5 ms·

Interesting. But why did they do this?

by injb 5y ago

throwawaysea 5y ago
So the person writing this article (Cliff Mass) is a professor at the university of washington, in atmospheric science. If you read his blog, he has numerous past posts discussing climate change, and he has noted that activist organizations (like 350) are corrupting climate science and confusing messaging to the public with hyperbolic claims. An example post discussing the politicization of the issue is at https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-real-climate-debate.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-real-climate-deba... Regarding this recent heatwave event in the northwest, right off the bat there were numerous news articles attributing the event primarily to climate change even before this attribution study (example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-heat-wave-in-pacific-northwest-driven-by-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-hea...). I can only speculate as to why a journalist would think that is appropriate. My sense is that journalism has to some degree become more biased and political in recent years, more reactive to pressure from activists (like climate change advocates), and more ready to sell "fast news" rather than "correct news". I don't doubt that these are ultimately well intentioned people, but they are acting on emotion rather than scientifically, and acting with a particular political outcome in mind. As such, they seem to push messaging that is as strongly in their political favor as possible, even if it doesn't strictly match reality, because they want to ensure their policies are implemented to avert a catastrophic outcome due to climate change. When it comes to the extreme headlines featured in this post, it feels like this may be less the fault of the journalism industry and more the fault of the study's authors. The main source for the provocative claim that the event "was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change" is the very first sentence of the study (https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/NW-US-extreme-heat-2021-scientific-report-WWA.pdf https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/N...). This sentence is not supported by the rest of the study, since it notes that it was a very low probability event (once in a millennium) even with climate change. The same misleading claim was also used to title their public-facing blog post (https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/ https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-americ...). This was picked up verbatim by journalists, as was visible in the numerous examples of news headlines shown in the professor's post. So I would say that this is a result of the editorialization from the study's authors and the group behind it (World Weather Attribution). Perhaps the extent of the journalists' culpability is that they didn't fact-check the claims or dig deeper, and just blindly repeated the same line.

Interesting. But why did they do this?

by injb 5y ago

Interesting. But why did they do this?

So the person writing this article (Cliff Mass) is a professor at the university of washington, in atmospheric science. If you read his blog, he has numerous past posts discussing climate change, and he has noted that activist organizations (like 350) are corrupting climate science and confusing messaging to the public with hyperbolic claims. An example post discussing the politicization of the issue is at https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-real-climate-debate.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-real-climate-deba... Regarding this recent heatwave event in the northwest, right off the bat there were numerous news articles attributing the event primarily to climate change even before this attribution study (example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-heat-wave-in-pacific-northwest-driven-by-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unprecedented-hea...). I can only speculate as to why a journalist would think that is appropriate. My sense is that journalism has to some degree become more biased and political in recent years, more reactive to pressure from activists (like climate change advocates), and more ready to sell "fast news" rather than "correct news". I don't doubt that these are ultimately well intentioned people, but they are acting on emotion rather than scientifically, and acting with a particular political outcome in mind. As such, they seem to push messaging that is as strongly in their political favor as possible, even if it doesn't strictly match reality, because they want to ensure their policies are implemented to avert a catastrophic outcome due to climate change. When it comes to the extreme headlines featured in this post, it feels like this may be less the fault of the journalism industry and more the fault of the study's authors. The main source for the provocative claim that the event "was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change" is the very first sentence of the study (https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/NW-US-extreme-heat-2021-scientific-report-WWA.pdf https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/N...). This sentence is not supported by the rest of the study, since it notes that it was a very low probability event (once in a millennium) even with climate change. The same misleading claim was also used to title their public-facing blog post (https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/ https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-americ...). This was picked up verbatim by journalists, as was visible in the numerous examples of news headlines shown in the professor's post. So I would say that this is a result of the editorialization from the study's authors and the group behind it (World Weather Attribution). Perhaps the extent of the journalists' culpability is that they didn't fact-check the claims or dig deeper, and just blindly repeated the same line.