Update 2/22:
- Boston reached 72 degrees on Wednesday, breaking the previous record for the date by 9 degrees, as 24 East Coast cities set all-time record highs for the entire month of February.
- Portsmouth, NH broke its record high temperature for the day by an insane 20 degrees and Mount Washington tied its all-time highest winter temperature. Both times Mt. Wasington has hit 48 in Dec/Jan/Feb have come in the last 5 years.
- God bless WHDH’s Jeremy Reiner, the only person working for a Boston TV or radio station who wrote anything about climate change. Reiner points out 4 of 5 of Boston’s warmest February days ever have come in the last two years. Isn’t that crazy? Imagine how much extra energy we’re adding to storms. Whatever extra it may cost for solar, onshore wind & offshore wind energy, isn’t it still a bargain?
- The Boston Globe’s Dave Epstein mentioned global warming in his forecast. But the Globe had three news reporters write two articles on the record high temperatures and not one of those reporters. The Globe did have room for an entire article on “5 ways to get fit fast for spring.” John Henry can print whatever he sees fit, but the “give us your money to stop Trump, liberals” sales pitches ring a little hollow.
Photo via Twitter.com/LepineBrian
Boston has been keeping temperature records for the last 146 years. It never once hit 70 in February in its first 113 years of record keeping. But if forecasters are right about today, we’ll have done it twice this week and three times in the last two years alone. We’re forecast to break today’s 112-year-old record high by an incredible seven degrees.
And not a single journalist in Boston is connecting the dots to global warming, according to my Google News search.
Many journalists still falsely cling to a now-disproven line that no one extreme weather event can be connected to climate change. First, scientists are now directly connecting weather disasters to global warming. Second, there’s plenty we can say right now about today’s weather:
- Global warming is dramatically increasing our odds of record-breaking heat. Over the last year in America, 2.22 high temperature records were broken for every 1 cold record, according to ClimateSignals.org. As recently as the 1950s, it was still close to even at 1.09/1.
- Global warming is loading the dice for extreme weather, worsening heat waves, strengthening storms, deepening droughts, and adding fuel to wildfires.
So what should these stories say? Here’s a line that’s true & relevant for any extreme weather story, any time of year: “Scientists say this kind of record-breaking extreme weather is exactly what we can expect more of as manmade carbon pollution warms our climate.” That’s it! Easy!
One of the problems is that journalists only go to local government scientists as their sources, as the Boston Globe’s climate-silent story shows. Local government scientists have strong incentives to not say anything interesting, never mind controversial. So you get this:Temperatures in February normally average around 29 degrees, [National Weather Service meteorologist Lenore] Correia said, “but it’s really just the wind patterns.”
Oh! Just the wind patterns! Around the entire planet, endlessly getting warmer! Nothing to see here! Please don’t fire me, Trump administration!
Then there’s the head in sand approach. Here’s a list of ways Boston Magazine finds to talk about the record heat while never mentioning climate change or global warming:
- “unseasonable warmth”
- “lovely”
- “mild weather”
- “incredibly rare”
If you’re a reporter with national ambitions, why would you talk about global warming? As Media Matters has documented, national TV networks ignore climate science almost completely.
Even when the “cold” returns tomorrow, we’ll still be 10 degrees above our 20th-century normal. As humans, we can enjoy the brief warmth and when the frost returns Thursday night, we’ll barely even notice. But the flowers sprouting too soon won’t be so lucky – as Mike Campbell writes at WBUR, magnolias getting fooled into opening early and then getting immediately killed by frost is becoming an annual tradition. There are also countless tiny critters that have emerged from their winter hiding spots – but if their food hasn’t emerged too, the wasted energy may leave them struggling to make it to spring.
We need to act faster on clean energy, both to curb global warming and to take advantage of the growing clean energy economy as states like New York and New Jersey get more ambitious.
Please take a moment right now to ask your legislator to pass the omnibus clean energy bill.
I really don’t think Boston’s weather reporters are a bunch of climate deniers. In fact most people in that line of work are first in line to acknowledge it. The five-minute weather update during a newscast is hardly the place to go off an analytical tangent. Methinks thou dost protest too much. Making meteorologists out to be the dupes of the Kochs strikes me as unreasonable.
Dude. They got five minutes to say “cloudy & warm today, flurries & cool tomorrow.” They can’t say “Scientist say this record-breaking warmth is exactly what we can expect more of as manmade carbon pollution warms our climate”? Come on.
(Post updated to add that point. We liberals tend to think of climate science as complicated & hard. It can be! But it doesn’t HAVE to be.)
I most strongly encourage you to do even a little bit of investigation.
For example, Accuweather provides the raw material for many “local” weather reports. The Accuweather executive team steadfastly resisted the compelling science for years. Brett Anderson, an Accuweather met, runs a “climate change” blog hosted by Accuweather. It took more than a decade before Mr. Anderson could openly say, on that blog, that the science supporting global warming is compelling.
Joe Bastardi, one of the most prominent climate change deniers around today, was a senior forecaster at Accuweather for years. He left Accuweather only after embarrassing the brand by flagrantly misrepresenting research done by others and publishing those lies with the Accuweather brand prominently displayed.
There was a time when on-air personas routinely smoked cigarettes, cigars, and pipes as part of their act. Johnny Carson, Milton Berle, David Letterman, Walter Cronkite, et al routinely smoked on-air. As the science demonstrated how destructive tobacco is, a variety of societal forces banished that practice.
Virtually every one of those 5-minute weather segments begins with content-free and carefully scripted exchanges among the anchors. On days like today, those exchanges nearly always include references to “beautiful weather” and “the gorgeous day”.
Such comments are precisely analogous to those same anchors lighting up a cigar, cigarette or pipe. For anyone who is remotely familiar with the science of climate change, warming events like we see today are the climate equivalent of a smoker hacking up blood and bits of bloody tissue.
It is currently 73.8 degrees outside my front porch here in Somerville, on the 21 day of February. This is NOT a “gorgeous” day.
There is no need to do “go off on an analytical tangent”. It is just as easy for the smiling talking head to say “Global warming is certainly hitting home today” as anything else. If these anchors can remind us to bring our umbrellas and galoshes, they can just as easily remind us to take the T instead of driving.
The fact is that ALL media are driven by advertising. The reason why climate change and global warming is so flagrantly avoided by our media is the fear of alienating advertising buyers. Like it or not, that makes station managers and owners “the dupes of the Kochs”.
The on-air mets say and do exactly what they are scripted to do by their managers. If anything is “unreasonable”, it is the stunning silence about climate change as our rivers flood, our coasts are over-ridden by tides more and more often, and our wildlife and agriculture suffer.
Meteorologists have a moral obligation to be in the forefront of changing public attitudes about climate change. They have that obligation precisely because the science is so compelling and so many of them are familiar with that science.
I think it is both reasonable and proper for us to demand that our meteorologists tell us the truth about climate.
I intended this as a response to Christopher’s first comment.
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I’ve always seen you as a bit bah humbug on this. I for one like 70 degrees and can’t fault people for saying it’s beautiful.
A difference between climate change and smoking is that your decision view me as “bah humbug” on this, and your refusal to “fault people for saying it’s beautiful” directly harms my grandchildren.
Millions of smokers resisted the reports about tobacco causing harm, and reacted the way you do. Millions of them died from cancer.
The issue here exemplifies why effective government is needed. Those of us who know how important this is, and who know how compelling the science is, have very limited ability to actually change societal behavior so that we don’t all suffer.
A nuclear blast emits a flash of bright light that travels much faster than the following shockwave, sound, and debris field. Eyewitness reports described it as a “nuclear dawn”.
In my view, saying that days like today are “beautiful” is like celebrating the arrival of that nuclear flash. The catastrophic consequences of what we’ve already done to the climate are devastating and are already beginning.
I love the aroma of pipe tobacco. Would you be ok if on-air personalities fill their chit-chat with references to how lovely the anchor’s pipe smells?
I can’t even put into words how obvious to me the difference is between a respite from winter cold which are bodies are most adjusted to (There’s a reason 68F is called room temperature.) and the absolute mess tobacco makes to your lungs, which interferes with how the body is supposed to work.
Sorry, that dog won’t hunt.
The changes happening north of the Arctic circle are devastating, and they involve wintertime temperatures well below 68 degrees.
What you call a “respite from winter cold” is a two by four upside the head for anybody paying even a little bit of attention.
> I for one like 70 degrees and can’t fault people for saying it’s beautiful.
If there is a difference between that and talking about how awesome heroin feels, I can’t tell what it is.
As I tell people over and over and over…..The Media is not liberal, it is corporate.
This is how much warmer than normal February was across the area BEFORE Wednesday’s records:
Boston: +4.4 degrees
Providence: +5.5
Worcester: +4.2
The lead national weatherman on Filipino television dresses like Crocodile Dundee and regularly sells questionable medicine during the middle of his report (http://www.iweb.ph/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PAGASA-07.jpg) and even HE routinely acknowledges climate change and implores viewers to do something about it. Even someone as deplorable as Rodrigo Dutuerte signed the Paris accords and is a big booster for wind power (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-accord-philippines/philippines-duterte-signs-paris-pact-on-climate-change-idUSKBN1683HX). Even a third world country that has backward policies on birth control, LGBT rights, and human rights can double down on wind power which is totally non-controversial. My in laws lost a friend who was killed by agents working for the local governor for registering people to vote, but even *that Governor* has ordered more windmills for their region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangui_Wind_Farm). Incidentally her family’s house is right next to the windmills and they are beautiful. Had she not discovered the engagement ring in our closet leading to a spontaneous proposal in our apartment I would have proposed to her there.
We are decades behind the rest of the world, especially the developing world, in acknowledging both the threat of climate change and the economic opportunity of converting to renewables.
I might add Massachusetts is decades behind Bangui when it comes to wind power. This is not just a Trump or Red State problem, it is an American problem. We are all doing too little too late to solve this global problem, despite being among the biggest global contributors to it.
For what it’s worth, Tim Kelley said the following in this afternoon’s NECN report (:28 – :45):
That took fifteen seconds.
I am amazed that anybody who professes to be progressive objects to this thread-starter.
I’ll admit I’m a little reluctant to see climate discussion tied too closely to weather events. That cuts both ways. Way back in December we got a cold snap unlike anything I can remember at that time of year and it begat plenty of “Where’s your global warming now, Al Gore?” reactions.
The NECN report Tom posted strikes me as the responsible way for this sort of thing to get reported. Talk about the weirdness and how formerly predictable patterns are breaking. In December, as I understand it, the jet stream went haywire. Emphasize the science, use it to explain the bigger picture, send the message that there’s a reason behind the weird weather we’re seeing.
All that said, I got some serious spring fever today and I liked it. Note to self: that’s yet another reason to stay away from heroin.
I have long been skeptical of trying to link climate and weather too closely for this reason, and I was thinking specifically of that cold snap after Christmas when I read this yesterday. Even if correct, it seems straightforwardly self-defeating. I suppose I feel the same way about pretending that yesterday’s warmth was a horror. People watch local news to see if they need to wear the warm coat today, and if weather will muck up next weekend’s plans,and not for a sermon.
That said, Tim Kelly is really fantastic. More than many others, he actually makes an effort to make the reports a little science lesson,and does so without sermonizing.
The cold snap after Christmas was another example of jet stream vortex that separated from the Arctic region. These events have become more common as the Arctic has warmed. The icecap is thinner and the surface warmer, and the effect is to essentially lubricate the mechanism, so that vortices spin off the pole more frequently.
One reason why “climate change” is replacing “global warming” in the scientific community is that local impacts on any given region are often cooling events.
Yesterday’s warmth WAS a horror, no pretending is needed. By the standard you suggest, it is only after a succession of category 5 superstorms destroy our infrastructure — flooding all of the subways in Boston, New York, and DC, destroying all the bridges into and out of each city, covering all of Back Bay with several feet of sea water — that we will begin to admit what’s happening.
If we are to have a prayer of even slowing — never mind reversing — these cataclysmic events, then we MUST start to treat these episodes are horrors.
By the time the symptoms cannot be ignored, the patient is dead.