The media reporting on recent Australian disasters like the drought, bushfires, Queensland flooding and related cattle deaths usually fails to mention some salient facts like the government’s rejection of international Climate Change obligations and loving embrace of coal power. Noticed this with CNN, but even a normally-on -the-money outlet like The Guardian doesn’t bring it up in all its reporting on the issue. Which every media outlet absolutely should.
Not just for Australia, I should emphasise - for any place where the government’s policies contribute to the scope and scale of climate change and associated disasters - certainly would have appreciated it if South African outlets reporting on the Western Cape drought had dropped a little disclaimer into every article on those lines. “Name and shame” should be the order of the day on this one.
Well, one problem is that no SINGLE event can be definitively “blamed” on climate change, let alone the anthropogenic components of climate change. Changes in PATTERNS over TIME (over decades, typically), yes. Media outlets should certainly be broadcasting scientific studies about these patterns and human activities and political policies, and sometimes in the context of specific weather events as examples, but to muddy the distinction between weather and climate is to simply play into the hands of idiots who say “hey, it was cold this week, so there’s no such thing as global warming!” and the like.
Counterpoint: anyone seriously using the “look, it’s snowing, therefore no global warming” is almost certainly not arguing in good faith and cannot be relied upon to do so even if we remove all unclarity.
Scr4, there is indeed a direct connection between a destabilized polar vortex and the crazy weather events of parts of the world in recent months. But again, did the polar vortex NEVER destabilize before anthropogenic climate change? No, of course it did. Again, it’s the frequency over time (decades, approximately) that reveals the drastic change.
True, but it’s also the fact that the polar vortex’s destabilization is occurring at approximately the same time as historic heat in Australia, which was preceded by historic wildfires in California, which was preceded by Hurricane Harvey’s record (or near record) rain output. There’s the rapid disintegration of polar ice, several years or record and near record warmth in the Arctic Circle. I don’t care if we can definitively say whether a single weather event is attributable to global climate change - we’re well past that point now. We should view it as simply more evidence that something is unusual about our climate and that industrial activity is, at minimum, a contributing factor.