Speaking of storms

In the now daily force-fed diet of climate change news served up by The Philadelphia Inquirer we read in Tuesday’s editorial “Casey again is strong on climate issues”:

“Johns Hopkins University recently concluded that Philly’s energy grid is ‘increasingly susceptible’ to stronger storms [due to man-made climate change].”

Let the Inquirer climate change propaganda machine be forewarned of worse “storms” on the horizon than the far-fetched climate change ones envisioned here. A handful of private Cessna airplanes commandeered by Islamic terrorist pilots untrained in landing procedures and salivating for 70 virgins awaiting their martyrdom could bring about energy grid mayhem in a single hour that slow-moving climate would need a century to achieve. But because it’s all-climate-change-all-the-time in the Inquirer these days, expect more from the menu of fanciful apocalyptic scenarios rather than plausible warnings of terroristic dangers to our power infrastructure.

Speaking of storms, the real winds and rising waters mankind need worry about, rather than the column’s warning that “the ocean is literally moving up the Delaware,” Jonathan Edwards notes in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”:

“There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God for the present stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind. … The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose.”

To deal with danger effectively is to first recognize it accurately. On the moral plane, attention should be paid to one’s right standing with the God of the wind. On the energy infrastructure plane, let us focus on the immediate and viable danger of kamikaze types who have vowed to destroy “the Great Satan,” rather than whipped up scares about uncertain fossil fuel–caused winds and water levels.