ENVIRONMENT

NYT Leaves Readers High and Dry on Causes of Mississippi Drought

January 19, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Source: FAIR

Above: The Mississippi near Thebes, Ill. (Credit: Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times)

By Jim Naureckas:

Another example of a major news outlet reporting the effects of climate change without mentioning climate change–this time the New York Times (1/18/13):

For months along the Mississippi River here, the withering drought has caused record-breaking low water levels that have threatened to shut down traffic on the world's largest navigable inland waterway….The fact that the river has remained open for business along the critical "Middle Miss"–the 200 miles between the Mississippi’s last dam-and-locks structure, above St. Louis, down to Cairo, Ill., where the plentiful Ohio River flows in–stems from a remarkable feat of engineering that involved months of nonstop dredging, blasting and scraping away of rock obstructions along the riverbed, effectively lowering the bottom of the channel by two feet….

The effort has allowed the corps to maintain the river's 300-foot-wide navigation channel at a depth of at least nine feet. While that is no deeper than many swimming pools, it is just enough to keep tow boats and their barges afloat, though loaded more lightly than the shippers wish.

But nowhere in this discussion of the reaction to what an accompanying graphic calls the "historic drought in 2012" is there any mention of what is changing our history: the climate change caused by global warming brought on by human alteration of Earth's atmosphere.

By contrast, here's how an Australian paper, the Sydney Morning Herald (12/18/12), reported the same story, under the headline "Climate Change Adds to Mississippi's Toll":

For the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose lands straddle the North and South Dakota border, river water means drinking supplies. For Illinois farmers, it's irrigation for their crops.

Rivers also power hydro-electric plants, provide recreation for boaters and give coal companies inexpensive access to export markets with barges to New Orleans.

Balancing these competing demands on the nation's water resources has never been easy. Global warming, linked to near-record low water levels on the Mississippi River this year as well as last year's severe floods along the Missouri River, is making the task even harder….

The government will increasingly need to referee such disputes as average temperatures in much of the U.S. may increase by five degrees Fahrenheit by the 2080s, straining river systems, [U.S. Water Alliance president Ben] Grumbles said. Earlier thaws and smaller snowpacks will decrease flows from mountains. Increased evaporation rates will dry out some areas and create excess rainfall in others, resulting in more volatile water levels and more frequent floods and droughts, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Carbon-dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution have led to a warming of the Earth's temperature, which threatens to cause extreme weather, drought and coastal flooding, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

The Times piece does close on an attempt at a longer view–one that's all too short-sighted. Reporter John Schwartz quotes Maj. Gen. John W. Peabody of the Army Corps of Engineers:

While the immediate crisis appears to have passed, General Peabody of the corps warned that cycles of drought could last for years, as the Dust Bowl showed, and that there are no guarantees when it comes to rivers. "We'll continue to respond to what nature throws at us," he said. But, he added, "There's nothing that man can do that nature can't overcome."

The reality is that changes underway in the Earth's climate could last for centuries, not years–and those changes are being thrown at us by ourselves, not by nature. Unfortunately, there are things humans can do that nature can't overcome–at least on a human timescale.

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Tom the Dancing Bug (7/25/12) offered a vision of media yet to come that is all to similar to the way present-day media cover current climate-related crises:

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