Media Data Shows Covid-19 Has Stolen Climate Change's Thunder

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

To get a sense how the impetus for action on climate change has been eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic, you only need to look at how the media’s interest on the matter has shifted.

From what looks like an all-time peak in Australia’s interest in a warming world during the bushfire crisis in January - with 4.5 per cent of articles about climate change - interest has since cratered to be less than 1 per cent, according to analysis from Streem, a media monitoring firm.

Stealing their thunder?: A climate change protester in Melbourne during the height of the bushfires. Credit: Chris Hopkins

By April, the number of articles given prominence on the homepage of 12 leading news sites that mentioned climate change in their first 100 words had dropped to 32 from 562 in January, when the bushfire inferno was at its worst.

COVID-19 counted 13,256 slots last month alone."Certainly coronavirus has reached unprecedented levels of media saturation, being mentioned in 80 per cent of stories some days," Conal Hanna, a Streem media analyst, said.

Interestingly, a similar pattern is evident in the United Kingdom, where interest in climate change tracked at levels close to Australia's even though the bushfires had no direct impact other than drawing the media's attention.

Less than one per cent of articles now mention climate change
Percentage of articles published in leading newspapers and websites

Source: Streem

The surge in coronavirus articles in Australia is notable, with four times more articles on the pandemic than all climate change-related news in the past year, Streem data showed.

Previous periods of relatively active interest in climate-related news, such as the address to the United Nations by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were similarly dwarfed by articles about COVID-19.

Climate change coverage in April was 0.36% that of coronavirus
There were four times more COVID-19 stories in April
than climate change stories in the past year

Source: Streem

Bushfires devastated much of the forests of eastern Australia and elsewhere during the summer of 2019-20. Credit: Rob Blakers.

Mr Hanna said that while the pandemic was always going to dominate Australia's media landscape, other topics have been gaining reader interest in recent weeks.

"The George Pell verdict, the release of Malcolm Turnbull's memoir and the ongoing discussion about football season resumptions are all topics that have generated considerable prominence in the media despite the pandemic," he said.

How COVID-19 redefined 'blanket coverage'
The percentage of print and online news stories mentioning each topic

Source: Streem

Links

• Media ‘impartiality’ on climate change is ethically misguided and downright dangerous
• Why is climate change still not top of the news agenda?
• In media coverage of climate change, where are the facts?
• How is global media reporting on the climate crisis?
• Reporter’s Toolbox: New Resources Help Improve Climate Coverage
• Annals of a Warming Planet: Welcome to The Climate Crisis Newsletter
• (AU) Media Watch Host Paul Barry Fans Flames, Dodges Climate Change Facts
• (AU) Media Watch: News Corp's Fire Fight
• 'Major blow' looms for top Sydney solar research unit as funds wither
• Scientific approach for COVID-19 must be applied to climate change

Climate Change Has Already Made Parts Of The World Too Hot For Humans

New Scientist - Adam Vaughan

Climate change is already making some places unliveable. AKHTAR SOOMRO/Reuters/PA Images

Global warming has already made parts of the world hotter than the human body can withstand, decades earlier than climate models expected this to happen.

Jacobabad in Pakistan and Ras al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates have both repeatedly crossed a deadly threshold for one or two hours at a time, an analysis of weather station data found.

Wet bulb temperature (TW) is a measure of heat and humidity, taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating, but lower levels can still be deadly, as was seen in the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW.

A US-UK team analysed weather station data across the world, and found that the frequency of wet bulb temperatures exceeding temperatures between 27°C TW and 35°C TW had all doubled since 1979. Though 35°C TW is thought of as a key threshold, harm and even death is possible at lower temperatures, so the team included these in their analysis.

Most of the frequency increases were in the Persian gulf, India, Pakistan and south-west North America. But at Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, 35°C TW appears to have been passed, the first time the breach has been reported in scientific literature.

“The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C. The tantalising conclusion is it looks like, in some cases for a brief period of the day, we have exceeded this value,” says Tom Matthews at Loughborough University in the UK.

His team corroborated the threshold being breached by looking at another weather dataset, based on temperature and humidity observations and modelling. That analysis suggested several areas of the Persian Gulf will see the possibility of 35ۜ°C TW happening once every 30 years at around 2.3°C of global warming. The world has already warmed about 1°C due to human activities.

Such intense humid temperatures have so far largely affected affluent Gulf states, which have the capacity to cope by investing in air conditioning. But Matthews warns that with continued climate change, the extremes will affect more parts of Pakistan, and India too, which may have not have the capacity to adapt.

Even if they they could, it would require huge amounts of energy for cooling, further exacerbating climate if it came from fossil fuels. “We are already exquisitely close, closer than we thought, to that line in the sand,” he says.

While there are uncertainties over temperature and humidity readings from a few weather stations, because of where they are sited or how they are calibrated, Matthews says the overall picture is “unequivocal”.

Steven Sherwood at University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the research, says it makes a convincing case that the measurements are accurate, though it could not be guaranteed.

“The implications of this study are that such extreme conditions which push the tolerance of the human body are not as far off into the future as we thought, at least in a few locations on Earth,” he says.

Clare Heaviside at University College London says the work is broadly in line with existing research, but cautioned against the focus on the threshold of 35°C TW. “It is difficult to link a wet bulb temperature threshold to specific health outcomes, and for different population groups,” she says.

Links

• The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance
• Hot, sleepless nights will get more common with climate change
• It’s already getting too hot and humid in some places for humans to survive
• Unsurvivable Heat Was Predicted to Blast Earth in the Future. Instead, It's Happening Now.
• Potentially lethal heat waves are more common than scientists thought
• Heat and Humidity Are Already Reaching the Limits of Human Tolerance

Mark Carney: 'We Can't Self-Isolate From Climate Change'

BBC Science & Environment - Victoria Gill

Could a post-pandemic economic recovery provide countries with the chance to accelerate towards cleaner energy? Getty Images

The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has added his voice to calls for industrialised nations to invest in a greener economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

He shared his comments in an online discussion about climate change with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcom Turnbull.

Both called on nations to accelerate a transition to cleaner energy.

The event was organised by the Policy Exchange think tank.

Mr Carney said that the pandemic was "a terrible situation, but there was also a big opportunity" at the end of it.

"We have a situation with climate change which will involve every country in the world and from which we can't self-isolate," he added.

Mr Carney has previously spoken out about climate change risks. Getty Images

Science confronts politics

As has rapidly become the socially distant norm, both participants joined the discussion via video conference from their respective homes - setting out how they saw ways in which countries could emerge from the crisis with cleaner, more sustainable economies.

Mr Turnbull, who was Australia's prime minister from 2015-2018, issued blunt, broad criticisms of many governments for failing to take the science of climate change seriously.

Drawing bleak parallels with the pandemic, Mr Turnbull said Covid-19 was a case of "biology confronting and shaking the complacency of day-to-day politics with a physical reality of sickness and death".

"The question is, when will the physics of climate change mug the complacency and denialism - just as biology has with respect to the virus."



'Leapfrog ahead'

Mr Carney, who stepped down as Bank of England governor in March, just before the UK lockdown began, explained that, at a time when many industries would have to restructure, this would be a chance "to try not go back to the status quo".

As countries re-launched and rebuilt their economies, they "should try to leapfrog ahead", he said.

He recommended regulatory policies that would push economies more quickly towards greener growth - and a more sustainable future - citing the UK's plan to phase out petrol and diesel cars by 2035.

Governments, he added, should also take the opportunity to invest in wind and solar power to accelerate the transition to greener energy.

Many countries would have the opportunity to invest in sustainable infrastructure, Mr Carney said, pointing out that that opportunity was missed after the 2008 financial crisis.

"You can't wish away the systemic risk," he said. "In the end, a small investment up front can save a tremendous cost down the road."


Five things the world needs to invest in to be "climate change resilient"

Links

• Pandemic Also A Reckoning For Climate Change, Turnbull Tells British Audience
• Can coronavirus crisis spur a green recovery?
• COVID-19 Is A Dress Rehearsal For Entrepreneurial Approaches To Climate Change
• (AU) Australian Businesses Call For Climate Crisis And Virus Economic Recovery To Be Tackled Together
• (AU) Australia Listened To The Experts On Coronavirus. It's Time We Heard Them On Climate Change
• IMF Leader Says Pandemic Stimulus Must Focus On Battling Climate Crisis
• Parallel Threats Of COVID-19, Climate Change, Require ‘Brave, Visionary And Collaborative Leadership’: UN Chief
• German Companies Call For COVID-19 Aid To Be Tied To Climate Action
• The Pandemic Could Be A Call To Action On Climate Change
• Climate change: 'Invest $1.8 trillion to adapt'