Photo by Giro555 on Flickr. Click for link.The number of articles discussing possible links between Haiyan and global warming is something to behold given that, at least as far as I can see, most are correctly concluding that this particular beast of a storm cannot be attributed in this way.
- Time Magazine has Did Climate Change Cause Supertyphoon Haiyan?
- Scientific American has Did Climate Change Cause Typhoon Haiyan? and Did Climate Change Intensify Supertyphoon Haiyan?
- Nature News has Did climate change cause Typhoon Haiyan?
- The BBC's Newsnight show was pretty good on the subject too, making a fairly clear statement on attribution (video here if you are in the UK), followed up with someone from the Met Office making the same statement
Not everyone is taking the scientific high road though
- the Guardian - of course - takes the unscientific approach in their Q&A on the storm
- and the Nation takes a similar line in Yes, Typhoon Haiyan Was Caused by Climate Change
However, surprisingly for one not normally given to questioning the green orthodoxy, although quite correctly, the AGU's Dan Satterfield describes such conclusions as 'ridiculous'.
Almost everyone has raised the predictions of the models as well, and to the best of my knowledge not one single solitary report has raised the questions of
- whether the models are correct
- the extraordinarily low levels of hurricane activity in recent years.
This is very poor. We are left with statements along the lines of "most scientists believe", and a public that is being left in the dark.
Of course the greens are beavering away furiously, trying to make some mileage out of the disaster regardless of the science. Just this morning we had Jon Snow of Channel Four News tweeting:
Shocked by the level of climate change denial exhibited on Twitter. The Philippines tragedy demands more intelligence..
while Jeffrey Sachs managed to combine unscientific, unhinged, and full-on conspiracy theorising in his 140 characters:
Climate liars like Rupert Murdoch & Koch Brothers have more & more blood on their hands as climate disasters claim lives across world.
On the Newsnight piece linked above, we had Justin Forsyth from Save the Children saying that "we are already seeing intense weather events" and saying that for his organisation, it "clearly is" to do with climate change. There's probably an interesting philosophical debate to be had about the morality of this kind of behaviour from aid agencies. In unrelated news, Mr Forsyth turns out to have been a climate campaigner in the Blair and Brown governments.
In the meantime, here's link to a different aid agency working in the Philippines who need donations now.