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Ken Lassman's avatar

Very nice article about the continued shortfall in the media, where you not only hold their feet to the fire for not making the extreme weather event connection to climate change, but also the connection to fossil fuel and other human activities as the source for the observed changes.

And yet you might consider tweaking your message a bit more: For instance, you make this double connection of fossil fuel emissions and climate change to the extreme weather events, and then oddly in this section, you drop the fossil fuel component:

"Here are some examples of how media outlets easily explained the connection between extreme rainfall and climate change:

“As the climate warms, extreme precipitation events such as this one are becoming more frequent and intense, studies show.” (Axios)

"Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of human-caused climate change, fuelled by activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests." (BBC)

"Both episodes bear the fingerprint of human-caused climate change, which is increasing the intensity and severity of top-tier rain events." (The Washington Post)"

Only the middle quote gives the double connection by mentioning both the changing climate and fossil fuel emissions as being linked to the extreme weather event increases.

Furthermore, those same two quotes commit the causality sin that is so common in climate journalism. Instead of saying

“As the climate warms, extreme precipitation events such as this one are becoming more frequent and intense, studies show.” (Axios) a much better description would be:

"As fossil fuel emissions are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, greater heat retention is resulting in more frequent and extreme weather events, which is changing our climate."

And the last quote: "Both episodes bear the fingerprint of human-caused climate change, which is increasing the intensity and severity of top-tier rain events." (The Washington Post)" would be better worded with the following sentence:

"Both episodes bear the fingerprint of a warmer atmosphere, which makes more intense, severe, top-tier events possible. The warmer temps are the result of increased fossil fuel emissions, which has changed the atmosphere's chemistry, leading to a changing climate."

In other words, climate is just a running average of individual events. The climate is changing BECAUSE of increasingly frequent and extreme weather. It is these events that are changing the climate, not vice versa, and it is fossil fuel emissions that are making it possible by changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. Difficult to explain to journalists, let alone to readers, but worth putting out there...at least I think so. It's seldom done, I suspect, because it more directly links fossil fuel emissions to extreme weather events.

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William's avatar

Thank you both for putting this together!

I'm curious why even from the same outlet like AP there are articles mentioning the influence of climate change while others don't:

https://apnews.com/article/heat-wave-southwest-vegas-arizona-florida-761a5f251ad1cc714e87ee605b97440b

https://apnews.com/article/extreme-heat-wave-climate-e93d6f7d22ab0609c14a15fc5f14eef9

Does it depend on the author? Or even though both cover heat waves, one is more of an in depth weather report, while the other is a general news article? It is mentioned that an editor added a climate line to an AP article about flooding, so is it at the editor level and depends on the editor?

Just curious if a possible step would be to try and get some sort of editor enforced "template" or something for articles like this, so that at least the same outlet has consistent coverage linking climate change to weather. Or even a genuine industry wide reporting standard on this topic. No idea if that even makes sense in the context of how journalism works, and might be totally ignorant here. Sorry if that is the case!

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