When the power goes out in Deer Park, some homes keep the lights on. · Generated image (illustrative, not a real address)
“Safe Ground” (Local Theory), vocal version.
On a sweltering Tuesday evening in August, the hum of air conditioners across Deer Park cuts out in an instant. The digital display on the microwave goes black, the ceiling fans slow to a stop, and within twenty minutes, heavy Gulf Coast humidity creeps into the living room. Or picture mid-February: frost glazes the live oaks along Center Street, the heater clicks off, and your breath begins to show indoors while the thermostat display fades.
When neighbors step outside to check the street, the conversation immediately turns to why this keeps happening. Is our weather growing steadily more extreme because greenhouse gas emissions are trapping heat, or are we confusing routine Gulf Coast weather cycles and central grid failures with a worldwide climate emergency?
Depending on who you ask, the answer seems obvious. But to understand the debate, we have to look past the political shouting and examine each case at its strongest.
The concern case does not claim that Texas was historically free from dangerous weather, nor does it deny that year-to-year weather is heavily affected by natural variability. Its argument is that global warming and rising sea levels are systematically compounding physical risks, driving more severe extremes, higher flood hazards, and mounting disaster costs. Here is that case as its defenders make it.
On Texas specifically, the Office of the Texas State Climatologist at Texas A&M University, led by John Nielsen-Gammon, assessed climate risks in Extreme Weather in Texas, 1900 to 2036 (2021 update). While noting that year-to-year weather is heavily affected by natural variability and observing no long-term historical trend in river flooding, the report projects that extreme rainfall will become more frequent and localized urban flooding will rise 30% to 50% compared to the past half century. Along the Texas Gulf Coast, relative sea-level rise is projected to increase storm surge risk to about twice its 1900 level by 2050. Furthermore, 100-degree days are expected to nearly double compared to the 2000–2018 baseline, especially in urban areas.
Nationally and globally, defenders anchor these regional projections in federal records. The NASA GISS GISTEMP v4 annual table documents clear warming, showing global land-ocean temperature anomalies of +1.17°C in 2023 and +1.28°C in 2024 relative to the 1951–1980 base period. Meanwhile, the financial toll of extreme weather is documented in the NOAA NCEI U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters series, which recorded 403 events costing at least $1 billion each, totaling more than $2.945 trillion between 1980 and 2024, based on figures reported by CNN in May 2025. Plainly stated, NOAA retired the database in May 2025; the 1980–2024 data stay archived, and Climate Central now maintains it.
On regional human impacts, the Fifth National Climate Assessment Southern Great Plains chapter outlines severe compounding pressures across Texas. In its Overview summary, the assessment notes that "Extreme heat and high humidity harm human health and exacerbate inequities." The Overview also lists more frequent flooding in Texas, along with wildfires in California and sea level rise in Florida, among the pressures expected to displace millions of people. For a Deer Park family, the practical conclusion defenders draw is that planning, building codes, and household safeguards cannot rely on historical weather patterns, but must actively prepare for escalating storm surge risk, frequent urban flooding, and dangerous heat.
The skeptic case does not deny that Gulf Coast weather is dangerous or that the climate has warmed. Its argument is that the observed record does not show a worsening crisis, and that policy is being built on projections that overshoot. Climate at a Glance is a project of the Heartland Institute, a think tank that opposes many mainstream climate policies, and its pages exist to rebut the concern case. Here is that case as it makes it.
On Texas specifically, its Texas State Climate Summary, drawing on NOAA's state climate summary and NCEI data, says Texas has had no sustained rise in 100-degree days, and that such days were somewhat more common in the 1920s to 1950s. It says average temperatures have risen about 1.5°F since 1900, mostly from warmer nights, which it attributes largely to urban heat islands as population grew. It adds that annual rainfall has edged up, that recent droughts sit inside the past century's range, and that it sees no upward trend in wildfires, hurricanes or tornadoes.
On hurricanes, its hurricane page leans on the IPCC, which it says finds no increase in hurricane frequency or severity, and on the long U.S. stretch without a major landfall from 2005 to 2017. On floods, its floods page says the IPCC has low confidence that climate change is affecting flooding, and that NOAA data show U.S. flood damage falling relative to GDP over the twentieth century. On heat nationally, its heatwaves page cites NOAA's Climate Reference Network, in place since 2005, as showing no sustained rise in U.S. daily highs.
The forward-looking argument is about scenarios. Its RCP8.5 page says the highest-emissions scenario assumed roughly a five-fold rise in coal use and a very large 2100 population, and that real emissions have run well below it, so work built on it overstates risk. For a Deer Park family, the practical conclusion skeptics draw is that spending and mandates should follow measured trends and cost, not worst-case models.
Its sources include the IPCC SREX and AR6 reports, NOAA NCEI, the NOAA Storm Prediction Center and USDA data, linked on each page. These are its readings of that data; the concern side reads some of the same record differently.
When you look past the shouting, the fundamental split between these two positions is rarely about whether weather is hazardous or whether natural climate cycles exist. Both sides acknowledge that Texas weather is defined by immense natural variability and that Gulf Coast storms bring real destruction.
The actual disagreement divides along three distinct fault lines:
First, observation versus projection: Does the historical and modern temperature record confirm accelerating danger, as the Texas State Climatologist concludes regarding doubling urban heat days and surge vulnerability, or does clean modern surface monitoring reveal stability in daily high temperatures, as Heartland contends?
Second, the validity of baseline scenarios: Are long-term infrastructure and regulatory plans being calculated against realistic emissions pathways, or are they skewed by extreme hypothetical scenarios like RCP8.5 that exaggerate future impacts?
Third, the cost of policy: whether the benefits of cutting emissions are worth what grid changes, taxes and subsidies cost households, or whether those costs outweigh the benefits.
In short, the split is about how much warming is happening, how fast, and what it's worth spending to respond.
Regardless of which side of the climate argument you find more convincing, everyday reality in Deer Park is governed by events that have already hit our community.
First, the central power grid has repeatedly broken down under pressure. During Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, the FERC/NERC final report documented that ERCOT was forced to order approximately 20,000 megawatts of rolling blackouts to prevent catastrophic grid failure. Close to 4.5 million Texas homes and businesses lost power at the peak, per a University of Houston report (the FERC/NERC report puts it at more than 4.5 million people), leaving families without heat for up to four days. Three years later, in July 2024, Hurricane Beryl struck the coast, knocking out power to 2.2 to 2.3 million CenterPoint customers—out of 2.6 million in its Houston Electric territory. It took CenterPoint about a week to restore 90% of customers, as reported by ABC13 and others. The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) investigated and published its report November 21, 2024; it found, as reported by the Texas Tribune, that CenterPoint's outage tracker failed before the storm and that fallen trees caused many of the outages (Texas Tribune, via Insurance Journal).
Second, staying connected to the grid is becoming increasingly expensive. Texas residential rates rose about 29% from 2020 to 2024, from about 11.7 to 15.1 cents (EIA figures, as on the /solar card). Today Texas residential electricity runs about 15 to 16 cents a kilowatt-hour, per the EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, and CenterPoint-area customers average about 14.9 cents, according to 2026 market summaries of EIA data.
When the power goes out, food spoils, medical equipment fails, and indoor temperatures turn dangerous. Household resilience—having self-contained backup power so your home does not depend entirely on utility wires—remains a necessary household defense either way.
If you decide you want backup power of your own, here is what to know before you talk to anyone.
Most rooftop systems shut off automatically when the grid goes down, to protect line crews; interconnection rules such as IEEE 1547 require it. Keeping power during an outage takes a battery and the right inverter, as the U.S. Department of Energy explains.
Ownership terms make a big financial difference. A system can be leased, bought through a power-purchase agreement (PPA), financed with a loan, or bought outright, and each handles who owns the equipment, who claims any tax credit, and what happens when you sell the house differently. If you buy a system outright in 2026, there is no federal tax credit anymore; it ended December 31, 2025, per the IRS. With a lease or PPA, the company that owns the panels may still claim a federal credit, but only for systems in service by the end of 2027. Since the July 4, 2026 window to begin construction has passed, a system started now must be running by the end of 2027 for the owner to claim the credit. Ask how much of that credit shows up in your price. Also, Texas has no statewide net metering, so what you are paid for power you send back to the grid depends on your electricity provider's buyback plan.
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Where do you stand when the power cuts out in Deer Park? Do you view these recurring blackouts as proof of a shifting global climate that demands urgent energy reform, or as basic grid management failures that call for local hardening rather than global mandates?
Send your perspective, outage experiences, and letters to the editor at the Deer Park Herald at herald@thinkandactlocally.com. We welcome thoughtful reader responses from across the community.