14 January 2011
Kudos to ABC News for Doing an Accurate Story On Climate
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Many network news stories I’ve seen on climate change end with an interview of someone who has never published anything in the field repeating an often heard myth. The myth almost always has long ago been shown to totally wrong, so it gets a new life.
ABC News (U.S. not ABC Australia) aired an excellent, and scientifically accurate piece last night on the flooding around the world over the past 12 months. They discussed it’s relationship to climate change, and rightfully pointed out that while you cannot blame any one event on climate, something strange is happening.
The evidence is overwhelming that warmer temps globally will bring more extreme rainfall events, and the events of the past few months force one to sit up and take notice. For every one degree rise in ocean temperature, the atmosphere can hold around 4% more water vapor, and this will increase rain and snow events.
Most researchers in atmospheric physics and climate are not surprised at what’s happening. As my favorite science quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson goes: “The laws of physics are real, everything else is politics”.
Give it a watch.
I didn’t see the ABC report, but how do you convince a skeptic, or those who want more info, that extreme weather events are evidence of climate change when nearly all recent extreme weather events are now cited as evidence of climate change? Brisbane gets a 500-yr storm, but how do you measure that against background rates past say 100-200 years? Where’s the faslifiability here? Doing this just seems to make skeptics more adamant; and to me, it seems to be sloppy reasoning.
Mike,
That’s why I pointed out that you cannot blame one event on AGW. The increase in the overall number of events is an indication that is consistent with theory. That is what they tried to point out in the ABC story.
As for convincing skeptics, most are unreachable for political reasons. They tend to have authoritarian personalities and once they conclude AGW is not happening, no amount of evidence will change their mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality.
Bob Altemeyer’s book is actually a fascinating read on the subject.
Kudos to Dan, for giving credit to good science reporting, regardless of where it appears. Quite fair of you.
It takes restraint to report on science correctly, which is to say, in a very dry way “this would seem to be evidence.” Science is often too slow and demanding to make a good story with pop–who can blame a reporter for not digging into the details far enough for accurate perspective?
Anyway, while writing this I’ve come to appreciate Dan for his duties in “PR for Science.” We need more like you. Keep it up.
PS, Does anyone out there know of journalism degree programs that strongly encourage a science minor? Any professors out there that teach a “science in journalism” type of class?
Thank you!
Unfortunately, the days when newspapers had an entire unit of science reporters seems numbered. There are few left, and even Andy Revkin is no longer with the NY Times.
Some of the mantle has been taken up by scientists themselves. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy is an exc. example. I have a friend who is finishing a PhD in a closely related field to science comm. at George Mason Univ.
I traveled to the Pole with Robert Lee Hotz of the WSJ. He is a giant in the field who has earned the respect of many scientists.