Many scientists who advocate the theory that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming have warned against attributing any single weather event to climate change.
Nevertheless, CNN, CNBC, the New York Times and other major news outlets have thrown caution to the wind in their coverage of Hurricane Dorian, claiming, for example, the storm’s stall is a “signal of climate change,” reports the Media Research Center’s Newsbuster’s blog.
Dorian received many mentions at CNN’s Sept. 4, climate forum with Democratic presidential candidates. Sen. Bernie Sanders called Dorian “what climate change looks like.”
The Guardian of London published an op-ed from climate scientists Michael Mann — the creator of the debunked “hockey stick” graph — and Andrew Dessler saying “global heating made Hurricane Dorian bigger, wetter — and more deadly.”
They also warned climate change would turn more places into “nightmarish hellscapes.”
Significantly, however, they admitted “the science has yet to come in” on whether or not climate change had any affect on Dorian.
Dessler was cited in a Sept. 3 New York Times article claiming there was a “very strong consensus” about increased rainfall in hurricanes.
In a Forbes column Professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado — who agrees that human-caused climate change is “real and poses significant risks — called Dessler’s claim “simply wrong.”
“Instead of referencing the assessments of the WMO, NOAA or USNCA the Times instead relied on a climate scientist who does not research hurricanes and who apparently invented a fictional consensus on rainfall and hurricanes,” Pielke wrote.
Pielke challenged the media to stop intentionally mixing up climate and weather for political reasons.
He criticized the inclusion of scientists on the “bullish fringe” of consensus forecasts from government agencies.
Newsbusters, citing The Spectator UK, noted that NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory reviewed the research on global warming and hurricanes in August and said “it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human activity – and particularly greenhouse warming – has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity.”
Roy Spencer, a meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, told Fox News on Sept. 2 that climate is “long-term.”
He said that “since 1900 out of all of the major hurricanes that have hit Florida there has been no long-term trend in either the intensity or in the number of major hurricanes.”
“Even if Dorian were to hit Florida as a Category 4, which it looks like now is not going to happen. There would still be no long-term trend,” Spencer said.
