Jonathan P. Baird

When the catastrophic flooding happened in Texas along the Guadalupe River, President Trump responded that “nobody ever saw a thing like this coming” and that “this is a once-in-every 200 year deal”. Not to be outdone, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the Texas floods as a “1000-year event”.

What is striking about these responses is their lack of comprehension of climate science and climate change. Extreme floods and sea level rise have become almost routine. It makes you wonder if we have all been inhabiting the same planet. It is not like climate science is something new. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen persuasively presented the risks of climate change in testimony to the U.S. Senate. Since that time, an overwhelming international scientific consensus has supported and reinforced Hansen’s perspective

Global warming has made events like the Texas flood much more common and more extreme. I was struck by the similarities between the Texas flood and Hurricane Helene which devastated North Carolina last year. I also think of the 2023 floods in Vermont. However, instead of seeing the Texas disaster in the context of many other similar events, the Trump regime remains in climate denial.

Trump has called climate change “a hoax”. With his mantra of “drill baby drill”, his administration is actually committed to worsening global warming as quickly as possible. He has increased subsidies for fossil fuels. It is like they are trying to remove climate change out of existence by scrubbing out the words off government websites. Their motto could be: “backwards at warp speed”. It is like a death wish.

The Trump regime accepted no responsibility for the Texas flooding. They did not see the mass layoffs at Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration or the National Weather Service as having anything to do with their lack of preparedness and the government’s inadequate and late response. At least 135 people died from the flood and 3 remain missing.

Since the Texas flood, there has been an assessment of blame going on. On July 3, the National Weather Service issued its first alert predicting rainfall totals of six inches in twelve hours. That initial forecast proved to be an underestimate. The National Weather Service office in nearby San Antonio was missing both a chief meteorologist and a warning coordination meteorologist.

The National Weather Service issued two more warnings early on July 4 but the warnings failed to get through to the residents who lived near the water. The water rose more than 25 feet in 2 hours. There was a lack of coordination between the National Weather Service and the locals. Kerr County Texas locals had tried to get FEMA funding for a flood warning system for years but the State of Texas had turned down the request.

In 2019, the owners of the girl’s camp, Camp Mystic, that suffered so many casualties, had performed a multi-million dollar renovation. For reasons that are unclear, the camp did not move its most vulnerable cabins out of the flood zone. They built more cabins inside it.

Immediately after the flood, FEMA’s response was poor. Homeland Security Secretary Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue Teams until Monday July 7 more than three days after the flooding began. Normally FEMA would have been at the site of the flooding much sooner.

Also, almost inexplicably, Noem fired hundreds of contract workers at FEMA emergency centers on July 5, a day after the flooding started. On July 6 and 7, FEMA did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line. Noem also had recently enacted a new cost-cutting scheme where she had to sign off personally on any expense over $100,000. Noem’s red tape delayed FEMA response time.

While politicians like Texas Governor Greg Abbott attempt to squirm out of responsibility by saying only losers try and understand to assess blame, if we, as a society, want to prevent more such events, understanding matters.

What is crazy is that the Trump regime is actively moving to disband federal agencies that help Americans cope with our ever-more frequent climate catastrophes. Trump has called for the elimination of FEMA “as it exists today” although he has gone back and forth on that. He cancelled a $4.5 billion program that helps protect hard-hit communities from flooding.

He plans to increase the amount of damage a storm has to do before the federal government will declare a disaster. This will make it harder for states to be eligible for federal assistance. This is consistent with his plan to send disaster relief back to states that lack the resources to do recovery.

The Trump regime’s response to climate is rooted in a hatred of science. The climate scientist, Andrew Dessler, has written:

“They hate science because it leads to regulation, so they want to do everything they can to stop science from being used to regulate.”

I think they also hate science because it is the ultimate woke discipline. Science is a repository of secular truths which conflicts with the conspiracy theories and religious beliefs that motivate so many MAGA followers.

Not only does the Trump regime want to dismantle federal agencies that respond to disasters, they want to purge our collective ability to understand climate and weather prediction.

They have fired hundreds of scientists who were working on the next version of the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report used to prepare endangered U.S.communities for extreme weather and sea-level rise. They also have taken apart the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a 35 year-old effort to track global climate change that was established by Congress.

The Trump plan will cause forecasting havoc and it will lead to needless death. They are looking to close the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the National Severe Storm Laboratory and the High-Impact Weather Research and Operation. Without question, reducing accurate and timely weather warnings endangers the public.

Humans are heating up the planet, melting the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. We can expect many more Texas-style disasters which I guess we are supposed to meet with an Alfred E. Neuman “what me worry” response. Disaster relief has become a passe concept.