SCOTT DREYER: Deep South Freeze Offers Important Lessons

A lie believed as truth will affect your life as if it were true. – Pastor and Author Craig Groeschel

We’ve surely all seen images and heard stories out of Texas and much of the Deep South from the recent hard freeze. Hitting around Valentines Day, at one point the storm knocked out electricity to over 4.3 million Texans. (For reference, that is about half the population of the state of Virginia.) Some friends of ours in Texas did not lose total power, but had days of rolling blackouts. The clever writers at the satirical Babylon Bee made hay by claiming: People Who Moved To Texas From California Finally Feeling At Home Now That Power Is Out.” 

The area impacted was enormous. Oklahoma City saw its temperatures drop to -14 F, the coldest since 1899 and the second-coldest on record. A friend who is a truck driver based out of Roanoke said almost all shipping west of Knoxville, TN was shut-down and snarled. 

Years ago I took my family to New England during what turned out to be a heat wave. It was in the low 90s in Maine and New Hampshire, and I explained to my children that, due to their location in the North, they usually had cool summers and thus most homes had no air conditioning.

Likewise, since the Deep South usually has mild winters, most homes are not built / insulated to withstand extreme cold and municipalities are not equipped with lots of plows and salt to clear snowy roads. That is a climatic fact and common sense. 

And frankly: for the past few decades we’ve had drilled into our heads that the world is getting hotter and the sea levels are rising. If people believed that, then why would they want to invest extra money in winterizing their homes, power grids, or investing in snowplows or road salt? 

It is ironic that Texas, one of the most energy-rich states in the Union, experienced such a massive power outage. It turns out that Texas has a large number of wind turbines to generate electricity, but ironically, many of the wind mills froze up and thus could not spin (or generate power) due to the freeze.  

The situation / conditions revealed some of the significant vulnerabilities of so-called “Green Energy.”

In early 2020 the Virginia General Assembly voted to close the final coal-burning power plants in Virginia that generate electricity. Virginia Sen. John Edwards (D-Roanoke), who represents a region of the state related to the coal industry–Southwest Virginia–voted to shutter those power plants. If your utility bills have gone up and/or do so in the future and we someday–God forbid–have Texas-style blackouts–you’ll have Sen. Edwards and other politicians of his ilk to thank. 

But back to Texas:

As I understand it, the Eastern US has a power grid, the Western US has a power grid, and Texas has a more or less independent grid of its own. (The Lone Star State, which earlier in its history was an independent republic, has a strong independent streak.) I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subjects of power generation and distribution, but I have heard that the grid was insufficiently maintained and upgraded. Due to what was evidently poor foresight, many in the state suffered, and many died.

Yet, did you hear the outrageous comment US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer (D-NY) made? 

Speaking about the Texas blackouts and suffering, on Feb. 21 Shumer said:  “The bottom line is, Texas thought it could go at it alone and built a system that ignored climate change. It was not what is called resilient, and now Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson.”

That reminded me of the Craig Groeschel quotation I heard recently: “A lie believed as truth will affect your life as if it were true.”

Ponder this. Even though a lie by definition is false, if people believe the lie, it will affect people as if the lie were the truth.

That made me think: how many lies are we swallowing and wallowing in?

Some snarky people, when they heard of the Deep South Deep Freeze, thought: “Joe Biden is a political and scientific genius. After less than a month in office, he’s solved Global Warming!”

Of course, a single weather event does not prove the entire climate has changed. Still, it’s ironic that the nascent Biden Administration is pushing the Green New Deal against the backdrop of news images of normally-sweltering places like Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas in a snow-white, icy grip. 

Remember how, for years, we were warned the world was getting hotter and hotter? I remember in the early 2000s reading predictions that, someday soon, children in England would never see snow except in pictures.  Not long after, several brutal winter storms came through, blanketing the British Isles under a cover of white and snarling traffic. 

So on Feb. 21, Sen. Shumer did not mention “Global Warming,” which would seem ridiculous in the middle of a deadly cold snap. Instead, like something out of 1984, he switched his vocabulary to “climate change.”

What a stroke of linguistic genius! The phrase “climate change” is so broad, it can include anything and can’t be disproven. 

West Europe is hotter than normal? Climate change!

Texas is colder than normal? Climate change!

California is drier than normal? Climate change!

Virginia is wetter than normal? Climate change!

I’m no meteorologist, but I think we all know that weather patterns have variations, quirks, and anomalies.  

To my knowledge, Shumer made no reference to the many who died in the deep freeze and blackouts. No condolences. No nod to grieving families. Instead, he vindictively snapped: “Texas is paying the price. I hope they learn their lesson.”

Ouch. That’s harsh. And that brings me to another lie that’s often drilled into our heads: the Left in America allegedly holds a monopoly on tolerance, love, diversity, inclusion, and acceptance. Yet here is Shumer, who leads the left-wing party in the Senate, kicking Texans while they’re down and grieving (and/or mopping up floods from frozen pipes and repairing damaged ceilings or drywall.) “I hope they learned a lesson.” 

Such tolerance. Such inclusion.

“A lie believed as truth will affect your life as if it were true.”

Scott Dreyer in his classroom.

– Scott Dreyer

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