New York Times Op-Ed ‘The Dustbowl Returns’ Never Mentions Climate Change - by Joe Romm

It stands in sharp contrast to the coverage of the connection between climate change and extreme weather other leading news outlets and science journals.  Consider the BBC’s Sunday article on the epic deluges hitting the UK, “Met Office: Evidence ‘suggests climate change link to storms’.” Consider the journal Nature, which back in 2011 asked me to write an article on the link between climate change and “Dust-bowlification” (the photo is by Dorothea Lange).

As James Hansen told me two weeks ago, “Increasingly intense droughts in California, all of the Southwest, and even into the Midwest have everything to do with human-made climate change.”

Climate change’s impact on Western drought has three components:

1. Higher temperatures, which worsen any drought
2. Declining snowpack, which reduces the summer dry season’s key reservoir
3. Reduced precipitation in the region

The first two are clearcut scientifically and the third is a long-standing prediction of climate scientists that appears to be coming true. Bizarrely, the NYT piece doesn’t ignore the fact that the temperatures have been incredibly warm, it just ignores any possible role of global warming in the “anomalous weather”.

New York Times Op-Ed ‘The Dustbowl Returns’ Never Mentions Climate Change - by Joe Romm