The newly-released National Climate Assessment (NCA) has sparked a tidal wave of media coverage, with a particular focus on how it contradicts the Trump administration’s stance on global warming.
Read pretty much any publication, and you’d also read that Americans are “already” feeling the effects of unchecked global warming. The NCA reviews and summarizes the state of global warming and how it may be impacting the U.S., attributing all current warming to human activities.
The NCA is the work of scientists, but the report’s media messengers are embellishing some of the report’s key findings with respect to current U.S. weather trends.
The New York Times, for example, reported “that every part of the country has been touched by warming, from droughts in the Southeast to flooding in the Midwest to a worrying rise in air and ground temperatures in Alaska, and conditions will continue to worsen.”
But that is not correct, according to University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert on extreme weather trends and natural disaster costs.
15/ NYT 100% wrong: “report finds that every part of the country has been touched by warming, from droughts in the SE to flooding in the MW”
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
Pielke pointed out that the NCA largely pretty much entirely echoes past climate assessments when it comes to extreme weather events, like storms, droughts, wildfires and floods.
13/ Any politician, journo, sci claiming that new US climate report supports attributing trends in extremes to human causes is just wrong
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
But NYT’s narrative about Americans already feeling the effect of global warming-induced extreme weather was echoed by other major outlets.
“And Americans are already experiencing the effects of climate change through heavier rainfall, coastal flooding, drought, more frequent heatwaves and wildfires, and earlier snow melt,” AFP reported of the NCA, released Friday.
The Washington Post said the report found “climate change is driven almost entirely by human action” and “enumerates climate-related damage across the United States that is already occurring as a result of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.”
Pielke went through the NCA’s findings when it comes to extreme weather trends in the U.S., finding, unsurprisingly, there’s little evidence linking man-made warming to such trends.
2/ Hurricanes: “there is still low confidence that any reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) increases in TC activity are robust”
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
3/ Tornadoes: “A particular challenge in quantifying the existence and intensity of these events arises from the data source” (so, meh)
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
5/ Drought: “drought statistics over the entire CONUS have declined … no detectable change in meteorological drought at the global scale”
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
9/ In US “incrsing & decrsing flooding magnitude but does not provide robust evidence that these trends are attrbutable to human influences”
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
12/ Precipitation B: “… tends identified for the U.S. regions have not been clearly attributed to anthropogenic forcing”
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 3, 2017
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