{"id":300228,"date":"2024-02-07T12:07:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T11:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=300228"},"modified":"2024-02-07T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T11:07:52","slug":"the-new-york-times-conflates-weather-with-climate-change-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=300228","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times Conflates Weather with Climate Change (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sunset Storm at Frankfurt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


By Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent article in the New York Times<\/em> (NYT) claims that coastal cities are \u201cbracing\u201d for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false. It is wise for coastal cities to improve their resilience in response to flooding and storms which have occurred throughout history. However, real-world data show climate change has not made atmospheric river events and other instances of extreme rainfall worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article, titled \u201cCoastal Cities Brace for Climate Change<\/a>,\u201d comes with the ominous subtitle \u201c[t]his week\u2019s atmospheric rivers may only be the beginning.\u201d Writer Manuela Andreoni writes that flooding from recent storms has \u201cbattered cities in the South and East Coast,\u201d and \u201cOverlapping atmospheric rivers over the West Coast have brought heavy rains that are likely to come back in the next few days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andreoni goes on to assert that climate change makes these kinds of events more likely, because warmer air \u201cholds more moisture, which means storms in many parts of the world are getting wetter and more intense[.]\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warm air does holds more moisture than cooler air does, and the modest warming of the past century has occurred alongside a similarly modest increase in overall precipitation in the northern hemisphere, but the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found is no direct correlation to flooding. The As pointed out in\u00a0Climate at a Glance: Floods<\/a><\/em>, the IPCC admits that there is\u00a0low confidence<\/em>\u00a0in even the sign of any changes in the frequency or severity of flood events. Additionally, the cost of floods in the United States in relation to to GDP has dropped over time, despite the fact that infrastructure has increased in value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. flood damage as a proportion of U.S. gross domestic product. Data plotted by Bjorn Lomborg.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The factors that influence extreme precipitation events are more complex than the NYT leads one to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In regards to atmospheric rivers in particular, again, these events are not new nor are they becoming worse due to climate change. As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains in the Climate Realism<\/em> post \u201cWrong, Washington Post \u2013 History and Data Contradict Claims of Worsening \u2018Atmospheric Rivers\u2019;\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[\u2026]a peer-reviewed paper published in 2020<\/a> used satellite and sounding data and found there has been no trend<\/a> influencing tropical lower stratospheric water vapor, in the region these west coast atmospheric rivers originate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more powerful than that, a data analysis of global relative humidity data over the land and oceans (where atmospheric rivers originate) and publicly available from the UK Met Office, shows relative humidity actually declining<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atmospheric rivers and major flooding are historically common on the west coast. The worst known flood in California history occurred in 1862, in which an atmospheric river event dumped an equivalent of ten feet of water between rain and snow on California, resulting in massive flooding in the Sacramento Valley. Core drilling revealed similar and worse floods occurred in the same region in AD 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NYT also claims that coastal regions are \u201cespecially vulnerable to climate change, not just because of storms and floods, but from rising seas and erosion.\u201d These claims have been thoroughly refuted in previous Climate Realism<\/em> posts, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, for example. Coastal areas are obviously vulnerable to sea level rise, but it\u2019s not dangerously accelerating, and other factors such as overdevelopment, land compaction and subsidence, natural geography, and poor water infrastructure are larger factors in determining whether a coastal city is especially flood prone in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the article is relatively reasonable, detailing ways that cities are improving their infrastructure to improve storm resilience, such as restoring estuaries and other coastal ecosystems that buffer coastlines from storm surge. Hardening infrastructure is a good idea regardless of climate change. We made this point at Climate Realism<\/em>, in response to similar previous articles<\/a> published by the NYT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NYT and its writers should examine actual data available regarding flooding, atmospheric rivers, and heavy rainfall, before hyping climate change as a cause of problems with coastal cities.  Had they done so, they would find that there is no reason to blame naturally occurring, extreme weather events on climate change, and they would avoid misleading their readership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post\u00a0The New York Times Conflates Weather with Climate Change (Again)<\/a>\u00a0appeared first on\u00a0ClimateRealism<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent article in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0(NYT) claims that coastal cities are \u201cbracing\u201d for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":300233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A recent article in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0(NYT) claims that coastal cities are \u201cbracing\u201d for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691821950,691823155,691818473],"class_list":{"0":"post-300228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-extreme-rainfall","10":"tag-new-york-times-nyt","11":"tag-weather","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Storm-Feature-image.jpg?fit=1558%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1g6o","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":278513,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=278513","url_meta":{"origin":300228,"position":0},"title":"DeSantis is Right, New York Times, We Should all \u2018Shrug Off the Threat\u2019 of Catastrophic Climate Change","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/13\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In short, DeSantis is right to \u201cshrug off\u201d the climate hype and focus instead on the real problems facing Florida. 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