News Reporter: Climate Coach: The climate attribution detectives

PUBLISHED BY

READ ONLINE | SIGN UP


Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, Mr. Bean's take on EVs and Greta ends her strike. But first, climate probabilities.

Last week, I asked you to share the moment when climate change became real to you.

Many of you noted it was not a single moment at all. It was many.

For Sonny Mujumdar, it began as storms and flooding that seemed to intensify as he got older. "This multitude of moments made me realize that the world was having a lot more 'natural' disasters than any other time since I was old enough to know about them," he wrote.

But skeptics can always point to reasons besides climate change for such disasters. The Canadian wildfires recently smothering the East Coast with smoke were "rotten luck," according to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In fact, they are "unprecedented."

It's the same with other weather disasters. In their pleas for federal money to withstand storms, Texas cited the need to deal with "changing coastal conditions" while South Carolina referred to "destabilizing effects and unpredictability" rather than name climate change in natural disasters. California's brutal 2020 wildfire season? Bad forest management, Donald Trump claimed.

These assessments are not exactly wrong. Disasters almost never spring from one cause. Implicating climate change in any one event is notoriously hard.

But climate scientists account for this. They deal in probabilities. Rather than only fingering global warming, they ask: Is this event more likely as a result of rising temperatures? There's an entire scientific discipline devoted to this: attribution science.

Take the devastating heat dome that formed over the Pacific Northwest in 2019. Temperatures soared more than 30 degrees above normal. Hundreds died of heat-related causes. Temperatures reached an all-time high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit in the Canadian town of Lytton the day before wildfires razed it.

Researchers in Earth System Dynamics say a heat wave of this magnitude would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change, putting the odds at least 150 times less likely to occur without human-induced climate change.

Such an event in today's climate is expected only once in a thousand years. Climate models predict if the globe warms by 2 degrees Celsius, this may occur every five to 10 years.

Living through these kinds of events is likely to change people's understanding of climate change more than any statistic. Personal experience with extreme weather — and hearing about its effect on others — are among the top reasons people report changing their views on questions such as "Is global warming happening?" and "Is it caused by humans?", according to a 2022 study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

History suggests this month's wildfires may not lead to immediate political change. But sharing a personal story about climate change shifts the conversation — and may lead to more than you realize.

Field Sample

Scientists are puzzling over a steady and remarkable rise in average global ocean temperatures, The Washington Post's Scott Dance reports. Temperatures this year are outpacing anything seen in four decades of satellite observations.

Some say a drastic reduction in air pollution from ships has allowed more sunlight to radiate into oceans. Others say weaker Atlantic winds may be encouraging warming.

Scientists agree on this: Conditions are ever ripening for extreme heat waves, droughts, floods and storms, all of which are linked to ocean warming.

Two terawatts of proposed renewable energy projects are queued up to connect to the U.S. grid, estimates Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That's almost double the generating capacity of all power plants on the grid today.

Only a fraction of those will be built, reports Canary Media. Some are speculative proposals, but many will die before they clear the bureaucratic hurdles to build the transmission lines and hookups clean power providers need.

To meet U.S. climate goals, local communities, states and federal agencies will need to clear those roadblocks.

The Second Degree

You all are good detectives. If I awarded prizes to every reader who guessed where I went on vacation over Memorial Day weekend, you would have filled a trophy case. The correct answer? Mount Shasta in Northern California. I'll try to go farther afield next time.

Thousands of you commented on my response to Mr. Bean's opinion piece on EVs in the Guardian on June 3. Most agreed the comedian was off base in his belief that electric cars aren't yet ready for prime time.

Barbara pointed out the toll of mining for EV batteries was serious, but should be compared to the environmental damage of extracting and burning fossil fuels, which is far greater. "Do you know how many of my neighbors use that excuse to be dismissive of the EV I just bought?" she writes.

Katie of Moab, Utah, meanwhile, sees my point that most people will soon view gasoline cars the same way we look at horses today: as hobbies. But, she also pointed out, "we still have plenty of working horses in this country — packing in supplies, taking people to the bottom of the Grand Canyon — working where no vehicle, EV or gasoline, dare tread." Ride on.

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

"We are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age," and we may never be the same. Welcome to the Pyrocene.

Air conditioners waste too much energy just dehumidifying air. New appliance standards are needed to keep us cool in a hot, humid world.

Seven major insurance carriers are still insuring and investing billions of dollars in fossil fuel projects even as they slash coverage for climate-related disasters.

Greta Thunberg, 20, held her last school strike last week, about five years after first protesting outside the Swedish parliament in 2018.

From elsewhere:

Can 16 kids sue Montana for violating their constitutional rights to a stable climate? The lawsuit could set a legal precedent, writes Vox.

Texas lawmakers tried to cripple new wind and solar development in the state. They lost — barely, reports Canary Media.

After writing a column on the climate benefits of lentils in March, I hoped to see legume fans everywhere. Sure enough. Sarah Dunton, a Washington Post editor, snapped this photo at the Tysons Galleria shopping mall in McLean, Va.

"I saw this license plate a few weeks ago and took a photo because #lentils," she wrote, "but it has some renewed relevance today given the Mr. Bean discourse."