Climate change coverage without the climate change.
This is a feature of contemporary news reporting. The latest example is by John Vidal in the Observer 22.05.16, the abridged online article can be found here.
The article by John Vidal describes the current drought crisis that affects much of southern Africa. The article does not attribute any of this crisis to rising global temperatures. El Nino is the villain sentenced for the crime. There are no accomplices.
“Caused by the strongest El Nino weather event since 1982…” (paper article only)
El Nino is a very convenient fall guy for the journalists who do not wich to discuss the more troubling long term environmental crisis of rising global temperature.
However the article also states,
“A second year of deep drought…”
So if El Nino is responsible for the drought, than what happened last year? No explanation for this is given.
When considering the effect of El Nino it is instructive to look at a chart of global temperatures provided by NASA.
It is understood that El Nino does not effect the global temperature evenly however it is also clear that 1982 does not stand out from this dataset. 1998, the last El Nino year shows a clear peak, however with 1998 excepted, the 10 warmest years in the 134-year record all have occurred since 2000.
To not mention this while describing current drought conditions in Africa is an interesting decision.
I will look forward to John Vidal’s article next year when he describes how, with El Nino finished, the crisis is over.