You doubt climate change? Come to this island — but hurry, before it disappears.
Zainal Abedin stands near the spot where remnants of his family home on the Bangladeshi island of Kutubdia sit underwater. Credit Thomas Nybo/Redux, for Unicef
KUTUBDIA,
Bangladesh — Anyone who doubts climate change should come to this
lovely low-lying island, lapped by gentle waves and home to about
100,000 people.
But come quickly, while it’s still here.
“My
house was over there,” said Zainal Abedin, a farmer, pointing to the
waves about 100 feet from the shore. “At low tide, we can still see
signs of our house.”
Already
much of Kutubdia has been swallowed by rising seas, leaving countless
families with nothing. Nurul Haque, a farmer who lost all his land to
the ocean, told me that he may have to pull his daughter, Munni Akter,
13, out of eighth grade and marry her off to an older man looking for a
second or third wife, because he has few financial options left to
support her.
“I
don’t really want to marry her off, because it’s not good for girls,”
he said glumly. “But I’m considering it.” He insisted that if it weren’t
for the rising waters and his resulting impoverishment, he wouldn’t
think of finding a husband for her.
Nurul Haque, a farmer whose
land was consumed by the ocean, is considering marrying off his
13-year-old daughter, Munni Akter, because he’s running out of ways to
support her.Credit
Thomas Nybo/Redux, for Unicef
One
of the paradoxes of climate change is that the world’s poorest and most
vulnerable people — who contribute almost nothing to warming the planet
— end up being most harmed by it.
Bangladesh
is expected to be particularly badly hit by rising oceans because much
of the country is only a few feet above sea level.
“Climate
change is destroying children’s futures,” noted Justin Forsyth, the
deputy executive director of Unicef. “In Bangladesh, tens of millions of
children and families are at risk of losing their homes, their land and
their livelihoods from rising sea levels, flooding and increased
cyclone intensity.”
Forsyth
said the average Bangladeshi produces just one-tenth of the global
average in annual per-capita carbon emissions. In contrast, the United
States accounts for more than one-quarter of cumulative carbon emissions since 1850, more than twice as much as any other country.
If Munni is pulled out of school and married off, she’ll have plenty of company. Unicef data suggest that 22 percent of girls in Bangladesh marry by the age of 15, one of the highest rates in the world.
“Climate changes appear to be increasing the numbers of girls who are forced to marry,” a three-year academic study in Bangladesh concluded.
On the mainland, gravel is
carried to cement mixers, to be used in concrete blocks that will be
placed along the coast to hold back the rising sea.Credit
Thomas Nybo/Redux, for Unicef
A year ago in Madagascar I met a family ready to marry off a 10-year-old girl, Fombasoa, because of a drought linked to climate change. And there are increasing reports that poverty linked to climate change is leading to child marriage in Malawi, Mozambique and other countries.
In Kutubdia, climate change is not the only issue. The seas are rising, but in addition, Kutubdia itself seems to be sinking.
The
upshot is that the island’s shoreline has retreated by about a
kilometer since the 1960s, farmers say. Even when land is mostly dry,
occasional high tides or storm surges bring in saltwater that poisons
the rice paddies. Thousands of climate refugees have already fled
Kutubdia and formed their own neighborhood in the mainland Bangladeshi
city of Cox’s Bazaar.
A
similar injustice is apparent in many poor countries. “Climate change
contributes to conflict,” noted Neal Keny-Guyer, the C.E.O. of Mercy
Corps, the aid group. He observed that a drier climate is widely
believed to have caused agricultural failures, tensions and migrations
that played a role in the Syrian civil war, the Darfur genocide and the
civil war in northeastern Nigeria.
Mokbul Ahmed, standing on a Kutubdia beach fortified by concrete blocks, points to where he had lived and farmed.Credit
Thomas Nybo/Redux, for Unicef
Aside
from reducing carbon emissions, Keny-Guyer said, Western countries can
do much more to build resilience in poor countries. That can include
supporting drought-resistant or saltwater-resistant crops, and offering
microinsurance to farmers and herdsmen so that a drought does not
devastate them. Mercy Corps is now developing such microinsurance.
The evidence of climate change is increasingly sobering, with the last four years also the hottest four years on record since modern record-keeping began in the 1880s.
We’re
also coming to understand that climate change may wreak havoc, changing
ocean currents, killing coral reefs and nurturing feedback loops that
accelerate the warming. It turns out that 99 percent of green sea turtles hatched in the northern Great Barrier Reef are now female because their sex is determined by temperature.
Most
of the villagers I spoke to both in Madagascar and in Bangladesh had
never heard of President Trump. But the outlook for their descendants
may depend on the actions he takes — and his withdrawal from the Paris
climate accord is an unhelpful surrender of American leadership.
Americans were recently horrified by a viral video of a starving polar bear, whose condition may or may not be linked to climate change. Let’s hope we can be just as indignant about the impact of climate change on children like Munni.
Structures were recently added along the island’s coastline in an attempt to prevent the further encroachment of the ocean.Credit
Thomas Nybo/Redux, for Unicef
Summary
Many
stories were written about climate science in 2017, but were the ones
that “went viral” scientifically accurate? To find out, we compiled a
list of articles with the most comments, shares, and likes on social
networks using data from Buzzsumo*.
From that list, we selected the articles containing verifiable
assertions on the topic of climate science (we searched for articles
containing “climate change” or “global warming”, leaving aside stories
about politics, or stories about natural disasters with no substantial
discussion of climate change).
We then asked scientists with relevant expertise to provide a brief assessment of their scientific credibility.
Here are the articles ranked by popularity (Click for details on the evaluations for each article):
Only about half of the stories are completely accurate
As shown on the figure above, about half of these articles were rated
highly credible—meaning these are informative articles on the topic
that do not contain major inaccuracies, nor do they mislead the reader.
Seven of these articles in the top 25 are from the New York Times, and all were found to be of the highest scientific accuracy. This, along with the dozen other Climate Feedback reviews of articles published by the Times,
give a strong indication that it is an influential and trustworthy
source of information on the topic of climate change. One article is
from the Washington Post, which usually publishes insightful articles on the topic (as illustrated by previous reviews), and one is from Forbes, which has published a mix
of credible and non-credible stories. Summing the number of shares
across accurate articles only yields about 25% of the total (see figure
below), meaning that overall readers were much more likely to have
interacted with a misleading article in their social media feed.
The top 5 articles are at least somewhat misleading
The other half of the list is comprised of articles with intermediate
or contested credibility (yellow on the figure) or low credibility
(shades of red on the figure).
The contested/intermediate credibility articles include some that build
on accurate information but are still misleading to readers. For
instance, the National Geographic article included correct
explanations of the impact climate change is having and will have on
polar bears, but it mislead readers by suggesting a particular starving
polar bear was a victim of low sea ice extent, while we do not know what
led to this bear’s demise. These “intermediate credibility” stories are
often found to suffer from sensationalism: presenting low-probability
scenarios as likely, playing on emotions like fear, or over-simplifying
reality with “clickbait” headlines.
Misinformation makes it to the top
Finally, the low-credibility articles managed to garner high levels
of engagement with simple falsehoods like “the Earth has not warmed”
(Daily Wire) or more elaborate misinformation like the claim that
scientists conspired to manipulate data and dupe world leaders (Mail on Sunday, republished online by the Daily Mail)—a story that was later corrected by the Mail on Sundayfollowing a decision by the Independent Press Standards Organization.
One limitation of this list is that we only looked at individual articles, but stories like the Mail on Sunday’s “manipulated data” allegation were reprinted by a number of other outlets, misinforming millions more readers.
It would thus be useful to expand this project to see whether the full
extent of misinformation as compared to accurate information is worse
that what we observed here—that half of the most popular articles on
climate are not reliably informing their readers.
Reviewers’ Comments: Karen Lone, Research Scientist, Norwegian Polar Institute:
The article contains valid information on the devastating consequences
of climate change on polar bears. The only problem as I see it is that
the article presents (implicitly) that the polar bear in the video is
dying as a consequence of climate change and from not finding enough
food due to lack of sea ice. This issue that this bear might be dying
from starvation naturally due to sickness or old age should be stated
more clearly in the article (and this concern has been raised in the
media, by experts, already). The only flawed reasoning is the strong
IMPLICIT link between climate change and the death of this particular
bear in the video. However, the wording used in the article, “this is
what is starving polar bear looks like…” is true. While it could be
presented better in this (central) aspect, the article’s content,
overall, is credible.
Steven Amstrup, Adjunct Professor, University of Wyoming in Laramie:
This reveals what declining survival looks like for polar bears, a trend
we will see increase as the world warms. But the article neglected to
point out this bear’s problems may or may not have had much to do with
declining sea ice in the Baffin area—an error of omission that can
become a target of global warming deniers. The important lesson from the observations shown is that ever-more
polar bears will be suffering this kind of fate as we allow the world to
continue to warm. Largely by omission, this article suggests we know
what led to this bear’s demise, and we don’t. Starvation is the main
cause of death among wild polar bears. After all, they have few natural
predators. Starvation rates will increase (decreased survival rates) as
sea ice continues to decline. But we must be careful in presenting an
observation like this as the fingerprint of climate warming. Without
proper context, observations and stories like this can distract from the
critical message we need to get out.
Reviewers’ Comments: Richard Betts, Professor, Met Office Hadley Centre & University of Exeter:
While it is clear that ongoing warming of the global climate would
eventually have very severe consequences, the concept of the Earth
becoming uninhabitable within anywhere near the timescales suggested in
the article is pure hyperbole. The author has clearly done very
extensive research and addresses a number of climate threats that are
indeed major issues, but generally the narrative ramps up the threat to
go beyond the level that is supported by science.
Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, Institute of the Environment:
This is an unusual piece in that it accurately describes some of the
most dire consequences of unabated global warming but focuses almost
exclusively on worst case scenarios. In doing so, it provides a
compelling narrative of what could happen in the future, but does not
accurately characterize the likelihood of particular outcomes relative
to what is justifiable based upon existing scientific evidence.
David Archer, Professor, University of Chicago:
I do not disagree with the tone of the article in the way that most
folks here seem to, and I think it does a service to highlight recent
results and ideas throughout the scientific community. However there are
inaccurate statements, like about satellite warming since 1998,
unsupported conclusions or implications (about past mass extinctions,
air chemistry, maybe arctic methane). But I feel that the overall thrust
of the article is not wrong, wildly misleading, or out of bounds of the
discussion we should be having about climate change.
Published in BBC, by Jasmin Fox-Skelly on 4 May 2017
Reviewers’ Comments: Greg Glass, Professor at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida
This is one of those stories that lies at the really straight up cool,
scary and true with maybe just a bit heavy emphasis on extremely
unlikely things happening. After all, the airplane you get on could
crash but that doesn’t seem to be the most likely event. I have worked
with folks trying to recover bacterial agents from the environment at
places where ‘events’ were known to have occurred in the past.
Empirically, it is a great way to get outdoors in exotic places but is
rarely successful.
Hazel Barton, Professor/Director of Integrated Bioscience Program, University of Akron
Most non-scientists won’t understand the subtleties of what’s being
explained here. As a scientists I read this and think, ‘Huh, that
reindeer thing is interesting’, but the idea that all these hitherto
unknown killing organisms are lurking beneath the ice is a bit
ridiculous.
Reviewers’ Comments: Alexis Berg, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University:
The article reports in a straightforward way on a scientific paper about
the potential reductions in greenhouse gas emission in the US resulting
from substituting beans for beef. The article explains the issue (meat
production diverts crops from humans to cattle) on a simple level. More
explanation and more context could have been provided, I think,
regarding individual-level and sectoral sources of greenhouse emissions.
Alejandro Gonzalez, Research Scientist, National Research Council-Argentina (CONICET):
The article is strongly misleading the reader, who at first gets the
impression that all beef eaten is from Brazil, which is totally false.
Imports account for around 12% of beef consumed in the US, and Brazil
contributes with only 5% of imports, while Australia, Canada, New
Zealand and Mexico provide 86% of beef imported (see ERS-USDA webpage). Thus, lowering beef consumption in the US is far from affecting Brazilian forests. On the other hand, it is not true that eliminating beef from diets
will produce such reductions in GHG emissions. The author cites
conclusions from a single work, but there are hundreds of works
published on diet and mitigation of climate change. The consensus is
that a well-planned diet change would lower greenhouse gas emissions,
but none agree that banning a single product would bring any benefit.
Not only beef but all animal products are much less efficient than
plant-based ones, and meats other than beef also carry environmental
burdens beyond greenhouse gases.
Reviewers’ Comments: Alek Petty, Postdoctoral associate, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center:
It’s not completely obvious to me that this specific event was caused
by, or indeed made more likely due to climate change, although it’s
clearly not an indicator that the opposite is true, as the Breitbart
article seems to be alluding to. I’m unsure if such a flow of thick ice
into the area is indeed unprecedented (over some time period), but that
seems plausible. The event described is a complex one, and is worthy of a
more in-depth discussion than can be provided in these short media
articles, in my view. The statement that Arctic sea ice is thinning and
becoming more mobile is valid, however, and indeed represents a key
indicator of the Arctic’s response to climate change.
Reviewers’ Comments: Allen Pope, Research Associate, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado Boulder:
The article handles a complex topic well. It would be easy to be
alarmist with this subject matter, and while its lede edges that way,
the main content of the article is very balanced. It also presents a lot
of interesting information in a compelling manner.
Dan McGrath, Research Scientist, Colorado State University:
Well-written article with fabulous graphics for illustrating and
explaining rift growth and the 2017 calving event on Larsen C. It
correctly highlights future concerns about the potential loss of
backstress from key ice rises on the ice shelf (Bawden and Gipps) and
the idea that this is a “natural laboratory to study how breakups will
occur at other ice shelves.” Further, the article does a nice job
explaining how ice shelves provide backstress to upstream glaciers, and
why their loss would spell increased ice discharge/sea level rise.
Reviewers’ Comments: Caroline Holmes, Polar Climate Scientist, British Antarctic Survey:
The article accurately reports on the state of Arctic sea ice at the
annual maximum (in March) and its causes, and gives an insightful
discussion as to the implications. There is one point which may be
misleading: when scientists refer to the Arctic being “ice-free” in
summer they specifically mean sea ice extent below a threshold of 1
million square kilometers (386 thousand square miles). This is not made
clear in the article and is an important distinction.
Reviewers’ Comments: Timothy Osborn, Professor, University of East Anglia, and Director of Research, Climatic Research Unit:
The headline’s claim that the Karl et al. paper “duped” world leaders
into investing billions is utterly false. Leaving aside the question of
whether the Karl et al. paper is invalid (it isn’t), the improvement to
global temperature records reported by Karl et al. had only a small
impact* on our estimate of global warming over the last century or more.
It is this warming over the last 50 to 150 years that is most relevant
for assessing the influence of greenhouse gases and particularly our
emissions of CO2. These long-term warming trends (hardly affected by the
Karl et al. paper) demonstrate the warming induced by CO2 and other
greenhouse gases and provide (part of) the scientific basis for
international climate agreements, like the one agreed by world leaders
in Paris in 2015.
Zeke Hausfather, Research Scientist, Berkeley Earth:
The “astonishing evidence” that David Rose purports to reveal in no way
changes our understanding of modern warming or our best estimates of
recent rates of warming. It does not in any way change the evidence that
policymakers have at their disposal when deciding how to address the
threats posed by climate change. If anything, there is strong independent evidence that
NOAA’s new record may be the most accurate one over the last two
decades, at least for the two-thirds of the world covered in ocean. Rose’s claim that NOAA’s results “can never be verified” is patently
incorrect, as we just published a paper independently verifying the most
important part of NOAA’s results.
Published in Quartz, by Katherine Ellen Foley on 5 Sept. 2017 Article tagged as: Accurate, Insightful
Reviewers’ Comments: Katharine Hayhoe, Professor, Texas Tech University:
The reason why I give this article a +1 and not a +2 is because the
title of the article is incorrect. The 38 papers were not all of the 3% –
they were a subset of them, selected based on their recency.
There was no problem with the content of the article itself. It correctly quoted the scientific study and the authors’ comments.
Rasmus Benestad, Senior scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological institute:
This article discusses a paper that I wrote together with colleagues,
and gives a nice overview. There was one sentence that I was a bit
unsure about that tried to explain a technical concept in more lay-man
terms:
“in which they would step farther and farther away from data until the points matched the curve of their choosing“
I would explain this differently: they give the curve so much freedom
that it conveniently matches the data by allowing for a large number of
coefficients in the equation describing it, but these coefficients do
not have a physical meaning.
Reviewers’ Comments: Simon Donner, Associate Professor, The University of British Columbia:
The article accurately depicts the scientific consensus on climate change and coral bleaching.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor and Director, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland:
This is an important article that relates the latest science. Even
though people may find it shocking, we are facing a serious downward
trend in the world’s largest continuous coral reef system.
Reviewers’ Comments: Kelly McCusker, Research Associate, University of Washington:
Repeating a version of a debunked argument against climate change
science, this biased and misleading political article states that the
cancellation of an Arctic research cruise due to increased sea ice at
one time and in one region proves climate scientists don’t know anything
about climate change over 100 years, which is patently false. The
article misrepresents many aspects of our current understanding and is
written in a biased manner, using phrases such as “climate change
activists [sic] scientists” and “bleeding-heart liberals”.
Published in The Independent, by Ian Johnston on 9 Nov. 2017 Article tagged as: Misleading, Alarmist
Reviewers’ Comments: Stephen Po-Chedley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
This article helped make some great points and I felt placed most
statements in the appropriate context, though some of the disclaimers
were ‘below the fold,’ which may have been missed by some readers. The
underlying research suggests that Earth, which is in a relatively warm
state, is more sensitive to greenhouse gases, which means we can
anticipate a bit more warming than the average climate model would
otherwise predict. The article points out that, if the warming estimate
given in the study is accurate, this would make it more difficult to
avoid specific warming targets (e.g., 1.5 or 2 degrees C warming).
Although most of the research is well-described, some of the statements
go beyond the scope of the original paper (e.g., “It is a vision of a
future so apocalyptic that it is hard to even imagine.”).
Mark Zelinka, Research Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
The article’s title, several quotes within it, and the final discussion
about Venus make this article overly apocalyptic. That said, the article
text does accurately report on the specific findings of the scientific
paper (that climate sensitivity to CO2 increases as the planet warms),
quotes an independent scientist who cautions that the results are
subject to uncertainties, and quotes one of the authors who acknowledged
their work was controversial with some scientists disagreeing.
Reviewers’ Comments: Chris Roberts, Research Scientist, ECMWF/Met Office:
Despite the colloquial tone, the article provides a pretty good summary
of the factors responsible for observed sea level variability. The
original scientific article is linked from the text and the authors
clearly distinguish between the variations associated with climate
change and the more rapid and localised change associated with modes of
internal variability.
However, this distinction between time scales gets lost a bit in the
concluding paragraph. The statement that “[Florida] is set to be
underwater faster than anyone has previously estimated” is not an
accurate representation of the concluding remarks from the original
scientific paper, which states that “[the impacts of sea level rise] may
be further amplified by short-lived [sea level rise] hot spots”.
Andrea Dutton, Assistant Professor, University of Florida:
While the information in this article is essentially correct, the links
lead to loosely related articles published on the same website, rather
than articles that directly support the statements made in the article.
The explanation of the acceleration of sea level rise in Florida is
oversimplified, probably because it is difficult to summarize concisely.
The mechanism is actually the combined effect of the El Niño cycle and
the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
Reviewers’ Comments: Terry Hughes, Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University:
The content is almost all correct, but the attention-grabbing headline
is wrong and isn’t supported by the quotes from two scientists or by the
rest of the content.
Simon Donner, Associate Professor, The University of British Columbia:
The short article accurately captures the scientific evidence that
repeat mass bleaching events will threaten the Great Barrier Reef, and
the message of the ARC official statement. In doing so, however, it is
forced into some generalizations including i) describing the Great
Barrier Reef as a single entity that can “die” (rather than a complex
web of ecosystems that will experience widespread degradation) and ii)
stating there have been only four instances of mass bleaching (there
have been thousands of events across the world over the past three
decades, yet only four years where bleaching occurred in all ocean
basins).
Published in CNBC, by Scott Pruitt on 9 Mar. 2017 Claim tagged as: Incorrect
Reviewers’ Comments: Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, The University of New South Wales:
That statement is inconsistent with every independent assessment of the
scientific literature I have seen, except from organisations set up to
deny the science and misinform the public.
The statement that global warming is unequivocal is supported by a massive body of work. The main statement comes from the 5th assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report agreed to by the global scientific community.
Published in Conservative Fighters, by ?? on Article tagged as: Inaccurate
Reviewers’ Comments: Timothy Osborn, Professor, University of East Anglia, and Director of Research, Climatic Research Unit:
The article and video present a misleading view of what we know about
recent climate change and its causes, ignoring the many lines of
evidence that give the science community confidence that global warming
is happening and is happening due to, predominantly, human emissions of
greenhouses gases. This article makes no attempt to challenge John
Coleman’s inaccurate statements.
Victor Venema, Scientist, University of Bonn, Germany:
It reads like a really bad parody of the positions of the American
mitigation sceptical movement. Evidence-free error-ridden extremism. #18
Reviewers’ Comments: Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor, Potsdam University:
I find the article is a very accurate summary of the state of science,
with the exception of the word “collapsing” in the headline (which may
well have been not the author’s choice). Changing this word to
“weakening” would have left me with nothing to complain about.
Reviewers’ Comments: John Bruno, Professor, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
The article accurately describes some of the key findings of the report,
with quotes from experts in the field. It also provides interesting
context in reporting the administrations response (or lack of one) to
the report that contradicts much the the Trump teams policy.
David Easterling, Chief of the Scientific Services Division, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center:
This is an accurate description of the process whereby the CSSR was
vetted and released. I was as surprised as anyone with the lack of
pressure from the new administration to do anything to the text.
Published in The Washington Post, by Chris Mooney on Article tagged as: Accurate, Insightful Six scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘very high’.
Reviewers’ Comments: Marina Levy, CNRS Senior scientist, Université Pierre et Marie Curie:
The content of the article is correct. It reports on a new study in Nature showing
the first observational evidence of a diminution of oxygen levels in
the oceans at a global scale. This is in agreement with projections from
climate models. In some regions where oxygen concentrations are already
low, this can be critical for ecosystems.
Jonathan Lauderdale, Postdoctoral Research Associate, MIT:
This article was well substantiated and measured in its reporting of the
decline in global ocean oxygen concentrations, without being hysterical
about the potential for mass fish suffocations, which I have seen in
previous articles on this subject. Several quotes were from scientists
not involved in the research paper, which lends credibility.
Reviewers’ Comments: Andrew MacDougall, Assistant Professor, St. Francis Xavier University:
Overall the article does a good job of summarizing the potential effects
of the permafrost carbon feedback to climate change. However, the
article highlights the very upper-end of the estimated strength of the
feedback instead of giving the most likely values or ranges.
Reviewers’ Comments: Victor Venema, Scientist, University of Bonn, Germany:
A clear and accurate article on the temperature record in 2016, looking
back at the records in 2015 and 2014. The article places them in the
proper context of long-term warming, while mentioning the special
effects that helped make the year a record.
Stephen Po-Chedley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
The article was a good summary of the record warmth in 2016. The summary
also made a number of useful points that put 2016 into the context of
the science of global climate change
Reviewers’ Comments:Michael Henehan, Postdoctoral Researcher, GFZ Helmholtz Centre Potsdam:
The article contains little to no rational treatment of observational
data, but relies on heavily biased secondhand interpretation. It has
been written by someone who had no intention of researching the
truthfulness of arguments that others have made, and merely reproduces
their mistruths with added inflammatory language and chiding outrage. It
rehashes logically-flawed and cherry-picked arguments from other
articles and repeats them verbatim without questioning their
authenticity. The article also rallies emotively against ‘Global
Quackery’ from thousands of qualified climate scientists of all
political persuasions, but then cites factually-inaccurate statements
from the CEO of a dubious company as opinions of a ‘scientist’ and
‘expert’, without any question of their integrity.
Even the title is based on a lie. There is no ‘study’ that finds static
temperatures for 19-years. This article is based on a newspaper article
that makes this false statement based in turn on a blog post. This blog
post in turn willfully misinterprets data that has been made
publicly-available from the Danish Meteorological Institute. In no point
along this production line of mistruths was anything like a peer
reviewed study involved.
Published in The New York Times, by Justin Gillis on Article tagged as: Accurate Thirteen
scientists reviewed this article, and generally found the answers to be
highly accurate distillations of the research on that topic.
Reviewers’ Comments: Ted Letcher, Research Scientist, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab:
The article provided a quick and remarkably concise “listicle” style
explanation of the key questions surrounding climate change. I saw no
red flags, or blatant attempts to mislead the reader. Furthermore, every
major scientific claim has a link to a peer reviewed article.
The article largely avoids hyperbole as well as alarmist and
inflammatory language, which is laudable. I also want to highlight the
section that talks about the various solutions and opportunities for
action.
Overall, a good article that hits all the key point, speaks in plain
English, and treats the reader with enough respect to look deeper into
any one issue.
Reviewers’ Comments: Victor Venema, Scientist, University of Bonn, Germany:
The article contains some inaccuracies, but the main problem is that it
depends on only one source, which the article admits is “contentious”.
The authors have a long tradition of overconfidence in their data, their
dataset has often needed large adjustments and has a large structural
uncertainty and the study was published in a low-level journal.
Alexis Berg, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University:
This article reports on a new study by Christy and McNider that, in my
view, contains little new regarding atmospheric temperature trends and
seems to simply assert that model-observation discrepancies are due to
model errors. Also, it seems the absence of accelerating warming trends
is meant to go against prevailing climate science, but I find that to be
a strawman argument.
In that sense the article is misleading—however, to its credit, it
does report on other published results that contradict this recent
study, but it fails to provide further context or to make any effort to
compare/reconcile the validity of these different studies.
* Method:
The number of social media shares are from the Buzzsumo database as
measured in December 2017, including articles containing the terms
“climate change” or “global warming”.
Weather-related disasters are exponentially increasing
The risk of extreme weather ending human existence is topped only by
the risk posed by weapons of mass destruction. A global survey released
by the World Economic Forum on Wednesday showed
that for the second year in a row, the dangers of extreme weather are
only second to that of nuclear missiles and other such weaponry. And in
terms of both likelihood and impact, extreme world weather events are
the number one concern, according to the survey.
“Environmental
risks have grown in prominence over the 13-year history of the Global
Risks Report, and this trend continued,” the authors wrote.
“Among the most pressing environmental challenges facing us are extreme
weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss;
pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate change mitigation
and adaptation; and transition risks as we move to a low-carbon
future.”
Extreme weather, natural disasters and the failure to
mitigate and adapt to climate change were all in the top five global
risks in terms of impact, according to the global survey. The report is
based on the perceived risks from nearly 1,000 experts from around the
world, most of whom were European men with expertise in economics and
technology who worked at a business organization.
A house destroyed by hurricane winds is seen in Barranquitas, southwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on October 20, 2017, a month after the passage of Hurricane Maria. Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images
In terms of likelihood, weapons of mass destruction aren’t on the list of top 10. Though the fear of war
has increased as a result of the ongoing feud between President Donald
Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, environmental concerns have been
prominently noted in the top five risks since 2011 in terms of both
likelihood and impact. Extreme weather events were the second most
likely global risk for 2014, 2015 and 2016—but were the number one risk
in terms of likelihood in 2017 and 2018.
The report noted that the "impact of Hurricane Maria
on Puerto Rico has starkly illustrated" how environmental problems can
result in devastation of crucial infrastructure. In 2016, nearly 24
million people were displaced from their homes due to weather-related
events—which were over three-quarters of all people displaced that year,
according to the report. California, Chile and Portugal had extensive wildfires in 2017, with over 100 deaths in Portugal recorded.
Firefighters battle a forest wildfire next to Vilarinho village, near Lousa on October 16, 2017, in Coimbra region, Portugal. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Rising global temperatures
and heatwaves could devastate food supplies, according to the report.
More than three-quarters of the world’s food comes from 12 plants and
five animal species—which highlights the world’s vulnerable food system.
The report says there is a one in 20 chance per decade that heat,
drought and floods will result in “widespread famine and hardship” as a
result of the failure of corn production in the U.S. and China, which
are the world’s primary growers.
Technology-based concerns,
including cyberattacks and data fraud, and theft were also in the top 10
among 30 global risks that could affect us over the next decade,
according to the 1,000 experts and decision makers surveyed. Other
events that pose a risk include large-scale involuntary migration,
man-made environmental disasters, terrorist attacks, illicit trade and
extremely overpriced assets, including housing, in a major economy or
region. Top risks in terms of impact that were not also included in the
top 10 risks in terms of likelihood were water crises, food crises, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and spread of infectious disease.
