Dose of reality on climate reporting

Despite the ‘climate change will destroy mankind’ crowds taking exception to singularized weather events not being indicative of climate trends, this group sure has had reporters doing this very thing this winter.

Funny how there weren’t such stories in 2019 when the peak ice cover for the season exceeded more than 80%, far above the 53% long term average. Never mind that ice cover reached more than 21% coverage this season, making it not even one of the five lowest years in the 50 years of data that are available. Let’s also ignore that ice coverage rebounded to nearly 20% within a few days of the Macomb Daily carrying this article (Feb. 19, “Great Lakes ice cover plummets to record mid-February low”). This nonsense about taking short term weather events that only seem to support a certain view of climate change is the antithesis of responsible journalism.

What might responsible journalism on the topic look like? Perhaps looking at the five year average of data for years ending in 2022, 2012 and 2002 and 1992 to see what the trend might be. It’s not hard, the data is readily available at glerl.noaa. gov/data/ice/#historical, but it might not paint the stark picture of the climate the media seems to want to push. Incidentally, such an analysis would look like this (five year averages ending in 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022 (latest year full season data is available): 1992: 52.6%; 2002: 26.4%; 2012: 42.4%; 2022: 55%.

Looking at this, one could reasonable conclude the ice picture isn’t so dire on the Great Lakes after all. With the exception of some years in the late 1990s when ice was severely impacted by an extended ElNino event, it seems in recent years we are averaging more than the long term 53% of coverage. I purposely chose this data set to eliminate years like 2014 and 2015 which saw 91% and 88% coverage, respectively. 2014 also saw ice within the basin into June, a record.

Without a doubt, the climate is changing. It’s responsible to understand what these effects are and may be so that mitigations can be planned. That understanding, however, cannot come from irresponsible reporting by the media and cherry picking short term weather impacts to try to carry a narrative that the sky is falling.

Greg Donahoe Warren