Is The End Of The World Old News? Summer Climate Horrors & The Media
"How Did the End of the World Become Old News?" By David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine, July 26, 2018. *Excerpts:
There has been a lot of burning lately. Last week, wildfires broke out in the Arctic Circle, where temperatures reached almost 90 degrees; they are still roiling northern Sweden, 21 of them. And this week, wildfires swept through the Greek seaside, outside Athens, killing at least 80 and hospitalizing almost 200. At one resort, dozens of guests tried to escape the flames by descending a narrow stone staircase into the Aegean, only to be engulfed along the way, dying literally in each other’s arms.
But, this July, we already seem much farther along on those paths than even the most alarmist climate observers- e.g., me- would have predicted a year ago. In a single week earlier this month, dozens of places around the world were hit with record temperatures in what was, effectively, an unprecedented, planet-encompassing heat wave: from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia.
The temperature of one city in Oman, where the daytime highs had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, did not drop below 108 all night; in Montreal, Canada, 50 died from the heat. That same week, 30 major wildfires burned in the American West, including one, in California, that grew at the rate of 10,000 football fields each hour, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term- “fire tsunami” - along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. The following week, the heat struck there, killing dozens.
In other words, it has been a month of historic, even unprecedented, climate horrors. But you may not have noticed, if you are anything but the most discriminating consumer of news. The major networks aired 127 segments on the unprecedented July heat wave, Media Matters usefully tabulated, and only one so much as mentioned climate change. The New York Times has done admirable work on global warming over the last year, launching a new climate desk and devoting tremendous resources to high-production-value special climate “features.” But even their original story on the wildfires in Greece made no mention of climate change - after some criticism on Twitter, they added a reference.
Over the last few days, there has been a flurry of chatter among climate writers and climate scientists, and the climate-curious who follow them, about this failure. In perhaps the most widely parsed and debated Twitter exchange, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes - whose show, All In, has distinguished itself with the seriousness of its climate coverage - described the dilemma facing every well-intentioned person in his spot: the transformation of the planet and the degradation may be the biggest and most important story of our time, indeed of all time, but on television, at least, it has nevertheless proven, so far, a “palpable ratings killer.”
All of which raises a very dispiriting possibility, considering the scale of the climate crisis: Has the end of the world as we know it become, already, old news? If so, that would be really, really bad. Climate change is not a matter of “yes” or “no,” a binary process. It is a system that gets worse over time as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases. We are just beginning to see the horrors that climate change has in store for us.
Things will get worse, almost certainly much, much worse. Broadcasters told the story of the historic temperatures, but chose not to touch the question of why we were seeing so many of them, all at once, with the atmosphere more full of carbon, and the planet hotter, than it has ever been at any point in human history. - Read more.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/climate-change-wildfires-heatwave-media-old-news-end-of-the-world.html
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Related: Washington Post, "Climate Change Is Supercharging A Hot And Dangerous Summer," July 26, 2018.
Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world is seeing this summer. And they predict that it will get hotter - and that what is a record today could someday be the norm. “The old records belong to a world that no longer exists,” said Martin Hoerling, research meteorologist. It’s not just heat. A warming world is prone to multiple types of extreme weather. Gone are the days when scientists drew a bright line dividing weather & climate. Now researchers can examine a weather event, estimate how much climate change had to do with causing or exacerbating it. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/climate-change-is-supercharging-a-hot-and-dangerous-summer/ar-BBL6YSh?li=BBnbcA1; https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016212000
New York Times, "In India, Summer Heat May Soon Be Literally Unbearable," July 17, 2018.
Extreme heat can kill, as it did by the dozens in Pakistan in May. Extreme heat is devastating the health & livelihoods of tens of millions more. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, they say, heat & humidity levels could become unbearable, especially for the poor. It is already making them poorer & sicker. “These cities are going to become unlivable unless urban governments put in systems of dealing with this phenomenon & make people aware. It’s a major public health challenge.”https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/climate/india-heat-wave-summer.html
- The fire this time (in Sweden).
- Fire Tornados in Carr, Northern California, Fri. July 27, 2018
- July 23, Greece: sweeping fires kill & injure hundreds in coastal areas & Mati, seaside village near Athens.
- Women in South Asia walk in stifling heat and humidity.
- A construction site in New Delhi. For laborers, taking time off means lost wages.
- India, clearing trees from construction sites can worsen urban heat.
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The powerful fossil fuel industry's debate of climate change for many years even though Exxon knew it in the 1970s meant dispute and denial with support by too many political leaders & mainstream media.
Look at where we are today after wasted years of delay and omission. In the last 10+ years: extreme storms & flooding; devastating hurricanes from Katrina to Irma; sea level rise from India and Europe to coastal US; historic 100-year floods from Paris to West Virginia; 2003 summer heat in Europe so bad bodies were piled up in France from lack of morgues; large areas of the Middle East suffering from massive drought, famine and population dislocation.
The damage from human caused climate change is irreparable and devastating to life on earth, from sea creatures to animals and plants on every continent and in every ocean. Human beings...
Still, public understanding of the crisis is far too misunderstood, ignored and denied. At this point, how climate change can be deterred or combatted after 30 years of valiant efforts by environmental groups I don't know. Try to handle the impacts and continue pushing for awareness and preparation is all I know.
*From the NY Mag. article: 'Decades of bad-faith debates about whether climate change is “real” and good-faith questions about whether it is “here” have dramatically foreshortened our collective imagination and provided an unfortunately limited picture of what global warming will yield. Treating every climate disaster as a discrete event only compounds the problem, suggesting that impacts will be discrete. >They won’t be, and the longer-view story is much more harrowing: *not just more months like JULY, but an *unfolding CENTURY* when a month like this July has become a happy memory of a placid climate. That it is almost hard to believe only makes it a more important story to tell.'
Horses threatened by wildfires and heat in No. California.
