A little news flurry today “reported” – a term I must use with a big qualification – that White House Science Adviser John Holdren has emphatically connected global warming to the rising pace of wildfires across the US. The video gets prominent play on the White House site – a three minute summary with dramatic imagery. He makes a good case.
Yes, it is news anytime a top Presidential official talks about an urgency that faces the nation. This morning (Wed) I learned of it from a post at an activist site:
- Climate Progress – Jeff Spross: White House Chief Science Adviser: Wildfires Are Linked To Climate Change ; Mostly from the video, plus information from NOAA’s US Drought Monitor and about the wildfire situation from the LA Times and The Hill.
A search ensued for any reports that tried to dig a little deeper – and also reflect the fact that Holdren said nothing surprising. Who said it may be news, but not what was spoken. A link between rising global temperatures and increased severity and frequency of wildfires and drought is part of the climate science canon.
Other stories (24 hours after Holdren’s video went up):
- Salon – Lindsay Abrams: White House video links climate change to West’s lengthening, worsening wildfire season ; Her first quote from the video is a lame one, and it is also the video’s first declaration: “While no single wildfire can be said to be caused by climate change,” I’ll get back to that a little below. Abrams also cites the recent National Climate Assessment and its agreement with Holdren’s points – which I thought reflected some research. But, it’s in the video as well.
- The Hill – Laura Barron-Lopez: WH: Climate change fuels intense fire seasons ; Includes, as do several accounts, a similarity in this video’s tenor to one Holdren made in associating global warming with the loose-goosey polar vortex that has spilled Arctic air across southern latitudes with annoying frequency in the last year or two. But basically the story depends without challenge or extension on what the White House said.
- The Weather Network – Scott Sutherland : The connection between climate change and wildfires, explained in less than three minutes ; Not a news story, but a heartfelt essay that agrees heartily with Holdren.
- ScienceBlogs/Greg Laden’s BLOG – Climate Change Increases Frequency and Intensity of Wildfires; Not much here, just a link to the video, plus one sentence that nearly causes yours truly to leap to his feet: “I don’t like the messaging Holdren alsmost always seems to start with: ‘While we can’t attribute a single bla bla bla to climate change’ (it is not the right way to phrase what is happening. This is a good video, just out”
- Washington Post/The Fix – Philip Bump: The White House posted a video linking the California wildfires to climate change. Here’s why. Not a bad analysis at all, but it is not so much about wildfires and climate change as the overarchingly difficult task the White House has convincing the public that greenhouse global warming is real, it is serious, we did it and only we can blunt it or, hope against hope, stop it within the lives of… my grandchildren, for instance.
A story did eventually emerge with some genuine good, expansive reporting in it – and it came out just before Holdren’s video. But first, back to the next-to-last last bullet and Mr. Laden. Indeed, while Holdren’s three minutes do dwell heavily on statistical buttressing that climate change is seen in the weather – and climate is simply the long term statistics or integration of weather over time – he starts off with the bromide about “While we can’t attribute bla bla bla…..”
My opinion, everybody and particularly reporters should put a sock in it when thinking and verging on saying that such a statement is a seminal insight for talking about climate when weather is on display. As journalists, we don’t have to ape public speakers if they trot out such fuzzy thinking. If weather and climate are different, this way of stressing the distinction only feeds confusion and may backfire. What does it mean, we can’t blame any single weather event on climate change? To say that suggests that while we can’t do it, there might indeed be some droughts, floods, blizzard etc. due to global warming and there are some that are not, but we are just not sure which ones. But that deflects from the plain truth of things. Every disturbance changes the weather parade. Once that occurs, whatever sequence would have happened is gone. It is not as though some tornadoes were already on Nature’s agenda and occur on time, while other “global warming” twisters insert themselves into the calendar. If one brushes a finger through a line of ants, some of them run around crazily for a while then get back in line. But not right where they were. Eventually the whole line and the exact population distribution of the colony has a different placement of ants. Statistically the ants may act the same, but few if any ants are going to be doing exactly the same thing at the same place and time. One can blame ALL the change on that errant finger. And our weather is entirely changed due to climate change. The weather is as thoroughly distinct for the same reason that the storms in March of this year will not be replayed next year. The system has no master schedule, and adjusts its expression continuously. Without climate change, there would have been no flash flood in drought-scarred Southern California the other day as a monsoonal thunderstorm cut loose. The whole weather map would be different, from nice days outside to dreadful ones.
It was disappointing that none of these accounts, other than the Post’s, went much beyond what the video said and what can be found by following links the White House provided. The thinness of the reporting immediately after the video’s release is understandable, but hardly anything better has come along since. The vicious 24-hour news cycle seems only to give reporters time for what used to be called an early-edition place holder, with real reporting continuing into the evening. Thus reporters are now slower, on average, to turning out polished stories routinely. To be sure, one cannot attribute any one reporter’s instant rewrite and rehash to the reved-up news cycle and ease of finding something for filling on the web. Ahem.
Enough carping. One outlet’s quickie story led me to a gem of a reporting job.
- Big News Network (UPI) – Brooks Hays – White House looking to tie wildfires to climate change ; Another churnalism piece, but it includes this final sentence: “Earlier this week, a study was released suggesting the soot from wildfires actually exacerbates man-made climate change – meaning wildfires are both encouraged by and encouraging climate change.”
Yes, there was just a study saying that soot in the atmosphere, both the black kind that gets all the standard ink and something called brown soot, gives the greenhouse-gas perturbed global thermostat and extra small nudge upward. And it turns out that the news event generated some serious reporting. There may be other examples, but this one is sterling:
- Scientific American/E&E Publishing ClimateWire – Elizabeth Harball (August 4): Wildfire Smoke Proves Worse for Global Warming ; First words: “forest experts generally agree that as climate change makes the world warmer and drier, wildfires will break out more often.” Good to see affirmation one day in advance that Holdren, who himself said as much in the video, was not sharing any new insight. More important, this is a fully formed news report with multiple sources, differences of opinion, and recognition (via one source) that “biomass burning is really complicated.” It explains some of the science of light scattering and absorption and of climate forcing and sketches out one project’s scientific protocol.
It is a pleasure to come across grown-up science journalism for grown-up readers.
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