The Washington Post “science” section has become a hotbed of opinion
Extreme weather in 2018 was a raging, howling signal of climate change
Just off the top of his head, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth can recount many of the weather disasters that hit the planet in 2018. Record rainfall and flooding in Japan, followed by a heat wave that sent tens of thousands of people to the hospital. Astonishing temperature records set across the planet, including sweltering weather above the Arctic Circle. Historic, lethal wildfires in Greece, Sweden and California, terrible flooding in India, a super typhoon with 165-mph winds in the Philippines, and two record-setting hurricanes that slammed the Southeast United States.
“Climate change is adding to what’s going on naturally, and it’s that extra stress that causes things to break,†said Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “It takes the experience well outside anything that’s been experienced before. It crosses thresholds. As a result, things break, people die, and things burn.â€
Blah blah blah. The opinion piece mentions lots of weather events, things that have always happened, and provides zero proof for the assertion that this has anything to do with the actions of Mankind. This is activist journalism.
Not to be outdone, David Leonhardt writes in the actual NY Times opinion section
The Story of 2018 Was Climate Change
Our best hope may be the weather.
For a long time, many people thought that it was a mistake to use the weather as evidence of climate change. Weather patterns contain a lot of randomness. Even as the earth warms and extreme weather becomes more common, some years are colder and calmer than others. If you argue that climate change is causing some weather trend, a climate denier may respond by making grand claims about a recent snowfall.
And yet the weather still has one big advantage over every other argument about the urgency of climate change: We experience the weather. We see it and feel it.
It is not a complex data series in an academic study or government report. It’s not a measurement of sea level or ice depth in a place you’ve never been. It’s right in front of you. And although weather patterns do have a lot of randomness, they are indeed changing. That’s the thing about climate change: It changes the climate.
I wanted to write my last column of 2018 about the climate as a kind of plea: Amid everything else going on, don’t lose sight of the most important story of the year.
Remember when they said weather was not climate? Surprise!
Yet, people still do not care enough to actually Do Something in their own lives. When with the WP and NYT stop using fossil fuels and go carbon neutral?
