From Watts Up With That?
Guest, “Why do they think ‘the climate story’ only has two sides?” by David Middleton
Both-sidesing the climate story
JANUARY 13, 2023
By KYLE POPEThe recent storms in California have been tragic, killing at least nineteen people and soaking nearly the entire state, including cities, such as Palm Springs, that are more used to drought. But is climate change driving it?
It is maddening that, this far into the climate crisis, news outlets continue to dither as to whether a single weather event is related to the now-undeniable, violent changes in Earth’s weather. Did the warming of the planet produce the water that pulled a five-year-old boy from his mother’s arms as he was on his way to school in San Luis Obispo County on Monday? It no doubt had a role. Is the cause and effect immediately and directly provable, on a chart or in a document? Of course not.
[…]
Journalists no longer need to both-sides the climate question. Many outlets don’t; this week, for example, Scientific American clearly conveyed that the California weather is the new normal. That would seem to be the story worth telling.
Scientists are doing their part to end the mystery; attribution science, which helps link local weather events to broader shifts, is gaining in sophistication and understanding. Help is also coming from local TV weathercasters who have emerged as unexpected heroes in efforts to more effectively tell the climate story. TV meteorologists are often the most trusted media figures in their markets, and the closest thing to a scientist many viewers see. The fact that they spend all day staring at the weather gives them unusual credibility in calling out changes on the ground.
OK… The Columbia Journalism Review calls for an end to “both-sidesing the climate story” because this was obviously due to climate change:
It is maddening that, this far into the climate crisis, news outlets continue to dither as to whether a single weather event is related to the now-undeniable, violent changes in Earth’s weather. Did the warming of the planet produce the water that pulled a five-year-old boy from his mother’s arms as he was on his way to school in San Luis Obispo County on Monday? It no doubt had a role.Columbia Journalism Review
Maybe the Columbia Journalism Review should have consulted the Columbia Climate School. They published this the day before CJR’s pathetic appeal to emotion…
CLIMATE, NATURAL DISASTERS
Flooding in California: What Went Wrong, and What Comes Next
BY SARAH FECHT | JANUARY 12, 2023
Battered by storm after storm, California is facing intense flooding, with at least 19 lives lost so far and nearly 100,000 people evacuated from their homes. And there’s no sign that the storms will be letting up soon.
Below, experts from across the Columbia Climate School help to explain this devastating weather and what it means in the broader conversation of climate change and disaster response.
Unusual, but not unheard of
“The floods are due to recurrent waves of atmospheric rivers that typically lead to very high rainfall. These are not unusual for California,” said Upmanu Lall, an engineering professor and director of the Columbia Water Center. Atmospheric rivers are air currents that carry large amounts of water vapor through the sky.
Modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey predicted a devastating scenario like we’re seeing now, Lall said. The projections were based on the storms that caused disastrous floods in California in 1861-62.
“There is sedimentary evidence from a UC Santa Barbara study that such a phenomenon recurs in California about every 250 years,” Lall added.
[…]
Climate change’s role
What role did climate change play in this seemingly endless parade of storms marching across California?
“Extreme precipitation is getting more frequent with warmer climate in many regions globally,” said Kornhuber. “A recent study suggests that climate change is increasing the frequency and magnitude of such storm sequences that impact California.”
However, he said, with atmospheric rivers in general, “it’s a bit difficult to say to what degree climate change is altering their frequency,” in part because it’s not clear how atmospheric circulation will change as the climate continues to warm.
The fairly well-balanced Columbia Climate School article cites many factors:
- The “recurrent waves of atmospheric rivers” that caused this flood “are not unusual for California”
- “Sedimentary evidence from a UC Santa Barbara study that such a phenomenon recurs in California about every 250 years”
- “El Niño and La Niña effects”
- Failure to heed warnings like these: Starting in December 2022, “US government agencies started issuing forecasts that indicated the imminent possibility of something like this happening in the immediate term”
- “Communication breakdown”
- The drought made flooding more likely
- Regarding climate change…
“Extreme precipitation is getting more frequent with warmer climate in many regions globally,” said Kornhuber. “A recent study suggests that climate change is increasing the frequency and magnitude of such storm sequences that impact California.”
However, he said, with atmospheric rivers in general, “it’s a bit difficult to say to what degree climate change is altering their frequency,” in part because it’s not clear how atmospheric circulation will change as the climate continues to warm.Columbia Climate School
While it’s possible that climate change played some role in this flooding event, Du et al., 2018 found that the the average frequency of these sorts of floods is 236 years, ranging from 144 to 372 years.
Modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey predicted a devastating scenario like we’re seeing now, Lall said. The projections were based on the storms that caused disastrous floods in California in 1861-62.Columbia Climate School
- 2023-1861 = 162 years
This flood did not deviate from the historical frequency of the past 9,000 years.
It seems to me that “both-sidesing the climate story” doesn’t have enough sides.
Here’s a plot of annual precipitation in California since 1895:
The most anomalous features are the heavy precipitation in 1984 and the 2011-2014 mega-mega-drought, which wasn’t caused by climate change.
Causes and Predictability of the 2011 to 2014 California Drought, NOAA
It is tragic when lives are lost due to flooding and other weather-related disasters. It would be even more tragic if the death toll from flooding in these United States was increasing. However, it is not increasing; it is decreasing.
The declining death toll is even more obvious on a per capita basis.
The real other side of “the climate story”
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that Earth is warming, that man-made causes are to blame…Columbia Journalism Review
The folks are Columbia Journalism Review think that the media should only cover one side of “the climate story.” That side asserts the “man-made causes” of climate change are greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel consumption and that this has lead to a climate crisis that must be solved quickly and at any cost. This illogical premise would lead to the conclusion that the only way to prevent children of the future from being swept from their mothers’ arms by flood waters, would be to get rid of fossil fuels.
This entirely ignores the massive benefits that modern civilization has derived from fossil fuels.
Life Expectancy: Our World in Data
Energy Consumption: Bjorn Lomborg, LinkedIn
From 1800 to 1900, per capita energy consumption, primarily from biomass, remained relatively flat; as did the average life expectancy. From 1900 to 1978, per capita energy consumption roughly tripled with the rapid growth in fossil fuel production (coal, oil & gas). This was accompanied by a doubling of average life expectancy. While I can’t say that fossil fuels caused the increase in life expectancy, I can unequivocally state that everything that enabled the increase in life expectancy wouldn’t have existed or happened without fossil fuels, particularly petroleum.
The logical side of “the climate story” is that greenhouse gas emissions have probably contributed to warming over the past 50 years.
Left: Modeled human climate forcing compared to three instrumental records (see Terando for specifics).
Right: Science News March 1, 1975
The warming has clearly been beneficial.
The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
[…]
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.
[…]
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reportsNewsweek, April 28, 1975 Full text.
If not for the warming over the past 50 years, it would still be just about this cold:
The logical side of “the climate story” would:
- recognize the massive benefits they have derived from fossil fuels
- continue to reap the benefits of fossil fuels
- promote economically viable efforts to reduce all emissions
- place the policy focus on adapting to changes in weather patterns
- recognize that weather-related disasters cannot be prevented, but they can be prepared for
The Columbia Journalism Review side of “the climate story” would:
- hype every weather-related disaster as proof of the mythical climate crisis
- ignore and/or censor the logical side
- remain blissfully (or bitterly) ignorant of the realities of energy economics
- continue to reap the benefits of fossil fuels, because they don’t have the slightest fracking clue about How the World Really Works
References
Du, Xiaojing, Ingrid Hendy, Arndt Schimmelmann. A 9000-year flood history for Southern California: A revised stratigraphy of varved sediments in Santa Barbara Basin. Marine Geology. Volume 397. 2018. Pages 29-42. ISSN 0025-3227 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2017.11.014.
Terando, A., Reidmiller, D., Hostetler, S.W., Littell, J.S., Beard, T.D., Jr., Weiskopf, S.R., Belnap, J., and Plumlee, G.S., 2020, Using information from global climate models to inform policymaking—The role of the U.S. Geological Survey: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2020–1058, 25 p.,
https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20201058.
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