No, New York Occasions, local weather change is just not burning bridges – what's unsuitable with that?
The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article titled “Climate change can cause bridges to “fall apart like toys,” experts say. written by Coral Davenport. Numerous evidences and examples not only disprove this claim as false, but also expose its utter absurdity.
Such absurd false claims have been made before, for example when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2007. A 2007 article by Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters debunked the claim as false:
A former member of the Clinton administration and current senior fellow at Clinton's virtual think tank, the Center for American Progress, claimed Monday that global warming may have played a role in the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis last week.
I'm not joking.
In an article for Climate Progress, CAP's global warming blog, Joseph Romm – who served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1997 and as First Assistant Secretary from 1995 to 1998 – wrote with the astonishing title: “Did climate change contribute to the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge?“
Unsurprisingly, the actual cause had nothing to do with climate change at all, but rather was a design flaw in the use of gussets that were too small to withstand the load on the bridge:
The investigation found that photographs from a June 2003 inspection of the bridge showed deflection of the gussets. On November 13, 2008, the NTSB released the results of its investigation. The primary cause of the collapse was the undersized gussets, which were 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick. Also contributing to this design or construction defect was the fact that 2 inches (51 mm) of concrete had been added to the road surface over the years, increasing the static load by 20%. Another factor was the extraordinary weight of the construction equipment and materials resting on the bridge just above its weakest point at the time of the collapse. This load was estimated at 578,000 pounds (262 tons), consisting of sand, water, and vehicles.
The cause of the bridge collapse was determined to be not climate change, but human error and additional weight.
Fast forward to the present. The NYT article makes similar claims:
Bridges designed and built decades ago from materials that were not designed to withstand severe temperature changes are now rapidly swelling and contracting, causing them to weaken.
“It gets so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel of these bridges together can literally fall apart like toy cars,” Dr. Chinowsky said.
Temperatures this year have reached their highest levels on record and much of the country's infrastructure, from highways to runways, has been damaged, but bridges are particularly at risk.
Really? The bridges in question were not designed to withstand daily temperature fluctuations? A natural phenomenon that occurs daily and in all seasons? That sounds like poor planning. In addition to the absurdity of this claim, there are two other contradictory points to consider.
First, we have experienced much worse sustained heat waves in the United States, such as in the 1930s, when the July 1936 heat wave hit the Midwest, where some places experienced temperatures above 100°F (38°C) for up to 14 days. This is demonstrated by the graph in Figure 1, provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Figure 1. This figure shows the annual values of the U.S. heat wave index from 1895 to 2020 for the 48 contiguous states. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the many reports about the heat waves in the 1930s, no bridge collapse is mentioned, which suggests that the claim that it was “extreme heat caused by climate change” is false. Otherwise, such temperatures would have led to bridge collapses in the 1930s. However, there are simply no reports from that period that are associated with heat.
Second, the article states, “As temperatures this year reached the highest in history, much of the nation's infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered.” But that's not true either. The claim the NYT uses refers to global temperature, not temperature in the U.S. As can be seen in Figure 2 below, which shows data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), which is widely considered the most accurate source of surface temperature data, July 2024 was not “the hottest in history.” For example, the maximum temperature in the U.S. was higher in 2012 and 2005 than in July 2024.
Figure 2: NOAA – USCRN maximum temperature.
Looking more closely at the NYT article, the Times attributes the collapse of a railroad bridge between Iowa and South Dakota during flooding to climate change. Flooding in the rivers and streams between Iowa and South Dakota and on the border between the two countries has been common since the mid-1800s, when records of such events began to be kept. And railroad bridge collapses have occurred repeatedly in the United States and around the world long before climate change even became an issue. Since the data shows no increase in the number or severity of floods in the United States in general or in Iowa and South Dakota in particular, there is no evidence that climate change played a role in this particular railroad bridge collapse.
The next claim is that the concrete of a bridge in Lewiston, Maine, buckled and cracked, which the NYT blamed on “recent temperature and rainfall fluctuations.”
A look at the weather in Lewiston, ME, when the event occurred shows that while the high and low temperatures were above the normal average for late June, the swings that the New York Times was so concerned about were less extreme than normal. In June 2024, the temperature difference between high and low was about 15 degrees, rather than the historical daily average of about 20 degrees. (See Figure 3 below.)
Figure 3: Normal average daily temperature variations throughout the year for Lewiston, Maine. Source: Google
The high temperature during the third week of June was 95°F, above the normal high for that day, but well below the city's historic high of 99°F set in 1911, 113 years of global warming ago. Lewiston's high temperature in June 2024 was also 10 degrees lower than the statewide high temperature record of 104°F set in North Bridgton, ME, just 30 miles from Lewiston, which also dates back to 1911, when that temperature was reached twice.
Because temperatures in Lewiston have not experienced much fluctuation or reached record highs, it is unlikely that the cracks and warping in the bridge's concrete have anything to do with climate change. More likely, they are the result of poor construction or, even more likely, poor maintenance, a problem that many bridges and overpasses in Maine and the United States have, along with increased traffic and stress due to rapid population growth in the city and the region that uses the bridge.
Literally two minutes of Google search work to find this data. Apparently NYT reporter Coral Davenport couldn't be bothered to find out the facts. Or maybe she just doesn't know how. This kind of sloppy reporting, which contains speculative claims instead of simple facts, is reminiscent of something out of the old TV series The Twilight Zone.
If such an episode were to air today, my suggested title would be “Bogus Maximus.” This story is pure science fiction.
Originally published at ClimateREALISM
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