How Climate Change Exaggeration Can Hurt People and the Environment

As readers of this blog know, I believe that communicating hype, exaggeration, and false information about human-caused climate change is a bad idea, if not highly counterproductive. 

On one hand, there are those who don't believe in the potential for human-caused climate change, mistakenly believing that an increase of a few hundred parts per million of CO2 could not be important. They are wrong.  Increasing CO2 will substantially change the climate of our planet during this century.

And then there are those who propose that virtually every severe weather event is the result of anthropogenic climate.   Also problematic.

In recent months we have seen a great example of how hyping global warming impacts can have a very negative impact, with potentially severe consequences for those suffering from a real environmental disaster. 

 The wine country wildfires north of San Francisco during October 2017.

The effects of the fires were catastrophic:  44 people lost their lives, 9000 buildings destroyed, 21,000 damaged,  hundreds of thousands of acres burned over, and Beijing-like air pollution affecting the health of millions of people in the Bay area.

The fires began after a normal dry summer that followed a wet winter, one that produced a lush crop of flammable grasses.  But the key to the fire initiation and spread were powerful "Diablo" easterly winds, gusting to 50-90 mph.  Winds that not only started many fires, but then caused then to explode and rapidly move into populated regions. 

As noted in my previous blogs,  there is no reason to suspect that anthropogenic  (human caused) global warming contributed to this event.   The previous wet winter was important, strong winds were essential (and they might even decrease under global warming), and in a normal year the fuels are dry enough to burn, with or without warming.   Importantly, there have been huge increases in population in regions that have burned for millennia, and fire suppression and the invasion of flammable invasive species (e.g., Eucalyptus trees) have made the region a dangerous tinderbox.

Recently, official investigations by California's official investigative agency (CalFire) have found that many of fires were caused by trees and branches falling on power lines managed by the local utility (PG&E).  PG&E is responsible for clearing the area around the lines to prevent such fires--it appears that they did not do a very good job at it and according to CA law should be responsible for the fire damage.  In fact, CalFire has communicating their concerns about PG&E to local law enforcement personnel.

But what are some major politicians saying?   They blame the fires on human-caused climate change and the "new normal", thus potentially giving PG&E a way to escape liability.

For example, when CA Governor Brown was asked about the wine country fires he stated "“That’s the way it is with a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture.” He also noted that climate change has produced a new normal of wildfires in the region.

And climate "advocacy" groups are with the governor.   For example, a local Pacific Northwest advocacy group (Grist) has produced a number of articles (like this one) pointing to climate change as the origin of the wine-country fires.


And then there is the media, with several jumping on the climate change as cause bandwagon ( such as Scientific American below)

PG&E is being sued for billions of dollars by those who have lost their homes, businesses, or loved ones. 

And what do you think they are doing?   They are attempting to use the climate excuse provide by the Governor, some climate advocates, and the sloppy media to get out of their responsibilities---blaming the fires on climate change and not their lack of maintenance of the power lines.

Blaming climate change is also an excuse for politicians not to do their jobs in protecting the environment and the population.   An excuse not to make hard decisions.   Like restricting people from living in fire-prone hills,  requiring homes to be fire resistant, or that power lines be buried.

Environmental stewardship goes well beyond dealing with  increasing CO2, but unfortunately many politicians and activist groups have become fixated on one issue, increasing greenhouse gases, and neglect important environmental threats and challenges.

Want a local, Puget Sound example?  That is easy... the quality of Puget Sound and our coastal waters.

Local environmental activists, regional politicians (like our Governor), and some local media (like the Seattle Times) have been fixated on the impacts of increasing CO2 on oyster production.    They have claimed that  increasing CO2 has caused the failure of oyster larvae to flourish in factory nurseries.

A detailed analysis reveals that none of this is true and that the factory nurseries made mistake in their intake of upwelled water at the wrong time of the day.  An error that has been remedied (thanks to the advice of the University of Washington!), with oyster production flourishing today.

But this fixation on the wrong problem (CO2 increases) has given the shellfish industry a pass on some very bad practices, such as spraying herbicides and pesticides over our State's waters, polluting our coastal zone with lot of plastic, and churning up our tide beds.    Politicians, wishing to show their environmental credibility, have been loud about CO2, but have neglected the issues of sewage run-off and the quality of our sewage treatment facilities. 

Remember the overflow of the massive overflow of the West Point treatment plant after a minor rainstorm,with huge amounts of sewage hitting Puget Sound?  It was due to some amazingly poor maintenance, lack of redundancy, and poor training.  Not as sexy as increasing greenhouse gases, but very important.

Another Washington State example?  

 So many politicians in our state blame climate change for the wildfires of late, rather than the real culprit:  the mismanagement of our state forests...forests that are overgrown and radically different than their natural state.   Or the fact they have allowed folks to live in regions that have traditionally burned.

Simplistic environmental activism can be highly destructive to the environment and we see this played out time and time again.

One final example:  the carbon tax saga.  Washington State had the opportunity to pass I-732, a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would encourage reduced emission of CO2 by our state, but not taking any money out of the pockets of state residents.  It even would have made our state tax system less regressive and would have been the first carbon tax in the nation and a bi-partisan beacon of what was possible if we worked together.

But many "environmental activists" worked against it, because of a false and divisive political narrative that climate change efforts must address "climate justice" by funding various interest groups (e.g., labor, tribes, minority groups),  without any evidence to support their contention that climate change preferentially hurts such groups IN WASHINGTON STATE.

The result:  the failure of I-732 and the pushing of a poorly designed carbon fee this year (I-1631) that will surely fail.

In summary, climate hype and misinformation hurts the environment and our citizens, no matter which side is doing it.  Facts matter and environmental issues go far beyond the concentration of one gas in the atmosphere.