This Will Not Surprise You

This should have been an important year for news about climate change. In September, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released part one of its fifth assessment, raising their level of certainty than global warming is human-caused from 90% to 95%, increasing their estimate of sea-level rise, and discussing climate change's irreversability. 2013 was also an active weather year, including the Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm ever to make landfall in recorded history. But, as usual, the corporate media are still ignoring or confusing the issue.

The release of the IPCC report fell victim to false balancing when an article in The Economist suggested that there had been a “pause” in global warming during the last 15 years. Because of natural climate variability, whether there appears to be a “pause” is largely a function of which years you choose as your start and end points. 1998 was a year of record high temperatures, so most “pause” advocates start there. Below are the exact same climate data. The top chart shows in red the long term trend that best fits the data. The bottom chart marks in blue several places where global warming might appear to have “paused.”

The IPCC may have made a tactical error by addressing and refuting the “pause” claim, which increased its familiarity and allowed the media to suggest there was a “controversy” over whether climate change was really happening. (“The global atmosphere hasn't been warming lately,” CBS reported.)

Media Matters did a study of coverage of the IPCC report from August 1 through October 1 on six TV and eight print outlets. The majority of them mentioned the “pause.”

Although climate change coverage had been improving in recent years, the “pause” story brought about an increase in false balancing, with more attention given to climate skeptics. As usual, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal were the worst, but doubters were 20% of those quoted by CBS and 17% by The Washington Post. USA Today published side-by-side op-eds giving equal weight to the IPCC and its skeptics.

Another depressing feature of news coverage is their failure to mention climate change when reporting extreme weather events consistent with climate predictions. Scientists, being a cautious lot, have often said that no single weather event can be definitely attributed to climate change. The media seem to have interpreted these statements to mean that it would be irresponsible to even mention climate change when reporting on hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, droughts, etc.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) did an analysis of reports on extreme weather on ABC, CBS and NBC TV news from January through September—ending before Typhoon Haiyan. The results could hardly have been more conclusive.

As Jim Naureckas has pointed out, every weather event is caused by the climate. While it's theoretically possible to imagine that Typhoon Haiyan might have occurred in a parallel universe in which we had not heated up the global temperature, defining “cause” that narrowly makes it impossible to ever attribute a weather event to the climate. This is not helpful when planning public policy. It's time for climate scientists to demand a new norm for reporting extreme weather. Current weather events should be compared to the historical record and changing trends should be reported every time the media do a weather story to which climate change is relevant.

You might also be interested in reading:

Death By Anecdote, Part 2

Public Getting Warmer

Climate of Mistrust