I just got back from a week in Martha's Vineyard. The air and light on the Vineyard are beautiful and it was a really nice break from the honking and diesel gauntlet of Clinton and Court Streets. But all is not well on the Island. The big front page story of yesterday's Vineyard Gazette told of a huge, unprecedented die-off of about one million shellfish hatchlings in the Vineyard Lagoon. Apparently, for the first time that anyone can remember, the Lagoon is inhospitable to the growth of baby shellfish. One of the hatchery's employees said that because baby shellfish are the sensitive little guys at the bottom of the food chain, they are the "canaries in the coal mine" when it comes to the health of the Island's waters and environment.

With the weather as screwy as it's been, I've been keeping an eye on stories like these. In the last few months I've noticed a widening gap between European and American coverage of environmental issues. A European media source would have made more of an effort to connect the shellfish die-off to Cape Cod's unusual weather, the Island's rapid commercial development, the increase in automobile and boat traffic in and around the Lagoon, and other macro environmental issues. The Vineyard Gazette, like most other U.S. media sources, seems more concerned about reassuring the public that one million dead baby clams is no reason to stop visiting the Island and dining at the local restaurants. Keep in mind too that this is the paper of record of Martha's Vineyard's -- the last bastion of Chardonnay-sipping liberalism in the U.S.A. If we're not openly talking about environmental issues here, where are we talking about them?

Definitely not in the New York Times. During NYC's record-setting wet, gray months of May and June, Times coverage of the weather never went any deeper than the reportage we get from our helmet-haired Stepford local TV weathermen. The Times gave us stories on how the unusual weather is impacting New Yorkers' moods, businesses, and shopping habits. And they wrote an editorial criticizing the Bush Administration for deleting some language about global warming from an EPA report. But they refused to take the obvious next step and connect the two stories. Whenever a reporter delved into the complex (and potentially interesting) question of "why" the weather is acting so strangely, the answer was invariably because of a "low pressure system" or some other technical reason that only really described the symptom in a more abstract way. How hard would it have been? The Times could have gone and asked a conservative government source whether human activities (such as 20,000 Chevy Avalanches idling in traffic on the nation's freeways each day) have something to do with the freaky weather. The source would have said "no." The Times would have discharged its duty to the public. But they didn't bother even to do a bad story. Instead, the issue was confined to the pages of the Metro section, thus ensuring that it would be covered as a cute "weather" story rather than being covered as a national or international story about global climate change.

The discussion in the European media has been way more open and honest. The conservative, scientifically-inclined folks who supply the local forecasting information in England are issuing stories such as the one below. It's time for us to catch up...

+ Independent Digital (UK): "Reaping the whirlwind"

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert
03 July 2003

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather,
the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the
world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed
scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted
record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in
recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month
for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate
change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the
fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth,
but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to
hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the
direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).

The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries
contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America
and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it
immediately.

The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low
temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of
the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming.
Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate
not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific
assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm
due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events
might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples.

In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising
above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average.

In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years,
environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime
temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June
recorded.

In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41
deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399
in June 1992.

In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures
of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India
due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical
Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and
landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and
economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of
20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next
three months.

Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with
average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme
events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts
and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages,
which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past
100 years.

"New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe,
but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.

"According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of
the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has
increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been
around 0.6C.

"New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that
the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been
the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years."

While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the
past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the
whole period.

Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the
second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land
temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record.

It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The
10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have
now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and
2001.

The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now,
the WMO says, it is a reality.

(c) 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Online source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=421166

10:25 PM | Link |