”and reluctance to invest in early warning systems. You may have been at a loss for words, but I can assure you my vocabulary for climate deniers and fools who don’t plan ahead for such foreseeable climate driven, rain bomb events is replete with similar words as above. We can fix a lot of society’s ills but we just can’t fix stupid.
We used to be the kind of country and state where people would have been sure to take the best care possible of other people’s kids, even if they had to pay a little extra, because that’s just what you did. I was lucky to grow up in that place.
The tragic loss of life in Texas is heartbreaking and demands our full attention—and compassion. In moments like this, it's only natural that people focus on the urgent need for better adaptation: warning systems, infrastructure, evacuation planning. These are essential and, frankly, long overdue.
But I’d offer a gentle reminder: adaptation alone is not enough. Without deep and sustained mitigation—meaning serious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions—we are simply accruing more and more “climate debt.” Every ton of carbon we emit now adds to the future cost of adaptation, both in dollars and in lives.
From a pragmatic standpoint, the cost of getting to net zero is challenging, yes—but it's a bounded and increasingly calculable investment. We can model it. We can plan for it. We can deploy technologies and policies to reach it.
In contrast, the cost of adaptation if we don’t mitigate is unbounded. The target keeps moving. The infrastructure keeps breaking. The extremes keep intensifying. And the human toll—like we’re seeing in Texas—grows each time.
So yes, we need both. But if we don’t lead with mitigation, adaptation becomes an endlessly escalating, reactive struggle. We can and must do better—not just for those already impacted, but to prevent even worse tragedies down the road.
Well put. I, for one, don't see adaptation and mitigation as competing strategies. Climate science is able to project future warming with mitigation (i.e. decarbonization) or without. Adaptation has to anticipate the most likely trajectory of global heat accumulation, and its effect on current and future local weather. Cost-effective adaptation must be quantitatively scaled to climate science's projections. The higher the emissions rate, the more frequent upgrades for resilience needed. As always, politics will pit private against public interests. At all times, people at risk of flash flooding, wildfire, heatwaves, droughts, etc., must remember that the sooner we build out the carbon-neutral economy, the less we'll have to spend on adaptation!
I drove across the escarpment region just last year and it is dramatic. What I have also seen in central Texas on several visits were dramatic concrete constructions clearly designed to capture and channel extreme rain events. Obviously the region has experienced similar events in the past and has tried to take measures to control excess amounts of sudden rainfall. They also need to step up their efforts to identify vulnerable structures and uses of areas vulnerable to such fast rising waters.
Cost comparisons of fossil fuel versus renewables always ignore the healthcare cost of breathing effluents, the increasing cost of homeowner insurance as climate disasters double each decade, the military price of defending supply lines, rebuilding after climate disasters, oil spills and rivers polluted by coal byproducts, etc. Now a million deaths a year from heat waves too hot to live through. There is no sane excuse for this escalating disaster.
"...the military price of defending supply lines..."
The US has been spending ~$80B a year just for protecting the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. I don't expect we'll get involved in the politics of other countries based on their local wind and insolation.
People rightly point out that renewables are cheaper and that the cost of continuing to burn fossil fuels makes it even more a no brainer, but converting to a plant based economy would also be considerably cheaper, improve health and free up nearly 50% of habitable land for reforestation, sequestration and cooling.
"Many have been quick to politicize the tragedy in an effort to support whatever agenda that they were promoting before the disaster — climate change, DOGE budget cuts, operations of the National Weather Service, the Biden Administration."
Golly, I wonder what his political preferences are.
He doesn't comment much on politics, except the intersection of politic, science, and policy. From reading a lot of his writing, and following his career, I think he's a fairly normal liberal Democrat. I would be astonished if he ever voted for Trump, or considered voting for him.
Roger Pielke, Jr. was a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder until he took emeritus status this year. You're obviously not interested in what I say. Read what he says, and evaluate it yourself.
Or, to quote one of my favorite Substackers, "We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe." If you aren't wedded to you choice, do some investigation for yourself.
Over the past few decades I've learned to filter out information based on sources. And though the risk is that I miss something useful to know, it's more than likely that valid information will come to me via other sources.
My life is too short to deal with anybody associated with the American Enterprise Institute (or Judith "satellite data is the best measure" Curry, or people who take religious oaths, or political scientists playing word games, or anti-vaxxers, or creationists, or white supremacists, or libertarians who won't state their position on inherited wealth).
In my youth, I fervently believed, based on the shared attitudes of people around me, that I could communicate telepathically with an unmeasurable entity that created the universe. It took me a long and disorienting time to disentangle those supernatural beliefs from that which was confirmably true. I'm much more careful about embracing unvetted information.
I do love questioning and arguing with experts in science and engineering, and they know from how I question them that I actually want to *understand* their answers.
Interesting. I'll point out that Roger Pielke was considered a prime expert on science and policy (he's not a scientist, but studied how science influences policy), until he was targeted for saying the "wrong" things about climate change. If you don't have the time to check him, there's nothing I could say or do to change your mind. But if you were to take the time, and compare what he writes to what the IPCC writes, you'd find that he has no quarrel at all with the IPCC findings.
"...as well as upgrading our warning systems so people can evacuate at-risk areas safely."
As we've seen with hurricane and wildfire evacuations, roads which are more than sufficient at handling a normal amount of traffic quickly get clogged by everybody hitting the road at once.
The downside with building higher-capacity roads for evacuation is developers adding more commercial and residential property to take advantage of the "shorter" commutes. Contraflow systems don't create that problem, of course, but they take too long to convert compared to the speed of wildfires or rapid intensification of storms.
One lower-budget but potentially effective project is to add signs "<local disaster> Evacuation Route" or "Avoid Road When Flooding," which at least has a chance to get people thinking in those terms once in a while.
The anti green loons are saying that the recent extreme and 'unnatural' floods were caused by military warfare, Rainmaker in league with Palantir. They don't comment whether the ones in 1921 were also.
Mexican Counselors Silvana Garza Valdez and Maria Paula Zárate Hailed as Heroes After Rescuing Camp Mystic Girls During Texas Flooding
Channel2 NOW Staff July 6, 2025
These brave young Mexican women are heroines in Texas. Silvana Garza Valdez and María Paula Zárate, both 19 years old, rescued 20 girls trapped by the flooding of the Guadalupe River.
Please post the peer-reviewed, published scientific article where I can cross-check the veracity of the unnamed graphic you used to support your position of increasing extreme rainfall event trends over time. I'm very curious in checking it out. In the meantime, consider this from Pielke: "Based on the peer-reviewed literature and observational records, there is little empirical basis to claim that extreme precipitation has increased in “flash flood alley” (or indeed, most of North America or the world). Similarly, there is little basis for claims that flooding has become more common or severe." And from AR6 WG1: "There is limited evidence and low agreement on observed climate change influences for river floods in North America (Section 11.5). "
Pielke also correctly referenced his graph showing decreased mortality in Texas as a result of river flooding corrected to population density since 1958, then backed it up with another article from Natural Hazards showing a global decline in mortality due to floods, including flash floods. See here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-024-06444-0. Also notice he doesn't use the words like "dumb", "misguided", or "denier". In other words, he writes like a professional.
"Pielke also correctly referenced his graph showing decreased mortality in Texas as a result of river flooding corrected to population density since 1958, then backed it up with another article from Natural Hazards showing a global decline in mortality due to floods, including flash floods."
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As with deadly heat waves, gas station fires, river floods, grain silo explosions, deadly chemical plant releases, earthquakes and storms, there are often projects and building code changes put in place to mitigate or prevent mortality* after the fact. A replication of Europe's 2003 heat wave should not result in the same mortality in 2025. Despite Japan's growing population, and frequent very large earthquakes, the mortality rates are much lower than the past. The string of modern Texas dams operated by the Lower Colorado River Authority, while also providing hydropower, were budgeted "to protect basin residents from the worst effects of Hill Country floods and provide the lower Colorado River basin with a reliable water supply" (although the first few poorly-constructed dams soon failed).
Mortality is not a proxy for measuring how bad a weather event is. On this warming planet, the rainfall rates—and how frequently these mass rain events occur—are the measures of a worsening climate, not the flooding itself, because over-paving and flood controls can affect flood levels in ways that have nothing to do with the climate.
_____________
*Emergency care also reduces mortality—whether on the battlefield or at home—so it's not the best metric on how "dangerous" shootings or floods or motorcycle accidents can be.
"Mortality is not a proxy for measuring how bad a weather event is...it's not the best metric on how "dangerous" shootings or floods or motorcycle accidents can be."
OK folks, NS Alito says we shouldn't count deaths as a sign of worsening climate change due to the confounding variable of adaptation and technological advancements like improved emergency management. We should instead use the frequency of mass rain events. My question is this: If we shouldn't use mortality as a gauge, then what other outcomes should we use? After all, Joe Biden said climate change is "The number one issue facing humanity". So, NS Alito, if we can't use mortality statistics to measure the effects of climate change, what do you think Biden was referring to? Costs to insurance companies? Is that it? Before you go there, make sure to correct for inflation and population density along vulnerable coastal areas over time. You'll find a pretty flat trend line for the past several decades. Sorry.
"We should instead use the frequency of mass rain events."
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We should use the frequency and intensity of mass rain events in lieu of flooding, certainly. The same storm can result in various levels of flooding or no flooding at all, depending on whether it is centered over a single watershed or split between two, or whether there has been a wildfire or baked soil, or whether a new, pavement-ridden subdivision has been built, or whether it overflowed and broke an ash slurry dam.
flood ↔ rain + terrain
Humans excel at modifying terrain. The climate metric for a flood event should be rain instead of flood.
Mortality is a clear-cut metric, so it is attractive to use by mainstream media and other score-keepers. Easy peasy. What it doesn't show is morbidity and other important forms of loss. Kidney damage from working in the heat (but he didn't die!), wildfire smoke in vulnerable lungs, damage or loss of a home or community resulting in homelessness (or people crowding up), damage to infrastructure that costs to rebuild (*if* it's rebuilt).
As for tallying costs, I warn people to be wary of media reports of monetary damage from disasters, as they're often only counting *insured losses* (in developed economies) and not counting the people driven [further] into poverty by damage to a roof or a vehicle or a washed-away single-wide or deaths of livestock.
Wow. Just wow. Look dude, I'm a medical doctor for over 20 years now. So I guess I'm pulling rank. Show me something concrete to believe that climate change is the "number one issue facing humanity". Because if all you have is elevated creatinines (kidneys) and abnormal spirometries (lungs), you don't have anything. You have nothing. We can count losses of homes and infrastructure as you suggestsed, but it must be (just like everything else) compared to a baseline historical rate. Climate change can't be catastrophic if we adapt to it. If the number one issue facing humanity can't be clarified into an issue at all, then it kind of makes human caused catastrophic climate change actually look silly. Doesn't it?
"Climate change can't be catastrophic if we adapt to it."
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Describe this "adaptation" to increasing sea level rise, or to increasing heat domes and high wet bulb temperatures. What are the labor and physical resources for coastal cities to stop the sea? Where should people build houses?
And "catastrophic" doesn't mean that silly Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow, but cities going into a revenue death spiral as the people with money move out and the property taxes drop with them. It's climate refugees choking cities like Dhaka (right now) or Atlanta (forecast) as their former homes become unliveable. It's budgets for emergency response not being able to keep up with the increasing frequency of heat domes or extreme rain events. It's moving runways that are too close to the sea, or extending them because the weather is so hot that jets need more takeoff distance. It's encroaching salt water into water tables, or taking city water wells out of service.
The code requirements for transmission towers has increased from handling 60mph winds to 80mph winds, which makes them a lot more expensive. Burying transmission power cables cost upwards of $1.25m per mile. Structures and roads that relied on the stability permafrost have to be rebuilt. In my experience, the people who whine the most about the "alarmists" also squeal like stuck pigs when asked to pay more to cover adaptation costs.
"There is no way, no how that you are going to convince me that we are living in 'terrifying' times."
One's mind recoils from the terror of those who died in this recent extreme event, some fraction of whom almost certainly would have survived if not for global warming. Whatever other causes fractionally contributed to the death toll, higher GMST -> more precipitable water (PWAT) -> more and heavier rain -> higher and faster flooding -> more deaths: seems like a 'no brainer'. The victims' mortal terror notwithstanding, Scott has not said how many more deaths attributable to global warming it will take to persuade him that collective intervention is needed, to cap the cumulative cost of anthropogenic climate change in money and grief.
"Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder."
Note that in the area of interest, Kerr County, Texas, both the frequency and magnitude of floods have been DECREASING since 1965, despite global warming.
In addition, downloading the data reveals that both the frequency and magnitude of US floods in general have decreased slightly since 1965. The decrease is not statistically significant in either case, but there is no sign of the increase that Mr. Dressler claims should be occurring.
Tragic indeed. The worst part is that the weather forecasters gave warnings 12 hours before the floods, but many people didn't get them due to lack of cell coverage.
And yes, I still write for WUWT. Here's one of my latest posts.
Thank you for these sensible words. Gratitude. But you miss an important aspect of what flows from this event. It is not science. Its compassion. It is seeing impact over time.
Each of these amped events has devastating impacts on individuals and communities who will have to rebuild destroyed lives under the weight of extreme loss (of loved ones, home, health, security). This takes years, and happens with almost no support (the government and charity programmes you are right now thinking step in—tiny drops, compared to the well of need. Drops that also demand a performace of gratitude from thier victims). Those communities will battle with thier internal landscapes as much as they will battle to regain a safe foothold in society that will cast them loose as soon as the media stops watching.
All the while, the natural landscape around them will be struggling the same. We are literally etching Earth's biospheres with destruction, and failing to notice once the media moves onto the next bauble and bead.
We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer.
It never should have been either/or. It always should have been both. Now tragedy unfolds and those left to adapt are silenced by the same messengers.
"We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer.
"It never should have been either/or. It always should have been both. Now tragedy unfolds and those left to adapt are silenced by the same messengers."
What the heck are you talking about? No "mainstream climate science" prevented you from making this comment! Who is being silenced, by whom? This is exactly the kind of baseless *tu quoque* complaint both deniers and doomers make!
Of course climate change necessitates both mitigation and adaptation! Adaptation is happening now, as weather-disaster victims bury their loved ones and repair their lives. Public investment in flood resilience is historically a local spending issue, never decided by scientists. Much of it, e.g. a warning system for Kerr County, requires local public investment that residents haven't been willing to spend tax money on. National institutions like NOAA and FEMA are undermined by anti-tax partisans who love only money. That's not climate science's fault!
Mitigation, too, requires collective action, to drive the US economy toward carbon-neutrality. The people with the most to lose by that spend $millions every year, to thwart any federal policy that even acknowledges there's anything to mitigate. Surely you know this! AFAICT, every objection to collective climate mitigation *or* adaptation originates with fossil fuel producers and investors, and others of their socioeconomic class, whose motives are transparent.
I could go on, but instead I'll let you defend your claim that mitigation is the only message "allowed". I, for one, prefer to focus on reducing fossil carbon emissions to zero, because it's the only way to cap the net cumulative cost of adapting to otherwise ever-worsening severe weather. That said, I'm scarcely opposed to collective adaptation, by zoning, building regulations, buyouts for homeowners at risk, and just about anything else you might propose, unless you're saying we should do those *instead* of building out our carbon-neutral economy. I can't even stop you from saying that: that's up to our host, who hasn't kicked either of us out yet! Do you have a chip on your shoulder, Dr. Prideaux?
I was going to give this a full reply, but do you know what? I don't have a chip on my shoulder, Mal Adapted. I have deep soul-crushing pain. If you had paused for one moment and looked at the backstory behind my comment you may have commented differently. But you didn't so it's moot. I respect you have another perspective. Let's agree to disagree.
"We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer."
That's pretty provocative language. Sorry, I can't "agree to disagree". I, for one, share your deep, soul-crushing pain, but climate scientists aren't the people you should be blaming! You know your host is a "mainstream" climate scientist, don't you? When has he ever not allowed "adaptation" to be spoken of? Do you think you might owe him an apology?
Do you share my pain Mal Adapted? Do you even know what it stems from?
Yes, I know the host is a climate scientist. One I have respected and promted heavily for a long time. I stand by my reaction. Where is the needed adaptation discussion? IPCC along with Mann and co suppressed adaptation discussions for more than a decade, because it was seen as giving in and giving up.
I am not responding to anything more here. We're hyjacking these comments. If you want to continue I welcome a discussion on DM.
Lady, I don't know anything about your private pain, but I'm as horrified as anyone by these scenes of destruction and death on the news, manifestly attributable in part to climate-change denial on multiple political scales. How can anyone not feel the victims' very public pain? Do I really need to say that? I'm not going to engage you privately, but will continue my responses here. You claimed at the outset that mainstream climate science (or perhaps just "Mann") is somehow suppressing discussion of adaptation. That's false, and damaging to climate science's crucial public credibility. Your complaint is misguided at best, and plays into the hands of carbon capital at worst. Stand by it all you want, but if it's all you've got, you're not helping with either adaptation or mitigation. In any case, when you led with a provocation, did you not expect pushback?
The earth study and researching of able bodied motions in time will only allow local literacy.
The army corps of engineers musn't have bad localized leadership obstructing construction of the southwest perimeter
Now as time allows adjust
A just relocating adjacent of gates is possible with coordinated opposition to the folding of lower levels of importance in the governing of the tertiary structural engineering in play.
This is enough for the generals public availability.
"Warmer air can hold more water vapor — about 7% more for every degree Celsius increase in temperature. Consequently, the air converging into a storm system in a warmer climate carries more water vapor. Since most of the water vapor entering the storm’s updraft will fall out as rain, everything else the same, more water in the air flowing into the storm will lead to more intense rainfall. That’s it. Not terribly complicated."
That being the case, the ~ 0.9°C global warming claimed since 1979 should have put about 6% more water vapor into the air. And ceteris paribus, this in turn should have increased global rainfall by ~ 3%.
However, this has not happened. Per the Copernicus rainfall data 1979-2024 (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/satellite-precipitation), there has been almost no increase in global average rainfall. The trend is slightly positive, but only about 4 mm per century, and the p-value of the trend = 0.328.
I'd be interested in your reasoning as to why global rainfall has not increased. Contrary to your assurance that it is "not complicated" that rainfall should increase by 7% per degree, the IPCC says that global precipitation is primarily constrained by atmospheric energy balance, not simply by water vapor availability. While the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship predicts that atmospheric water vapor should increase by approximately 7% per degree Celsius of warming, the IPCC says that global precipitation is constrained to increase much more slowly, at only 1-3% per degree Celsius.
But even that smaller amount, call it 2% on average, should have caused an increase in global annual rainfall since 1979 of about 20 mm … and there has been virtually no increase at all, only about 2.6 mm over the period of record with no statistical significance.
Next, the Copernicus rainfall is gridded. The IPCC claims wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting dryer. However, a scatterplot of rainfall trends versus rainfall amounts shows no such relationship.
Finally, since about 12 inches of rain fell during the Texas floods, this would mean that if warming is contributing, it only increased the rainfall by a quarter of an inch or so, hardly enough to create disaster.
"For a 12‑inch (≈300 mm) event and ~1 °C of warming, Clausius‑Clapeyron scaling alone would add ~7 %: about 0.8 inch, not 0.25 inch." But I didn't say it was following CC. That was YOU. I said it was following the ~2% IPCC figure.
Since ChatGPT can't tell the difference between what you said and what I said, you might want to use a different AI …
ChatGPT also says "“Wet get wetter, dry get drier” is a broad pattern, not a point‑by‑point rule" … my point was that the Copernicus rainfall data shows it is NOT a broad pattern. Run the numbers yourself, you'll see it's not true.
By contrast, Perplexity says this:
===
Claim True/Untrue Notes
7% more water vapor per °C TRUE Clausius-Clapeyron relationship
Global rainfall should increase ~3% per °C TRUE Global mean precipitation increases 1–3% per °C, not 7%
No significant increase in global mean rainfall TRUE Observed trend is small and not statistically significant
IPCC says: Precipitation constrained by energy balance TRUE Well-established in climate science
IPCC says: Global precipitation increases 1–3% per °C TRUE Consistent with IPCC reports
Global rainfall should have increased ~20 mm since 1979, but hasn't Mostly True Observed increase is small, but this matches climate science expectations
"Wet-get-wetter, dry-get-drier" not supported by data TRUE Not supported universally
Warming only adds a trivial amount to extreme events like Texas floods Untrue/Misleading Extreme rainfall increases faster than mean; small increases can have large impacts
===
It's not clear to me why Perplexity says the "Observed increase is small, but this matches climate science expectations". That is NOT true according to the Copernicus dataset.
I also don't understand why Perplexity says "Extreme rainfall increases faster than mean; small increases can have large impacts". The three sources for that claim are all climate models … and while small increases CAN have large effects, it's also true that small increases CAN have small effects.
So. How about we start over, and you personally look at my claims and YOU tell us based on YOUR research where I'm wrong.
Because ChatGPT clearly doesn't know.
Best regards to you and yours,
w.
PS—Contrary to your claims, the IPCC says that there is NO human-caused increase in either heavy precipitation, riverine flood, or pluvial flood. See e.g.
I never said that precip increases at 7%/degree. In fact, in the original post that was took that from, I had a footnote that said that rainfall increased at a slower rate (but I didn't copy the footnote to this post).
"Warmer air can hold more water vapor — about 7% more for every degree Celsius increase in temperature. Consequently, the air converging into a storm system in a warmer climate carries more water vapor. Since most of the water vapor entering the storm’s updraft will fall out as rain, everything else the same, more water in the air flowing into the storm will lead to more intense rainfall. That’s it. Not terribly complicated."
The implication is clear. I accept that that wasn't what you meant to say … but it was what you said.
“The argument seems to be that, if a stronger rain event ever occurred in the past, then climate change cannot be enhancing this current event.”
I make a version of this argument when people suggest that certain extreme events never happened before. For me that is equally annoying, epistemologically speaking.
Thank you for this excellent analysis and attribution explanation of the tragedy that unfolded in a state that denies climate change is even happening and that continues to suffer the consequences of their mutual “pigheadedness”and reluctance to invest in early warning systems. You may have been at a loss for words, but I can assure you my vocabulary for climate deniers and fools who don’t plan ahead for such foreseeable climate driven, rain bomb events is replete with similar words as above. We can fix a lot of society’s ills but we just can’t fix stupid.
Davide Faranda and his team have analysed this event here https://www.climameter.org/20250704-texas-floods , see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidefaranda_climameter-texasfloods-attributionclimatique-activity-7347970064513482752-V45m
We used to be the kind of country and state where people would have been sure to take the best care possible of other people’s kids, even if they had to pay a little extra, because that’s just what you did. I was lucky to grow up in that place.
The tragic loss of life in Texas is heartbreaking and demands our full attention—and compassion. In moments like this, it's only natural that people focus on the urgent need for better adaptation: warning systems, infrastructure, evacuation planning. These are essential and, frankly, long overdue.
But I’d offer a gentle reminder: adaptation alone is not enough. Without deep and sustained mitigation—meaning serious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions—we are simply accruing more and more “climate debt.” Every ton of carbon we emit now adds to the future cost of adaptation, both in dollars and in lives.
From a pragmatic standpoint, the cost of getting to net zero is challenging, yes—but it's a bounded and increasingly calculable investment. We can model it. We can plan for it. We can deploy technologies and policies to reach it.
In contrast, the cost of adaptation if we don’t mitigate is unbounded. The target keeps moving. The infrastructure keeps breaking. The extremes keep intensifying. And the human toll—like we’re seeing in Texas—grows each time.
So yes, we need both. But if we don’t lead with mitigation, adaptation becomes an endlessly escalating, reactive struggle. We can and must do better—not just for those already impacted, but to prevent even worse tragedies down the road.
Well put. I, for one, don't see adaptation and mitigation as competing strategies. Climate science is able to project future warming with mitigation (i.e. decarbonization) or without. Adaptation has to anticipate the most likely trajectory of global heat accumulation, and its effect on current and future local weather. Cost-effective adaptation must be quantitatively scaled to climate science's projections. The higher the emissions rate, the more frequent upgrades for resilience needed. As always, politics will pit private against public interests. At all times, people at risk of flash flooding, wildfire, heatwaves, droughts, etc., must remember that the sooner we build out the carbon-neutral economy, the less we'll have to spend on adaptation!
I drove across the escarpment region just last year and it is dramatic. What I have also seen in central Texas on several visits were dramatic concrete constructions clearly designed to capture and channel extreme rain events. Obviously the region has experienced similar events in the past and has tried to take measures to control excess amounts of sudden rainfall. They also need to step up their efforts to identify vulnerable structures and uses of areas vulnerable to such fast rising waters.
Cost comparisons of fossil fuel versus renewables always ignore the healthcare cost of breathing effluents, the increasing cost of homeowner insurance as climate disasters double each decade, the military price of defending supply lines, rebuilding after climate disasters, oil spills and rivers polluted by coal byproducts, etc. Now a million deaths a year from heat waves too hot to live through. There is no sane excuse for this escalating disaster.
"...the military price of defending supply lines..."
The US has been spending ~$80B a year just for protecting the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. I don't expect we'll get involved in the politics of other countries based on their local wind and insolation.
People rightly point out that renewables are cheaper and that the cost of continuing to burn fossil fuels makes it even more a no brainer, but converting to a plant based economy would also be considerably cheaper, improve health and free up nearly 50% of habitable land for reforestation, sequestration and cooling.
This is sadly superficial. Rather than enter an argument with Professor Dessler, I'd urge interested readers to read Roger Pielke's writeup at
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-texas-flash-floods
"Many have been quick to politicize the tragedy in an effort to support whatever agenda that they were promoting before the disaster — climate change, DOGE budget cuts, operations of the National Weather Service, the Biden Administration."
Golly, I wonder what his political preferences are.
He doesn't comment much on politics, except the intersection of politic, science, and policy. From reading a lot of his writing, and following his career, I think he's a fairly normal liberal Democrat. I would be astonished if he ever voted for Trump, or considered voting for him.
Roger Pielke, Jr. is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI is a notoriously cherry-picking "conservative" think tank.
Roger Pielke, Jr. was a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder until he took emeritus status this year. You're obviously not interested in what I say. Read what he says, and evaluate it yourself.
Or, to quote one of my favorite Substackers, "We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe." If you aren't wedded to you choice, do some investigation for yourself.
"You're obviously not interested in what I say."
Over the past few decades I've learned to filter out information based on sources. And though the risk is that I miss something useful to know, it's more than likely that valid information will come to me via other sources.
My life is too short to deal with anybody associated with the American Enterprise Institute (or Judith "satellite data is the best measure" Curry, or people who take religious oaths, or political scientists playing word games, or anti-vaxxers, or creationists, or white supremacists, or libertarians who won't state their position on inherited wealth).
In my youth, I fervently believed, based on the shared attitudes of people around me, that I could communicate telepathically with an unmeasurable entity that created the universe. It took me a long and disorienting time to disentangle those supernatural beliefs from that which was confirmably true. I'm much more careful about embracing unvetted information.
I do love questioning and arguing with experts in science and engineering, and they know from how I question them that I actually want to *understand* their answers.
Interesting. I'll point out that Roger Pielke was considered a prime expert on science and policy (he's not a scientist, but studied how science influences policy), until he was targeted for saying the "wrong" things about climate change. If you don't have the time to check him, there's nothing I could say or do to change your mind. But if you were to take the time, and compare what he writes to what the IPCC writes, you'd find that he has no quarrel at all with the IPCC findings.
"...as well as upgrading our warning systems so people can evacuate at-risk areas safely."
As we've seen with hurricane and wildfire evacuations, roads which are more than sufficient at handling a normal amount of traffic quickly get clogged by everybody hitting the road at once.
The downside with building higher-capacity roads for evacuation is developers adding more commercial and residential property to take advantage of the "shorter" commutes. Contraflow systems don't create that problem, of course, but they take too long to convert compared to the speed of wildfires or rapid intensification of storms.
One lower-budget but potentially effective project is to add signs "<local disaster> Evacuation Route" or "Avoid Road When Flooding," which at least has a chance to get people thinking in those terms once in a while.
The anti green loons are saying that the recent extreme and 'unnatural' floods were caused by military warfare, Rainmaker in league with Palantir. They don't comment whether the ones in 1921 were also.
Mexican Counselors Silvana Garza Valdez and Maria Paula Zárate Hailed as Heroes After Rescuing Camp Mystic Girls During Texas Flooding
Channel2 NOW Staff July 6, 2025
These brave young Mexican women are heroines in Texas. Silvana Garza Valdez and María Paula Zárate, both 19 years old, rescued 20 girls trapped by the flooding of the Guadalupe River.
Why isn’t the mainstream media covering this?
https://www.threads.com/@lakota_man/post/DLyqEsguCKx?xmt=AQF0C1He8K6zgU6P6lKAO5XMnO4Z5DSvrUuYRsulZKDRnQ
Share this before link is removed
https://substack.com/@krbyers/note/c-134074886?r=2nftwh&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Andrew,
Please post the peer-reviewed, published scientific article where I can cross-check the veracity of the unnamed graphic you used to support your position of increasing extreme rainfall event trends over time. I'm very curious in checking it out. In the meantime, consider this from Pielke: "Based on the peer-reviewed literature and observational records, there is little empirical basis to claim that extreme precipitation has increased in “flash flood alley” (or indeed, most of North America or the world). Similarly, there is little basis for claims that flooding has become more common or severe." And from AR6 WG1: "There is limited evidence and low agreement on observed climate change influences for river floods in North America (Section 11.5). "
Pielke also correctly referenced his graph showing decreased mortality in Texas as a result of river flooding corrected to population density since 1958, then backed it up with another article from Natural Hazards showing a global decline in mortality due to floods, including flash floods. See here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-024-06444-0. Also notice he doesn't use the words like "dumb", "misguided", or "denier". In other words, he writes like a professional.
"Pielke also correctly referenced his graph showing decreased mortality in Texas as a result of river flooding corrected to population density since 1958, then backed it up with another article from Natural Hazards showing a global decline in mortality due to floods, including flash floods."
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As with deadly heat waves, gas station fires, river floods, grain silo explosions, deadly chemical plant releases, earthquakes and storms, there are often projects and building code changes put in place to mitigate or prevent mortality* after the fact. A replication of Europe's 2003 heat wave should not result in the same mortality in 2025. Despite Japan's growing population, and frequent very large earthquakes, the mortality rates are much lower than the past. The string of modern Texas dams operated by the Lower Colorado River Authority, while also providing hydropower, were budgeted "to protect basin residents from the worst effects of Hill Country floods and provide the lower Colorado River basin with a reliable water supply" (although the first few poorly-constructed dams soon failed).
Mortality is not a proxy for measuring how bad a weather event is. On this warming planet, the rainfall rates—and how frequently these mass rain events occur—are the measures of a worsening climate, not the flooding itself, because over-paving and flood controls can affect flood levels in ways that have nothing to do with the climate.
_____________
*Emergency care also reduces mortality—whether on the battlefield or at home—so it's not the best metric on how "dangerous" shootings or floods or motorcycle accidents can be.
"Mortality is not a proxy for measuring how bad a weather event is...it's not the best metric on how "dangerous" shootings or floods or motorcycle accidents can be."
OK folks, NS Alito says we shouldn't count deaths as a sign of worsening climate change due to the confounding variable of adaptation and technological advancements like improved emergency management. We should instead use the frequency of mass rain events. My question is this: If we shouldn't use mortality as a gauge, then what other outcomes should we use? After all, Joe Biden said climate change is "The number one issue facing humanity". So, NS Alito, if we can't use mortality statistics to measure the effects of climate change, what do you think Biden was referring to? Costs to insurance companies? Is that it? Before you go there, make sure to correct for inflation and population density along vulnerable coastal areas over time. You'll find a pretty flat trend line for the past several decades. Sorry.
"We should instead use the frequency of mass rain events."
------------
We should use the frequency and intensity of mass rain events in lieu of flooding, certainly. The same storm can result in various levels of flooding or no flooding at all, depending on whether it is centered over a single watershed or split between two, or whether there has been a wildfire or baked soil, or whether a new, pavement-ridden subdivision has been built, or whether it overflowed and broke an ash slurry dam.
flood ↔ rain + terrain
Humans excel at modifying terrain. The climate metric for a flood event should be rain instead of flood.
Mortality is a clear-cut metric, so it is attractive to use by mainstream media and other score-keepers. Easy peasy. What it doesn't show is morbidity and other important forms of loss. Kidney damage from working in the heat (but he didn't die!), wildfire smoke in vulnerable lungs, damage or loss of a home or community resulting in homelessness (or people crowding up), damage to infrastructure that costs to rebuild (*if* it's rebuilt).
As for tallying costs, I warn people to be wary of media reports of monetary damage from disasters, as they're often only counting *insured losses* (in developed economies) and not counting the people driven [further] into poverty by damage to a roof or a vehicle or a washed-away single-wide or deaths of livestock.
Wow. Just wow. Look dude, I'm a medical doctor for over 20 years now. So I guess I'm pulling rank. Show me something concrete to believe that climate change is the "number one issue facing humanity". Because if all you have is elevated creatinines (kidneys) and abnormal spirometries (lungs), you don't have anything. You have nothing. We can count losses of homes and infrastructure as you suggestsed, but it must be (just like everything else) compared to a baseline historical rate. Climate change can't be catastrophic if we adapt to it. If the number one issue facing humanity can't be clarified into an issue at all, then it kind of makes human caused catastrophic climate change actually look silly. Doesn't it?
"Climate change can't be catastrophic if we adapt to it."
------
Describe this "adaptation" to increasing sea level rise, or to increasing heat domes and high wet bulb temperatures. What are the labor and physical resources for coastal cities to stop the sea? Where should people build houses?
And "catastrophic" doesn't mean that silly Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow, but cities going into a revenue death spiral as the people with money move out and the property taxes drop with them. It's climate refugees choking cities like Dhaka (right now) or Atlanta (forecast) as their former homes become unliveable. It's budgets for emergency response not being able to keep up with the increasing frequency of heat domes or extreme rain events. It's moving runways that are too close to the sea, or extending them because the weather is so hot that jets need more takeoff distance. It's encroaching salt water into water tables, or taking city water wells out of service.
The code requirements for transmission towers has increased from handling 60mph winds to 80mph winds, which makes them a lot more expensive. Burying transmission power cables cost upwards of $1.25m per mile. Structures and roads that relied on the stability permafrost have to be rebuilt. In my experience, the people who whine the most about the "alarmists" also squeal like stuck pigs when asked to pay more to cover adaptation costs.
NSAlito, you're arguing with a guy who has already declared his determination not to be terrified by climate change (https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimatebrink/p/climate-skeptics-have-new-favorite?commentId=103237035)
"There is no way, no how that you are going to convince me that we are living in 'terrifying' times."
One's mind recoils from the terror of those who died in this recent extreme event, some fraction of whom almost certainly would have survived if not for global warming. Whatever other causes fractionally contributed to the death toll, higher GMST -> more precipitable water (PWAT) -> more and heavier rain -> higher and faster flooding -> more deaths: seems like a 'no brainer'. The victims' mortal terror notwithstanding, Scott has not said how many more deaths attributable to global warming it will take to persuade him that collective intervention is needed, to cap the cumulative cost of anthropogenic climate change in money and grief.
"Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder."
Oh, goody.
Aaaaand your point is?
...carefully hidden under my admiral's hat.
(No science background.)
Sadly the river didn't listen to Pielke.
The EPA has a US-wide record of changes since 1965 in both the frequency and the magnitude of US floods.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-river-flooding
Note that in the area of interest, Kerr County, Texas, both the frequency and magnitude of floods have been DECREASING since 1965, despite global warming.
In addition, downloading the data reveals that both the frequency and magnitude of US floods in general have decreased slightly since 1965. The decrease is not statistically significant in either case, but there is no sign of the increase that Mr. Dressler claims should be occurring.
My best to all,
w.
Sadly the weather ignored the statistics. Didn't I use to read your stuff on wattsupwiththat?
Tragic indeed. The worst part is that the weather forecasters gave warnings 12 hours before the floods, but many people didn't get them due to lack of cell coverage.
And yes, I still write for WUWT. Here's one of my latest posts.
Best to you, to Andrew, and to everyone.
w.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/06/ocean-reversal-hysteria-facts-not-included/
Thank you for these sensible words. Gratitude. But you miss an important aspect of what flows from this event. It is not science. Its compassion. It is seeing impact over time.
Each of these amped events has devastating impacts on individuals and communities who will have to rebuild destroyed lives under the weight of extreme loss (of loved ones, home, health, security). This takes years, and happens with almost no support (the government and charity programmes you are right now thinking step in—tiny drops, compared to the well of need. Drops that also demand a performace of gratitude from thier victims). Those communities will battle with thier internal landscapes as much as they will battle to regain a safe foothold in society that will cast them loose as soon as the media stops watching.
All the while, the natural landscape around them will be struggling the same. We are literally etching Earth's biospheres with destruction, and failing to notice once the media moves onto the next bauble and bead.
We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer.
It never should have been either/or. It always should have been both. Now tragedy unfolds and those left to adapt are silenced by the same messengers.
"We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer.
"It never should have been either/or. It always should have been both. Now tragedy unfolds and those left to adapt are silenced by the same messengers."
What the heck are you talking about? No "mainstream climate science" prevented you from making this comment! Who is being silenced, by whom? This is exactly the kind of baseless *tu quoque* complaint both deniers and doomers make!
Of course climate change necessitates both mitigation and adaptation! Adaptation is happening now, as weather-disaster victims bury their loved ones and repair their lives. Public investment in flood resilience is historically a local spending issue, never decided by scientists. Much of it, e.g. a warning system for Kerr County, requires local public investment that residents haven't been willing to spend tax money on. National institutions like NOAA and FEMA are undermined by anti-tax partisans who love only money. That's not climate science's fault!
Mitigation, too, requires collective action, to drive the US economy toward carbon-neutrality. The people with the most to lose by that spend $millions every year, to thwart any federal policy that even acknowledges there's anything to mitigate. Surely you know this! AFAICT, every objection to collective climate mitigation *or* adaptation originates with fossil fuel producers and investors, and others of their socioeconomic class, whose motives are transparent.
I could go on, but instead I'll let you defend your claim that mitigation is the only message "allowed". I, for one, prefer to focus on reducing fossil carbon emissions to zero, because it's the only way to cap the net cumulative cost of adapting to otherwise ever-worsening severe weather. That said, I'm scarcely opposed to collective adaptation, by zoning, building regulations, buyouts for homeowners at risk, and just about anything else you might propose, unless you're saying we should do those *instead* of building out our carbon-neutral economy. I can't even stop you from saying that: that's up to our host, who hasn't kicked either of us out yet! Do you have a chip on your shoulder, Dr. Prideaux?
I was going to give this a full reply, but do you know what? I don't have a chip on my shoulder, Mal Adapted. I have deep soul-crushing pain. If you had paused for one moment and looked at the backstory behind my comment you may have commented differently. But you didn't so it's moot. I respect you have another perspective. Let's agree to disagree.
Was this you?
"We needed to be adapting for this decades ago. But mainstream climate science wouldn't let those words be spoken. Mitigation was the only message allowed ... even now. Anyrhing other, labled a doomer."
That's pretty provocative language. Sorry, I can't "agree to disagree". I, for one, share your deep, soul-crushing pain, but climate scientists aren't the people you should be blaming! You know your host is a "mainstream" climate scientist, don't you? When has he ever not allowed "adaptation" to be spoken of? Do you think you might owe him an apology?
Do you share my pain Mal Adapted? Do you even know what it stems from?
Yes, I know the host is a climate scientist. One I have respected and promted heavily for a long time. I stand by my reaction. Where is the needed adaptation discussion? IPCC along with Mann and co suppressed adaptation discussions for more than a decade, because it was seen as giving in and giving up.
I am not responding to anything more here. We're hyjacking these comments. If you want to continue I welcome a discussion on DM.
Lady, I don't know anything about your private pain, but I'm as horrified as anyone by these scenes of destruction and death on the news, manifestly attributable in part to climate-change denial on multiple political scales. How can anyone not feel the victims' very public pain? Do I really need to say that? I'm not going to engage you privately, but will continue my responses here. You claimed at the outset that mainstream climate science (or perhaps just "Mann") is somehow suppressing discussion of adaptation. That's false, and damaging to climate science's crucial public credibility. Your complaint is misguided at best, and plays into the hands of carbon capital at worst. Stand by it all you want, but if it's all you've got, you're not helping with either adaptation or mitigation. In any case, when you led with a provocation, did you not expect pushback?
Texas example
A Watergate bursts open and closed
The earth study and researching of able bodied motions in time will only allow local literacy.
The army corps of engineers musn't have bad localized leadership obstructing construction of the southwest perimeter
Now as time allows adjust
A just relocating adjacent of gates is possible with coordinated opposition to the folding of lower levels of importance in the governing of the tertiary structural engineering in play.
This is enough for the generals public availability.
Thanks, Andrew. You say:
"Warmer air can hold more water vapor — about 7% more for every degree Celsius increase in temperature. Consequently, the air converging into a storm system in a warmer climate carries more water vapor. Since most of the water vapor entering the storm’s updraft will fall out as rain, everything else the same, more water in the air flowing into the storm will lead to more intense rainfall. That’s it. Not terribly complicated."
That being the case, the ~ 0.9°C global warming claimed since 1979 should have put about 6% more water vapor into the air. And ceteris paribus, this in turn should have increased global rainfall by ~ 3%.
However, this has not happened. Per the Copernicus rainfall data 1979-2024 (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/satellite-precipitation), there has been almost no increase in global average rainfall. The trend is slightly positive, but only about 4 mm per century, and the p-value of the trend = 0.328.
I'd be interested in your reasoning as to why global rainfall has not increased. Contrary to your assurance that it is "not complicated" that rainfall should increase by 7% per degree, the IPCC says that global precipitation is primarily constrained by atmospheric energy balance, not simply by water vapor availability. While the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship predicts that atmospheric water vapor should increase by approximately 7% per degree Celsius of warming, the IPCC says that global precipitation is constrained to increase much more slowly, at only 1-3% per degree Celsius.
But even that smaller amount, call it 2% on average, should have caused an increase in global annual rainfall since 1979 of about 20 mm … and there has been virtually no increase at all, only about 2.6 mm over the period of record with no statistical significance.
Next, the Copernicus rainfall is gridded. The IPCC claims wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas are getting dryer. However, a scatterplot of rainfall trends versus rainfall amounts shows no such relationship.
Finally, since about 12 inches of rain fell during the Texas floods, this would mean that if warming is contributing, it only increased the rainfall by a quarter of an inch or so, hardly enough to create disaster.
Your comments welcome.
Best regards,
w.
You may want to run your comments through chatGPT to identify the obvious errors. Although, fixing those might mean nothing would remain. Hmmmm.
https://chatgpt.com/share/686c2d00-99d0-8004-82ac-554021845a34
ChatGPT says:
"For a 12‑inch (≈300 mm) event and ~1 °C of warming, Clausius‑Clapeyron scaling alone would add ~7 %: about 0.8 inch, not 0.25 inch." But I didn't say it was following CC. That was YOU. I said it was following the ~2% IPCC figure.
Since ChatGPT can't tell the difference between what you said and what I said, you might want to use a different AI …
ChatGPT also says "“Wet get wetter, dry get drier” is a broad pattern, not a point‑by‑point rule" … my point was that the Copernicus rainfall data shows it is NOT a broad pattern. Run the numbers yourself, you'll see it's not true.
By contrast, Perplexity says this:
===
Claim True/Untrue Notes
7% more water vapor per °C TRUE Clausius-Clapeyron relationship
Global rainfall should increase ~3% per °C TRUE Global mean precipitation increases 1–3% per °C, not 7%
No significant increase in global mean rainfall TRUE Observed trend is small and not statistically significant
IPCC says: Precipitation constrained by energy balance TRUE Well-established in climate science
IPCC says: Global precipitation increases 1–3% per °C TRUE Consistent with IPCC reports
Global rainfall should have increased ~20 mm since 1979, but hasn't Mostly True Observed increase is small, but this matches climate science expectations
"Wet-get-wetter, dry-get-drier" not supported by data TRUE Not supported universally
Warming only adds a trivial amount to extreme events like Texas floods Untrue/Misleading Extreme rainfall increases faster than mean; small increases can have large impacts
===
It's not clear to me why Perplexity says the "Observed increase is small, but this matches climate science expectations". That is NOT true according to the Copernicus dataset.
I also don't understand why Perplexity says "Extreme rainfall increases faster than mean; small increases can have large impacts". The three sources for that claim are all climate models … and while small increases CAN have large effects, it's also true that small increases CAN have small effects.
So. How about we start over, and you personally look at my claims and YOU tell us based on YOUR research where I'm wrong.
Because ChatGPT clearly doesn't know.
Best regards to you and yours,
w.
PS—Contrary to your claims, the IPCC says that there is NO human-caused increase in either heavy precipitation, riverine flood, or pluvial flood. See e.g.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-ipcc-actually-says-about
I never said that precip increases at 7%/degree. In fact, in the original post that was took that from, I had a footnote that said that rainfall increased at a slower rate (but I didn't copy the footnote to this post).
You said:
"Warmer air can hold more water vapor — about 7% more for every degree Celsius increase in temperature. Consequently, the air converging into a storm system in a warmer climate carries more water vapor. Since most of the water vapor entering the storm’s updraft will fall out as rain, everything else the same, more water in the air flowing into the storm will lead to more intense rainfall. That’s it. Not terribly complicated."
The implication is clear. I accept that that wasn't what you meant to say … but it was what you said.
w.
There's more to "cloudbursts" than Clausius-Clapeyron - which in any case is just a manmade rule.
“The argument seems to be that, if a stronger rain event ever occurred in the past, then climate change cannot be enhancing this current event.”
I make a version of this argument when people suggest that certain extreme events never happened before. For me that is equally annoying, epistemologically speaking.