This guest post comes from
DWG.
And, well, the Star-Ledger‘s editorial board is now my favorite editorial board in the nation.
Thanks to damage from recent north Atlantic superstorms, a major New Jersey utility plans to spend $4 billion over the next ten years to make its grid less susceptible to storm damage.
“It’s clear that Sandy, Hurricane Irene, and the October ice storm represent extreme weather patterns that have become commonplace,” said Ralph Izzo, chief executive officer and chairman of the utility’s parent, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. “Reliability is no longer enough. We must also focus on the resiliency of our systems to withstand natural disasters.”In a filing with the utility board Wednesday, PSE&G laid out plans to elevate or relocate electrical substations, reinforce poles, and replace 750 miles of aged gas mains.
It is starting to dawn on sane and sensible people that large, destructive storms are going to become much more common with fossil-fueled climate changes. Prepare now or pay through the teeth later.
“This is a cost of climate change, pure and simple,” says Jeanne Fox, a commissioner on the Board of Public Utilities, which oversees the utilities.
Recognizing that this bill will be $500 per capita, the New Jersey Star Ledger has a splendid suggestion on its editorial page about who should be paying for hardening our infrastructure to climate change.
It’s a pity we cannot send the entire bill to the flat-earthers who are willfully deaf to the chorus of warnings from the world’s most respected scientists. By blocking political action on climate change, even now, they are driving up the costs of coping.
The editorial ends
Yes, we have always had storms, droughts and floods. But the pace and severity are setting records across the globe, just as the scientists predicted. To ignore that growing risk is reckless. And expensive.
Let’s just say that the ‘flat earther climate deniers‘ weren’t thrilled with this editorial.
The flat-earthers were not amused by the suggestion that they take fiscal responsibility for the damage that they are creating. Here is a sample of their righteous indignation:
Climate change is a plot to transfer money
Nonsense.
The system is only held together with bubble gum and duct tape because it’s not profitable to properly maintain. Climate change is just a convenient excuse for the utility monopolies to raise rates and finally upgrade the system that they chose to neglect for years, when they should have been addressing it all along. Jeanne, they are peeing on your leg and telling you it’s raining. And you believe them. Don’t be so gullible.
Climate change is not occurring and it is certainly not due to human activity
This editorial is pure hyperbole and speculation! I especially enjoyed the laugh from the sentence about “flat earthers” and the last sentence about storms severity “setting records”. I must ask, what records are set? The burden of proof is with those making allegations that man is responsible for the minimal increase in temperature we have experienced over the last 2 decades and there are no scientific observations that prove such!
People who accept the scientific evidence are poopy-heads
Yes, please send the bill to the “flat-earthers” along with any evidence that man’s use of fossil fuel has any effect on the weather. That way you’ll be forced to admit that such conclusions are based purely on speculation and we can put this manbearpig nonsense to bed once and for all!
It’s Al Gore’s fault
The global warming crowd shrugged it off when Al Gore warned the world the seas were rising and then bought a $9 miilion dollar ocean front home in California. They ignored the fact Gore flew to his beach house in a private jet and was driven from the airport in a stretch limo. Now he’s sold his radio station to the country of Qatar whose entire ecomony is based on drilling for crude oil and selling it world wide for $100 million dollars. He sold out his entire movement and all his followers. And yet they call us who easily saw through Gore’s charade and the emails from the very same scientists they taut admitting they fudged and eliminated data that refuted their desired hypothisis “flat earthers”. Perhaps they should be referred to as ‘flat headers”.
Silly Scientists. What could they be thinking?
Or another way, want to believe flat-earthers or scientists?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Andy Lee Robinson // Feb 22, 2013 at 10:08 pm
For millions of years, the Arctic has been
regulating the jet stream, currents and climate, and allowed us to evolve frontal lobes and higher ‘intelligence’.
Then this happens:
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
2 Jon Findley // Feb 23, 2013 at 2:06 am
It will never work. The flat earthers are going to be too busy trying to figure out how to pay for the gas for their Hummers and F350s. Let’s send the bill to the oil companies and coal companies that are laughing all the way to the bank .
3 sailrick // Feb 23, 2013 at 10:34 pm
an interesting article yesterday at Climate Progress
“Why Politicians May Not Rely On Their Own Uninformed Opinion On –
Climate Change Science”
——
At what point do we take them to court or boot them out, for endangering the population by ignoring science?