Whether you are a climate activist, government official or a citizen eager to stay informed on climate issues, having reliable and accurate climate information is critical.
Unfortunately, The Seattle Times continues to provide factual information, with screaming headlines and stories that can easily be proven inaccurate.
This disappointing behavior by Seattle’s only newspaper was evident on Tuesday (see below).
A large, jarring headline foretells that “DATA CONFIRMED THAT WATER WATER IS DOING ABSOLUTELY, TERRIBLE“.
And in the subtitles, they double: “WHAT IS A CONNECTED CONNECTION PROVIDED BY A NEW RESEARCH“
As I will demonstrate below, these claims are baseless. Research does not confirm anything. And the “expected connection” subheading reveals a lot about the Seattle Times’ editorial approach.
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Articles, like so many of our stories local newspaper, which is a reprint of a Washington Post article (by Kasha Patel): THE WORLD IS WARMER THAT CAUSES DRAIN AND EXTREMELY RUN. NEW RESEARCH PROVIDES IT.
When a reporter describes research as “indisputable,” you know they understand very little about the scientific process. Science is ALL about disputing and questioning each other’s facts and interpretations.
The “irrefutable” information mentioned comes from a new research paper”Changing magnitude of hydroclimate events revealed by Grace and Grace-FO” by Mathew Rodell and Bailing Li by NASA Goddard and published in the journal Nature Water.
This article describes the measurement of the Grace satellite, which can measure soil water content from space. Importantly, they only analyzed the period 2002-2021.
Their entire statement about global warming signals is based on two observations: the past few years there have been several droughts/heavy rains and the earth is warming over the past decades.
Therefore, global warming/climate change is probably the cause. Correlation proves causality. Unscientific logic (see below).
Why are these statements false?
Let me start with something obvious: you can’t pinpoint a climate change/global warming signal with a 20-year record – it’s not long enough.
There are many natural sources of climate change: El Nino/La Nina with a period of 3-7 years, a Pacific Decade Oscillation with a period of 20-30 years (see below) and others.
So with all the natural variability of precipitation, temperature and other variables, it is difficult to give a global warming signal over a shorter time period (decades or less), especially since the global warming signal is relatively small and slow. develop. Note: it is generally accepted that the Earth has warmed by about 1.2°C over the past 150 years.
The Pacific Decimal Oscillator goes between warm and cool periods.
A closer look at the paper itself will reveal some serious additional problems. Let me show you a few.
Below are the key figures of the publication. Extreme hydrological events sensed by satellites are shown as colored dots. The black dashed line represents the monthly “intensity” of extreme hydrological events, essentially multiplying the number of events by their magnitude.
The article (and the Seattle Times/WA Post article) highlights that the number and intensity of extreme events has increased.
However, the increase in the intensity of extreme hydrological events has been limited to the LAST THREE YEARS. The same is true for the number of “events”.
What did global warming do in the last 15 years? Going on vacation?
In short, there is no long-term trend in extreme hydrological events that would make you think that global warming/climate change is the cause. Virtually no change from 2002 to 2018.
This is an important issue for their hypothesis
They also plotted the change in the global average temperature in the table below. You can expect to see a small warming (about 0.2 degrees Celsius) over a 20-year period, with 2016 being the warmest year.
The evolution of extreme hydrological phenomena (which has only increased dramatically in recent years) is very different from the trend of global temperature (distributed over the whole period), undermines the authors’ claim that global warming may be the cause.
You’ll note that 2016 was the warmest, without more extreme events. Furthermore, their plot shows little evidence that the intensity of extreme events has increased.
Considering the above, does it seem that the Washington Post is right in stating that the study demonstrates that the forcing of hydrological extremes due to global warming is “indisputable”? Of course not.
In fact, the evidence provided in this paper is so thin that one weather researcher (Daniel Swain) is quoted as saying:
” I think that if this happened all of a sudden, and this is the only evidence that we have that hydrological extremes are getting larger as the climate warms, then that in itself won’t be so obvious. clear“
Finally, The Seattle Times does not allow comment on stories from outside sources (such as the Washington Post). Obviously, this allows them to publish questionable information that no one can question or comment on. They do the same with their cartoonist, David Horsey, who repeatedly makes exaggerated and baseless claims about the climate.
Newspaper should not be in business advocate.
Surname should do the job of communicating the truth and when there is an argument, both sides of the argument.
