The Washington Post, for too many decades, has been the ‘home-town’ paper. With the dead-tree edition at the breakfast table, the gaps and failures in coverage (and skewed editorial section) are too evident. Thus, many — many — posts re The Post leading to a decision to begin/maintain a “Post Watch” series when frustration (or, well, with good journalism — enthusiasm) leads to a blog post.
Today’s Washington Post has a small AP report “Winds still causing damage in L.A. area” (note: the story does not seem, in at least its exact wording, to be on the Post website). While noting that “unusually powerful winds” began hitting the L.A. area Wednesday, the story’s concluding paragraph explains them as “dry, seasonal gusts”.
Video uploaded by the Salt Lake City Tribune. Description: In this video, greenhouse coverings are torn off a business near Highway 89 and Fruit Heights, Utah. Gusts were recorded in excess of 100 mph and damage was extensive. (Hat Tip Capital Weather Gang)
Online, WashPost.com has more extensive coverage such as the Weather Gang’s Wind storm diminishing in West, but strong gusts linger in Southern California which noted that “Thursday’s Santa Ana blast, which one NWS official told the NY Times was unlike anything experienced in Southern California “in more than 10 years.” Also online, a longer AP story, Powerful winds topple trees, down power lines in California and across much of the West. As a sign of the severity of the conditions, this story notes that “winds reached 123 mph at a ski resort northwest of Denver and topped 102 mph in Utah. California, however, was the hardest hit, with more than 330,000 utility customers still without power late Thursday. The gusts were blamed for toppling semitrailers and causing trees to fall on homes, apartment complexes and cars.” This story, interestingly, contains this paragraph:
Bill Patzert, a climate expert with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lives in Sierra Madre and, like hundreds of thousands of people across the region, lost power at his home. A heavy tree limb blocked his driveway.
Note that noting that “a climate expert” had “lost power at his home” was the only comment that I could find in Post coverage that provided any link between climate and the devastating wind storms …
Hmmm …
Yes. These are “dry, seasonal gusts” and, without question, winds and windstorms have existed on planet Earth for billions of years. Thus, winds and even “dry, seasonal gusts” are nothing new.
However … perhaps the Post coverage could have been more robust to assist a more informed citizenry.
Five years ago, an academic study published in the American Geophysical Union’ (AGU) Geophysical Research Letters looked specifically at southern California high-wind patterns.
A new method based on global climate model pressure gradients was developed for identifying coastal high-wind fire weather conditions, such as the Santa Ana Occurrence (SAO). … analysis shows consistent shifts in SAO events from earlier (September–October) to later (November–December) in the season, suggesting that SAOs may significantly increase the extent of California coastal areas burned by wildfires, loss of life, and property.
We are seeing, globally, severe weather event after severe weather event, flooding to greet climate negotiators in Durban, South Africa, to massive windstorms knocking down forests in Europe, to 1000+ year Texas droughts to … Yet, consistently, reporters seem unwilling or unable to place these ‘events’ within the context of climate change and to provide windows on whether climate change might have a meaningful role in record-breaking events with some concept as to what the future might bring. (For example, the science is not in 100 percent agreement about climate change’s impacts on Santa Anna winds. Some work actually suggests decreasing impacts (media version; scientific paper version pdf).) To be clear, it is hard to state that any specific weather event (no matter how severe or unusual) occurred “because of climate change” but it is increasingly untenable to discuss such severe weather without some effort to understand how climate change is or could be a contributing factor.
Reporting without context is a failure in the 4th estate’s responsibility to provide for a more informed electorate.
GESN Items re The Washington Post include
- Washington Post advocated practicing journalism: Did they fulfill the mandate?
- A WashPost heaping of garbage
- WashPost/NY Times: To Subscribe or Unsubscribe, that is the question.
- WashPost editorial board calls out Kook-inelli
- Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception … leads to a question: “Does the Washington Post have any honor left?”
- Washington Post editorial board … confusion is bad (even if we’re at fault)
- POSTal Schizophrenia re Climate Science strikes again
- Washington Post washes its hands with passive voice re climate change confusion
- Faux for Balance: Post’s Opinion Section Strikes Out on Climate Change, again …
- Blogging about WashPost OPED Editing: Inane or Insane?
- Mea culpa: I trusted George Will and Washington Post fact checking