The New York Times (NYT) claims in “Without Climate Change, U.S. Heat Wave Called ‘Virtually Impossible’” that the recent Northeastern U.S. heat wave could not have occurred without human-caused climate change. This is false. The NYT bases its entire story on a model-driven analysis from a group whose sole purpose is to connect weather events to climate change, while ignoring the long observational record showing that severe heat waves have repeatedly struck the United States, including New York, for centuries.
“Heat and humidity as severe, prolonged and far-reaching as this week’s would have been ‘virtually impossible’ in the Northeast and eastern Canada before humans began warming the planet, a team of scientists said on Friday,” writes Raymond Zhong, a reporter for the NYT. “Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal have trapped more of the sun’s heat at Earth’s surface, raising temperatures worldwide for more than a century.
“Summer hot spells are nothing new, but because of the excess heat around the planet caused by global warming, they can produce higher temperatures today than they once did,” Zhong continued.
Unlike a good journalist, Zhong never questioned the premise, never examined the historical record, never interviewed anyone outside the climate attribution community, and never asked whether the group they cite, World Weather Attribution (WWA), has conclusions that might be influenced by the organization’s very reason for existing. Instead, Zhong presented readers with exactly one narrative: climate change is causing the present heat wave.
WWA exists for one purpose, to determine how much climate change has influenced weather events. That is its mission. Asking WWA whether climate change caused a heat wave is like asking the National Football League whether football is important or Greenpeace whether they think oil spills are harmful. What exactly did the NYT expect them to conclude? That climate change had nothing to do with it?
Of course not. This is not journalism, rather it’s a reporter using a narrative autopen.
The article reports that WWA concluded the heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” before industrialization and cites a probability analysis based on wet bulb globe temperature calculations combined with weather observations, forecasts, and climate model simulations. Yet there is one enormous problem with this approach: climate models are not observations.
WWA begins with climate models, creates a hypothetical version of Earth without modern greenhouse gas emissions, and then compares that imaginary world to today’s modeled climate. The result is not a measurement. It is an estimate built upon assumptions about carbon dioxide driving climate changes, already embedded within the models themselves. The NYT never explains this distinction. Instead, it presents speculative model output as though it were an observed fact. Even more troubling is is the fact that the NYT story ignored heat wave history entirely.
America’s climate did not begin in 1970. Long before anyone blamed carbon dioxide for extreme weather, the United States experienced devastating heat waves that rivaled or exceeded many recent temperatures. Climate at a Glance documents that the most severe period for U.S. heat waves remains the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, when NOAA observations show far more frequent extreme heat than today.
The historical record extends even farther back. The catastrophic Eastern U.S. heat wave of 1901 killed an estimated 9,500 people. The historic 1911 heat wave brought temperatures above 100°F across much of New England and still holds Boston’s all-time record of 104°F. The Dust Bowl heat waves of 1934 and 1936 produced temperatures that remain unmatched across large portions of the central United States. The devastating heat wave of 1980 in the United States killed thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage. None of these events receives a single mention in the NYT article.
Instead, readers are asked to believe that today’s weather is fundamentally different from any weather experienced in the past, just because one attribution group says so.
The article also ignores the basic reality that reliable nationwide temperature observations span roughly 150 years, while humans have lived in North America for more than 15,000 years. Claiming that a weather event is “virtually impossible” based on such a tiny slice of climate history requires extraordinary confidence, or hubris. A commonly cited scientific saying “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is often attributed to astronomer Carl Sagan. Yet the NYT provides no extraordinary evidence for the claim that the ongoing heat wave is exceptional or would be “virtually impossible” sans climate change. Indeed, it presents no hard evidence at all, just WWA’s computer model spin. The NYT applies none of the skepticism that journalists normally reserve for extraordinary claims.
The NYT also overlooks another important factor. Much of the observed warming in cities occurs at night, when asphalt, concrete, and buildings slowly release the heat absorbed during the day. This Urban Heat Island effect raises overnight minimum temperatures, precisely when heat-related mortality is greatest. Urbanization can substantially influence long-term temperature records, a known factor ignored by the NYT.
Finally, Zhong quotes a WWA scientist declaring that “the climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.” That line makes for dramatic copy, but it is historically false. The Founding Fathers experienced brutal heat waves. The most famous heat wave during the American Revolution occurred during the Battle of Monmouth in central New Jersey on June 28, 1778. Temperatures soared to nearly 100°F (37.8°C) with high humidity, pushing the heat index well over 110°F. Fighting in heavy woolen uniforms under the blazing summer sun, soldiers on both sides suffered severe dehydration and heatstroke. Almost as many American soldiers died of heat exhaustion as died from battle wounds.
Extreme heat in the United States is not a new phenomenon.
Despite this, modern media treat every string of hot days as evidence of a looming “climate catastrophe” while ignoring centuries of evidence that debunks this claim.
The most disappointing aspect of this story is not WWA’s predictable conclusion. Organizations are free to pursue the missions for which they were created. The failure belongs squarely with the NYT simply parroting, without critical examination, a climate advocacy organization’s unverified claims.
Readers deserve good journalism. What they got was sloppy climate advocacy masquerading as news. In this case, The New York Times erred because WWA’s claims are not news and certainly not “fit to print.”
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
