Hurricane Sandy late last year hammered the northeast. I read the articles and listened carefully to NPR for a consensus from the scientific community attributing the cause of the hurricane to global warming (I use “global warming” and “climate change” interchangeably). There was no consensus nor did I hear a scientific expert unequivocally say that global warming caused Hurricane Sandy. No shortage of laypeople expressing their views, including Mayor Bloomberg, but it seemed the scientific community was silent.
While there is agreement that the climate is changing and that man has a lot to do with this, only generalities have been offered as to the impact of all this on the weather. Weather is the short term state of the atmosphere, while climate describes the typical or average atmospheric conditions.
It really is important for the scientific community to determine if the droughts in the mid-west and the severe storms we are bearing are caused by human activity. If the droughts persist, and once the reservoirs have been drained, prime farmland will no longer be good for growing food and there will be huge loss in asset values and food shortages. I view this not emotionally but pragmatically – if human activity is causing massive degradation in our environment which will seriously impact us, then the experts must expedite their research and step up and say so.
So I was very interested to read in the NYT yesterday that “Report Blames Climate Change for Extremes in Australia” (March 5, 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/world/asia/australian-government-blames-climate-change-for-angry-summer.html?_r=0).
The Australian summer over the past few months has been brutal. On almost every weekly chat with my Mom, who lives in Perth, the temperature was mentioned. Many days it was in the low to mid- 40’s Celsius (for comparison 43 degrees Celsius equates to 109 degrees Fahrenheit). This is truly HOT!
The report, issued by the Climate Commission (per the NYT “an independent panel of experts that issues reports on behalf of the government but is not subject to its direction or oversight”) is titled “The Angry Summer”. It includes a slide which has catchy titles: “Hottest January on record”, “Hottest Summer on Record”, “Hottest Day on record for Australia as a whole” etc. A quick reading of the NYT article leads you to think that the Commission was saying that climate change caused the record setting temperatures and bush fires. That is a problem with quick readings since you tend to merge the quotes from interviews with quotes from the report. The interview quotes had good stuff such as the probability the heat was caused by natural events is 500:1 and “Not too many people would want to put their life savings on a 500-to-1 horse” or an analogy that the climate is like an athlete on steroids. Persuasive images, but not in the report.
The report’s wording is more cautious such as: “All weather, including extreme weather events, is influenced by climate change” and “It is highly likely that extreme hot weather will become even more frequent and severe in Australia and around the globe over the coming decades” and, finally as to causation “The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren”.
“Influenced by”, “Highly likely” and “Largely determine” are hardly words which will catalyze action. But still, a step in the right direction.