Why will climate denialism, so effective in keeping policy-makers and politicians neutered so far, become increasingly irrelevant? Because of the picture in the post below – and the many others that quickly circulated on social media in the last few days.
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Yes, it’s just weather – albeit very dramatic weather. No, it’s not necessarily an indicator of ‘climate change,’ not like this:
Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right) based on data from three satellites.
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But both stories happened in the same week – one that surprised scientists but occurred in a place very far away, the other literally in people’s face and in a media news capital. And both were consistent with the theory of climate change and the predicted consequences. If anything, it appears as though science has been too conservative in its estimate of the speed and degree of intensity.
As a consequence, the popular media is covering “climate change’ without the denialist being given equal time for the sake of ‘balance.’ Whereas even a few months ago, ‘climate change’ was avoided as a topic even by PBS journalists on stories like the Texas drought, presumably because it would seem to bias their coverage, now the link is unavoidable. A news outlet not discussing climate change in the context of severe droughts, floods, wildfires and derechos would be seen to be deliberately omitting a necessary part of the story.
When a word has to be added to the popular vocabulary – notably derecho 
(below right) – to describe the storms that are knocking out power to hundreds of thousands and killing dozens, then the story itself is reframed. And public awareness and concern about climate change increases commensurately. Nothing like a little disaster to focus attention.
The problem for the denialists, who have been so effective at attacking science, casting doubt and justifying delay, is that they must have an explanation for what is actually occurring in the environment. It’s not enough to say that, well, these are freak events, it’s happened in the past, there’s no link to temperature change, which isn’t actually happening, or happened before, and it’s not the carbon but sunspots, volanoes or radiation, and anyway there’s nothing we can do about it.
Sorry, either you have a theory to explain what’s going on, or why the one that does is wrong, or you don’t have a reason to be quoted repeatedly. A message that says, please ignore that gorilla doesn’t resonate when the gorilla keeps getting bigger.
It’s not that you go away; it’s just that you aren’t relevant. And so there’s no reason to listen to you anymore.
Derechoes are not an indication of climate change, they happen frequently enough (see 5th image here: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2162). The one on June 29 was large, no question, but it would have been possible in the past as well. However, it made such an impact on people because of the huge loss of power during an extreme heat wave, and it hit an area of large population contentration. But if the impact of this derecho causes people to sit up and take notice, then I suppose that is helpful for taking the opportunity to explain climate change. But the direct link between this derecho and climate change is not possible.
On the other hand, Greenland melting is different, especially if it happens with any degree of regularilty as opposed to the natual 150 year cycle. Here is Dr. Masters excellent post on Greenland melting:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2160