The New York Times Conflates Weather with Climate Change (Again)
By
Linnea Lueken
February 5, 2024
A recent article in the New York Times (NYT) claims that coastal cities are “bracing” for climate change, which they claim is making events like heavy rainfall and atmospheric rivers more common and severe. This is false. It is wise for coastal cities to improve their resilience in response to flooding and storms which have occurred throughout history. However, real-world data show climate change has not made atmospheric river events and other instances of extreme rainfall worse.
The article, titled “Coastal Cities Brace for Climate Change,” comes with the ominous subtitle “[t]his week’s atmospheric rivers may only be the beginning.” Writer Manuela Andreoni writes that flooding from recent storms has “battered cities in the South and East Coast,” and “Overlapping atmospheric rivers over the West Coast have brought heavy rains that are likely to come back in the next few days.”
Andreoni goes on to assert that climate change makes these kinds of events more likely, because warmer air “holds more moisture, which means storms in many parts of the world are getting wetter and more intense[.]”
https://climaterealism.com/2024/02/the-new-york-times-conflates-weather-with-climate-change-again/
