If our news media continue to ignore the essential link between
extreme weather and climate change, then we may not act in time to
avert even greater catastrophe.
Evidence supporting the
existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this
summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent
“derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million
people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase
“extreme weather” flashes across television screens from coast
to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently
ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including—or
especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential
link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a
nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not
act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.
More than 2,000 heat
records were broken last week around the U.S. The National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government
agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012
“marked the largest temperature departure from average of any
season on record for the contiguous United States.” These record
temperatures in May, NOAA says, “have been so dramatically
different that they establish a new ‘neighborhood’ apart from
the historical year-to-date temperatures.”
In Colorado, at least seven
major wildfires are burning at the time of this writing. The
Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs destroyed 347 homes and
killed at least two people. The High Park fire farther north
burned 259 homes and killed one. While officially “contained”
now, that fire won’t go out, according to Colorado’s Office of
Emergency Management, until an “act of nature such as prolonged
rain or snowfall.” The “derecho” storm system is another
example. “Derecho” is Spanish for “straight ahead,” and that is
what the storm did, forming near Chicago and blasting east,
leaving a trail of death, destruction and downed power lines.
Add drought to fire and
violent thunderstorms. According to Dr. Jeff Masters, one of the
few meteorologists who frequently makes the connection between
extreme weather and climate change, “across the entire
Continental U.S., 72 percent of the land area was classified as
being in dry or drought conditions” last week. “We’re going to
be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like
we’re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires and storms.
... This is just the beginning."
Fortunately, we might be
seeing a lot more of Jeff Masters, too. He was a co-founder of
the popular weather website Weather Underground in 1995. Just
this week he announced that the site had been purchased by The
Weather Channel, perhaps the largest single purveyor of extreme
weather reports. Masters promises the same focus on his blog,
which he hopes will reach the much larger Weather Channel
audience. He and others are needed to counter the drumbeat
denial of the significance of human-induced climate change, of
the sort delivered by CNN’s charismatic weatherman Rob Marciano.
In 2007, a British judge was considering banning Al Gore’s movie
“An Inconvenient Truth” from schools in England. After the
report, Marciano said on CNN, “Finally. Finally ... you know,
the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films, as well.
... Global warming does not conclusively cause stronger
hurricanes like we’ve seen.” Masters responded to that
characteristic clip by telling me, “Our TV meteorologists are
missing a big opportunity here to educate and tell the
population what is likely to happen.”
Beyond the borders of
wealthy countries like the United States, in developing
countries where most people in the world live, the impacts of
climate change are much more deadly, from the growing
desertification of Africa to the threats of rising sea levels
and the submersion of small island nations.
The U.S. news media have a
critical role to play in educating the public about climate
change. Imagine if just half the times that they flash “Extreme
Weather” across our TV screens, they alternated with “Global
Warming.” This Independence Day holiday week might just be the
beginning of people demanding the push to wean ourselves off
fossil fuels, and pursue a sane course toward sustainable energy
independence.
Denis Moynihan
contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio
news program,
Democracy
Now!.
http://www.alternet.org/story/156203/climate_change:_%E2%80%98this_is_just_the_beginning%E2%80%99/?page=2