Tech | June 14, 2011 | 24 comments

Must see climate video connects the dots- while NY Times reporting on Arizona wildfires does not

source: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/12/243065/climate-change-video-connects-the-dotsrecord...

JanforGore
Last month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed about the failure of the media and others to connect any dots between recent extreme weather events and climate change. Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia has combined McKibben’s words with striking images.

Underscoring McKibben’s point is an uber-lame New York Times story today, “As Arizona Fire Rages, Officials Seek Its Cause,” which, you guessed it, is dot free. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote Friday, “The return of critical fire conditions this weekend means that the Wallow fire will likely become Arizona’s largest wildfire in history.”

Before taking on the NYT piece, let’s look at the video:

McKibben’s piece is a nice work of rhetoric. After April saw records set for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours, I examined the climate-tornado link in great detail here, looking at the data, the literature, and expert analysis. That piece concluded:

1.When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2.Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.
The NY Times has been doing some very good science reporting recently (see NY Times Bombshell: “The latest scientific research suggests” climate change is “helping to destabilize the food system”). But their overall reporting team is not connecting the dots (see, for instance, my May piece “New York Times blows the Dust Bowl story“).

The NYT had promised two years ago to do more coherent reporting, as the Columbia Journalism Review noted at the time:

Environmental S.W.A.T. Team
On Thursday, The New York Times will launch a new, crack environmental reporting unit that will pull in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks in a bid for richer, more prominent coverage.

Not.

The more prominent coverage simply never happened, as I detailed in the second half of my January piece, Silence of the Lambs: Media herd’s coverage of climate change “fell off the map” in 2010, which shows that in all of 2010 none of “the largest lead headlines” in the paper dealt with climate. As professor Robert Brulle, an expert on environmental communications, wrote me at the time:

Apparently, the editorial board of the NY Times has yet to fully grasp the importance of global climate change to our collective survival. As the science becomes stronger and more dire, the editors of the NY Times bury their head deeper into the sand.

Today’s Arizona story is a case in point. Now I don’t necessarily think that every single story written on the record Arizona wildfires must focus on or even mention climate change. But the NYT story is quite specifically on the “cause” of the fires. Worse, the newspaper has no difficulty repeating dubious right-wing myths as to the cause of the fires

Many wildfires are caused by humans — and investigators say this one may have been started by two unattended campfires — distinguishing them from hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes….

Residents heaped plenty of blame on Mother Nature as harsh winds spread the flames and low humidity left the forest full of fuel. But residents and experts also pointed their fingers at a variety of policies that they said had contributed to wildfires that seem to have grown in intensity over the years.

Some complained that it was environmentalists who had caused the forests to become tinderboxes by preventing the thinning of trees as they sought to protect wildlife. Others, like William Wallace Covington, a forestry expert at Northern Arizona University, countered that the leading factor was the grazing of forest grass for generations. The government’s longstanding practice of quickly extinguishing forest fires was also seen as adding to the thick clusters of highly combustible trees.

Seriously.

You would never know from the NYT that this standard right-wing talking point has actually been examined in the scientific literature and found wanting. Back in 2006, Science magazine published a major article analyzing whether the recent soaring wildfire trend was due to a change in forest management practices or to climate change. The study, led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, concluded:

Robust statistical associations between wildfire and hydroclimate in western forests indicate that increased wildfire activity over recent decades reflects sub-regional responses to changes in climate. Historical wildfire observations exhibit an abrupt transition in the mid-1980s from a regime of infrequent large wildfires of short (average of 1 week) duration to one with much more frequent and longer burning (5 weeks) fires. This transition was marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation (which provoked more and longer burning large wildfires), and longer fire seasons. Reduced winter precipitation and an early spring snowmelt played a role in this shift.

That 2006 study noted global warming (from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide) will further accelerate all of these trends during this century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0&feature=player_embedded
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24 comments // Must see climate video connects the dots- while NY Times reporting on Arizona wildfires does not // Video

  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  

    • "Drought across the southern US - and heavy rains across the north of the country - are a result of La Niña, says Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An extended holding pattern in the jet stream, the same type of "blocking event" that caused last summer's heat wave in Russia, is responsible for this year's European droughts, says Michael Blackburn of the University of Reading, UK."

      "As for the apparent convergence of droughts worldwide, Mark Saunders of University College London says current conditions aren't that unusual. News media may simply be more tuned in to reporting extreme weather events."

      Well!!! Imagine that, sensible reporting from the New Scientist.
      http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028173.100-global-warming-not-to-blame-f...

      Saunders is bang on with his comment. Now, every weather event is reported and exaggerated, taken out of context compared to the 'normal' weather the other 98% of the world is experiencing.

    • 12 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  

    • Everything that is happening related to global weather and warming was written about in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I read articles 20 years ago that predicted this outcome if we did not change our habits and energy demands. For denial to still be the political tool to keep honest conversation at bay, shows how badly our populace has been tricked into not thinking for themselves. What will it take to get America to grow up and start taking pollution seriously?

    • 12 months ago
  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  
    • treewolf39:

      "Everything that is happening related to global weather and warming was written about in the 70s, 80s, and 90s" - Treewolf39

      So let's take a look at some of those predictions.

      A RECENT flurry of papers has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a minor statistical fluctuation – Nature - March 6, 1975

      Scientists ponder why World’s Climate is changing; a major cooling is considered to be inevitable – New York Times May 21, 1975

      This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

      A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said... Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years - San Jose Mercury News - June 11, 1986

      [In New York City by 2008] The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up... Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.” - James Hansen testimony before Congress in June 1988

      STUDY FORESEES 86 NEW POWER PLANTS TO COOL U.S. WHEN GLOBE GETS HOTTER: Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants -- at a cost of $110 billion -- to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants - Associated Press May 15, 1989

      ''I think we're in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left - we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.'' - ABC - The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990

    • 12 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  
    • IceKat:

      Kudos, Point taken. I guess it really matters what science you are reading. We could save money on air conditioning if we all moved underground; might be hard in the flooding areas.

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • treewolf39:

      How is that a point that even relates to now, when we are also seeing more severe winter weather as well even with a global trend of warming? Deniers always use this global cooling prediction from the seventies because they have nothing to explain or back up what is happening now.

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

      The vast majority of climate papers during this time predicted warming. Again, cherrypicking to suit a purpose without links or scientific papers. Newspaper references? Please. And when you now really look at the entire globe in relation to drought, close to 40% of our world is now in some sort of drought and it is on every continent except Antarctica. This is not a linear process, so it is easy to jump on something that isn't happening exactly the way it was stated twenty years ago or exactly in the same place. That however does not change the overall picture of a world that is warming on the whole faster than what was predicted with droughts, excessive and erratic rainfall, floods, stronger storms, glacial melt etc. taking place over much of the world today with potable water availability and agriculture being hard hit.

    • 12 months ago
  • thedirtman
    • 0
      thedirtman  
    • IceKat:

      Check out this item from the 90's - the 1890's. Svante Arrhenius did some incredible work with very little. In those days scientists could calculate from astronomy that an ice age was coming. The astronomers calculations were not bad. The astronomers were calculating the wobble of the planet and the eccentricity of the orbit about the sun. Arrhenius correctly predicted that carbon dioxide emissions would steer us away from an ice age. Only now we've already gone about two times over what we needed, and all the signs are it's getting worse.

      I imagine the comic book scenario where one throws out a banana peel and promptly slips over it. We threw our garbage to the sky and we'll be forever tripping over it.

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/jun/30/climatechange.climatechangeenv...

    • 12 months ago
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  
    • JanforGore:

      Not IceKats world. And there is a point to be made when so many people get their science from Fox and Friends. People around the world all believe in global warming and climate change but there is a group of loud rich media moguls who promote backward scientific outcomes. I have gone down Icekats links and they have only confirmed global warming though IceKat claims different. I do not like beating my head against a wall to try to make a point that will never be accepted. I have gotten most of my information over the years from sources like National Geographic.

    • 12 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -1
      IceKat  
    • treewolf39:

      "I have gone down Icekats links and they have only confirmed global warming though IceKat claims different." - Treewolf39

      When have I ever stated that climate does not change?
      Show me where I have stated that the planet did not warm.

      It is well known that the planet warmed (and cooled, in other words varied) by less than one degree Celsius over one hundred and fifty years, and there have been changes to the climate, as there always has been - and yes, that is relevant.
      What I don't do is go as far as to read a theory, accept it and then stop dead. Research goes on, opinions change as evidence grows. Science has gone a long way since the CO2 induced Global Warming theory was proffered.
      CO2 does play a part in the warming (and cooling) of the planet, but nowhere near as much as you are led to believe. Cutting all emissions and bringing CO2 concentrations down to something like 250ppm (even it that were possible) would be detrimental to an already CO2-deficient planet, and would have absolutely zero impact on the weather events we see today.

      It may be easy for some extremist to sew together a group of weather events and blame them all on man's use of fossil fuels, but videos like this are really aimed at those who are easily led, ready to believe whatever is presented - without question - and really, if people cannot see that this is just some sort of pseudo-religious, anti-science chant then I really feel sorry for them.

    • 12 months ago
  • thedirtman
    • 0
      thedirtman  
    • IceKat:

      Why do you think that others simply read a theory, accept it and stop dead? If I may make an observation, it seems as though you have made an assumption and applied it to others without evidence.

    • 12 months ago
  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  
    • JanforGore:

      Martin Hoerling of NOAA: 'A lot of these extreme conditions are natural variations of the climate. Extremes happen, heat waves happen, heavy rains happen' -- 'Drought across the southern US -and heavy rains across the north of the country -are a result of La Niña, says Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center'

      NOAA says no problem. The ultra-biased, anti-science and extremist JanforGore says otherwise. Who to believe?

    • 12 months ago
  • squarethecircle
  • thedirtman
    • 0
      thedirtman  

    • My experience living in Northern Arizona leaves me thinking that wherever there is fuel there will be fire. If fires are suppressed there will be less fires overall, but eventually fires will get out of control and become larger. In the end, none of this has to do with climate change in any way. That there are the largest ever fires may be related.

      When science is not interdisciplinary, the scientist will go into a corner of the universe and relate how their corner works without looking at the big picture. That's how you get an atmospheric physicist from MIT that doesn't see how the oceans affect temperatures in Northern Europe. In the same way an NAU forestry expert may be helpful explaining how fires start. The media will take sentences out of context. In the end perspective becomes filtered and points are summarized beyond recognition.

      Recognizing global warming and climate change requires looking at the number of peaks in various fields of work and counting the number of dots that rise above the background noise. I can't emphasize how much I would want more data and more models before we went screwing with our atmospheric composition. Scientists were making real progress, but it wasn't nearly enough.

      It isn't important that we think exactly alike. I do believe that JanforGore and coolplanet are providing Current with information that is most pertinent, and extremely relevant. For the most part, my effort is to add details and encourage people to think.

      I would also note that IceKat's participation could be helpful, potentially. It concerns me more when the discussion ends.

    • 12 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  

    • You are SUCH a good writer, Jan!
      I told you once and I'll tell you again.
      Your postings are what attracted me to Current.
      Even though we disagree sometimes I nonetheless appreciate everything you put out here.
      Again and again, THANK YOU for your amazing dedication to the welfare of Gaia!

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  

    • How much worse do the climate catastrophies have to get before we heed the scientists who have been warning of these exact weather phenomena for the past 30 years as a result of increasing atmospheric carbon?
      Does it require the sudden death of billions before we wake up and take action???

    • 12 months ago
  • 14_Crusaders
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  
    • 14_Crusaders:

      Thanks, as it slides down and out. Democrats (in Congress and candidate) can't then say they care about "climate change" if they are just as apathetic as anyone else about tackling it and taking the truth to where it should be taken. That is why this should never have been made a political issue. It killed any real progress we may or will have on this, and that is truly tragic.

    • 12 months ago
  • 14_Crusaders
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • Yes, much better to be content in your own selfish, self absorbed, politically partisan mind where everything is beautiful because the media and the oil companies and Rush Limbaugh told you it is. No responsibility, no accountability, no worries. While the world gets closer and closer to the day when a "normal" day will be anything but. Actually, its already there. The Republican oiligarchy now has its plants already in this so called "presidential race" telling people that biodistress is a hoax even in the face of all of this. Playing the oil line to a tee, with their hands out for the cash. This is why the opposition has to grow some__ and show the truth of this and for once not be afraid to forego a little cash of their own to do the right thing.

      But is that really possible in politics now regardless of the side you are on? Mitt Romney (who BTW I would not vote for) at least admitted climate change is real, happening and in part contributed to by humans. He's already been ruled out by Limbaugh, who for some reason thinks he is relevant because he has a microphone to bark into so that gives him the sole authority to pick the presidential nominee. What is it about responsibility, accountability, truth and humanity that seems to elude gasbags like him?

      So, in the face of that, media blackouts, Koch money and face it, spineless Democrats ( though there are a few exceptions) what is the strategy for making biodistress part of this election campaign and doing so in the way it needs to be phrased and brought to the American people? How will Obama be able to do it if he also approves the Keystone XL pipeline? If drilling continues? If solar and other renewables continue to lag behind? If the media is continued to be allowed to not even say those two words? Based on prior campaigns, I'm not too optimistic and that does not bode well for the world any of our future generations and the ones here will live in. And make no mistake, it will be our fault. But hey, isn't that what "independent" media is for? Doing the job the MSM won't?

    • 12 months ago
  • EmileZ
    • +1
      EmileZ [removed]  
    • JanforGore:

      There is no such thing as clean coal.

      Mitt Romney admitted climate change is real??? I haven't heard Obama mention it for...how long has it been???

      I just dunno. I really just dunno about these presidential politics.

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  
    • EmileZ:

      I don't even know if Romney said it because he really means it, or just to get Democrats and environmentalists to consider him. However, it took guts to say it. And I'm sure Obama will say it more as the months go by after he is told he needs to gain back the disillusioned environmental and progressive lobbies that are not as disappointed in him as they were in Bush, but nevertheless disappointed in his acquiescence to Republicans and those oil supporting Democrats on oil, coal and setting firm emissions standards legislation and in trying to make us believe that natural gas, "clean" coal and tarsands are clean energy. I am truly of the opinion that you cannot be an environmentalist and a political partisan. I'm also hoping that on at least one media outlet we will get to see real solutions discussed about this because the time for implementation before the tipping point is fast approaching and won't wait for these politicians and the media to get around to thinking it is sexy enough to be taken seriously in connecting the dots.

    • 12 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • JanforGore:

      Why are we all waiting for politicians to take action?
      Why aren't we all planting and caring for trees in our own back yards or rooftops which environmentalists have long agreed is the best thing we can do to reduce atmospheric carbon fast?
      Are we waiting for big government to provide the saplings like they do in China?
      What is our pathetic excuse for not getting off our asses and planting some god damn trees???
      Sorry but I just see a lot of complaining and very little down to Earth action.

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • squarethecircle
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