Dry, Indeed…

What would “Climate Change” look like, if it were happening…? It’s a question on the minds of many, certainly something I’ve thought about as I travel around Iowa. To my mind, the State looks dry, indeed. It’s a problem throughout the Midwest, actually, and persistent—on and off, here and there, around Iowa for a couple years.

Wetlands with dry, cracked mud are one of many signs that our climate is abnormally dry. In Spring and early summer this year, I found streams and marshes and ponds all with low water, or no water, where normally there’s plenty of water present. Actually, this is the second year of dry conditions: last year my students made fun of me as I exclaimed “Wow, this spot is REALLY dry…” over and over, one site we visited after another.

“But Paul,” you say. “Is this drought caused by Climate Change?” Sorry, I can’t answer that with certainty. It’s frustrating, but it’s the truth of how science works. Scientists must hypothesize, gather and evaluate evidence, and work in probabilities. It’s seldom an obvious cause-and-effect for a particular meteorological event. We usually can’t say “THAT ONE is caused by Climate Change.”

But while I can’t say for certain that THIS drought is the result of climate change, I’m quite certain that droughts ARE caused by Climate Change. It’s exactly the sort of effect associated with an ongoing, overall, global phenomenon. As the Drought Center report linked above indicates, the effects are wide-reaching: crop yields reduced, ecology impacted, surface water and navigation, and on and on.

Nevertheless, climate-change deniers would latch onto my honest-but-hesitant statement above to suggest “climate change isn’t the issue, you yourself admit you can’t prove it.” It’s tiresome, because it’s so very dishonest. It’s also a very old, and sadly all-too-effective, form of misdirection and obfuscation. It’s how you pretend to engage with a topic related to science, without truly, honestly, coming to terms with it.

In class, I describe this strategy used effectively for years by the tobacco industry. For decades, tobacco companies cast doubt, misdirected attention, put up barriers to action, and told bald-faced lies. Unsurprisingly, the tobacco companies didn’t want to be regulated, and resisted any public, official condemnation of their product (such as official statements suggesting it was harmful to health). But instead of an honest “people have used tobacco for millenia, and they like it, so leave us alone” approach, they pretended to “research” its health effects, while in fact making it more difficult to document the real consequences to health.

Those who oppose action to prevent climate change have adopted many of the deceitful practices used by Big Tobacco. Manufacturing doubt is an effective strategy, but…its days are numbered. There’s way too much evidence at this point to doubt that the climate is changing, and that humans are a major driver of this crisis. To save our wetlands, and to save ourselves, we need to come to terms with the Climate Emergency. Case closed.