Climate

Some reservoirs in south at critical levels as water companies call for extended restrictions that would affect golf clubs, private schools and car washes

A severe drought has been declared in six areas of England, with some reservoirs at critically low levels, threatening public supplies.

Parts of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex have moved into severe drought, and urgent measures are being taken to secure public supplies of water after the UK experienced its hottest summer on record.

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As climate breakdown pushes families to starvation, many feel forced to ‘sacrifice’ daughters to save siblings. Photographer Elise Blanchard travelled the country speaking to girls as young as eight, 10 and 14 who have been engaged or married to repay debts or pay for food

‘I’m not happy about this,” says 11-year-old Khatira, who was sold into marriage to repay debts, sitting in her home in Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province in north-west Afghanistan. “She was healthy before her engagement, now she is worried and cries a lot,” says her 40-year-old mother, Noor Bibi.

When her 20-year-old husband-to-be comes to her home, Khatira runs away. Since her engagement, she has stopped going outside because she “is ashamed of having a husband in front of the other girls”, says her mother.

Shepherds watch over their sheep in the hills of Bala-Murghab, Badghis province, north-west Afghanistan. By March, the pasture was already too dry for the season

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Why are we constantly trying to prove human influence in extreme weather events when we already know that fossil fuel-driven climate change has fundamentally altered the climate system?

In a Nature Climate Action comment released two weeks ago, my colleagues and I propose a significant normative shift in climate attribution science—and ultimately, in how we talk about climate change. Rather than repeatedly asking and testing for human influence in climate or weather extremes, scientists should begin by assuming that fossil fuel-driven climate change impacts every event to some extent.

Our climate system—the atmosphere, ocean, and land—has been fundamentally changed due to decades of fossil fuel-driven climate change. For example, due to warmer temperatures, the atmosphere can now hold more water, leading to an intensification of the global water cycle. In addition to an expanding Hadley Circulation, there is evidence of a poleward shift of the westerly jet streams, which changes weather patterns over the US. In the oceans, which have absorbed 92% of the heat added to the climate system from fossil fuel-caused warming, more frequent and intense marine heatwaves are occurring globally.

Given humans’ clear role in fundamentally changing the system, my colleagues and I attempt to shift the norms within attribution science and chart out a path that more directly achieves climate action and climate justice initiatives.

What is climate attribution science?

Climate attribution science is a mature sub-field of climate science that has been tested and perfected over the last two decades. For example, extreme event attribution answers the question in many instances, “how much more intense was this extreme event due to fossil fuel-driven climate change?” Or, “how much more frequent will this extreme event become due to fossil fuel-driven climate change?”

Scientists have now published hundreds of attribution studies, many finding conclusive evidence that extreme heat and rainfall, tropical cyclone rainfall, and weather conditions that produce wildfires in the western U.S. are exacerbated by human-caused climate change.

Yet still, scientists, journalists, and media frequently ask after an extreme event, “did climate change contribute to this?” The answer is yes. According to the latest IPCC report, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land… climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.” The emission of heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere has fundamentally changed how our climate system works. We no longer need to ask, “was this influenced by climate change?” We can instead assume there was some influence, and instead ask, “how? And to what extent?” And the urgent question, “what do we do about it?”

Big Oil learned from Big Tobacco

Why are we in this mess to begin with? It all has to do with “doubt” in the science, manufactured by Big Oil. According to a report released by my colleagues, Big Oil knew that the burning of fossil fuels would lead to climate change as early as the late 1950s, but instead of acting on this knowledge to change their business model to reflect the science, they began sowing doubt in the science in order to continue profiting off of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Scientists have been in this position—where an industry spreads lies to confuse people about settled scientific facts—before. In the mid-20th century, a buildup of evidence linking smoking to lung cancer led tobacco companies to deliberately spread misinformation that cast doubt on the established medical science, allowing them to profit off the sale of their product despite known deadly health impacts.

Today, the fossil fuel industry is using the same methods as Big Tobacco, and today’s situation is actually far worse. Fossil fuel-driven climate change was well-understood in the 1980s, and President George H. W. Bush famously pushed for action on the climate crisis, contributing to the formation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Big Oil responded by deliberately spreading misinformation, including questioning the scientific basis of climate science and citing the economic cost of switching away from fossil fuels without accounting for the costs of climate change itself. This was done through advertorials and the funding and amplifying of junk science, which Exxon and other companies were working to create and spread by the late 1990s.

Why does this matter for attribution science? The fact is that climate scientists are constantly held back by persistent disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry. A substantial amount of resources and capacity have been spent to replicate and communicate the same research and conclusions that have been well understood for decades, when scientists could have instead been innovating climate science more rapidly.

It’s also clear that advancements in attribution science could strengthen climate litigation. In response, conservative groups are continuing to spread the lie that climate science isn’t settled, and legislators are openly questioning the validity of attribution science in proposed legislation that would grant Big Oil legal immunity.

The future of attribution science

With this NPJ Climate Action comment, we argue for moving beyond repeating well-established conclusions of climate change, which is exactly what Big Oil wants us to do. We don’t need to redo the science that a given extreme heatwave is influenced by fossil fuel-driven climate change when it already occurs in a changed system!

The message here is not just for climate scientists, but also journalists, opinion leaders, and the general public. We should begin all analyses of extreme weather events from the established physical reality that all events occur within a fossil fuel-altered climate system. We no longer need to question if each event was influenced by climate change.

This normative shift enables scientists to focus on opportunities for innovation in attribution science that more directly address equitable climate action. For example, more scientists could shift their focus to improving both impact and source attribution science. Impact attribution answers questions like, “how many more deaths or how much more economic damage resulted from this extreme weather event due to fossil fuel-driven climate change?” Source attribution studies quantify oil and gas producers’ individual contributions to climate trends and extreme events. As litigation pursues accountability for fossil fuel companies, source attribution studies can be key in informing these lawsuits.

As the impacts from fossil fuel-driven climate change continue to accelerate, it is up to scientists, communicators, and the public to break through the disinformation that bad actors continue to spread to slow down scientific advancement and climate action. Updating the norms of attribution science will allow for the science to continue to evolve and effectively respond to the climate crisis. Our climate science needs to be able to shed the dead weight of these tired, fossil fuel-interest-serving arguments, and instead to bring all its energy to helping create a lasting society for future generations.

After sick corals were placed in direct contact with healthy ones of the same genetic make-up, they recovered at “incredible” speed, scientists found.

Environmentalists of all political hues must find the language and ideas that turn passion for climate action into impetus

The future of Green politics is under constant discussion after the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, but a much heavier clash – in meaning, symbolism and portent – happened earlier this summer, in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. The council declared a climate emergency in 2021, along with hundreds of others, and while it was under Conservative control. It is now controlled by independents, and a Reform UK councillor, Austen Moore, moved to scrap the declaration.

It was the end of June, and the meeting had to be called off, because of the extreme heat in the King’s Lynn council chamber. A lot of people paused to grimly remark on that irony, but not Moore, who simply rescheduled the motion for the following week, where it was voted down (by 33 to seven). A local scientist and member of Extinction Rebellion liveblogged that debate, adding helpful maps, such as how much of the county was already below the annual flood level – most of it, including King’s Lynn itself. If this all sounds like a cheerful take home, numerous other Reform-led councils have had the same debate and Reform has prevailed. Their arguments can be terrifyingly illiterate. In Kent, councillor Linden Kemkaran asserted that climate change is fine because the world was warmer in Roman times, and as “carbon dioxide … is a trace gas essential for life on Earth”, to try to cut carbon emissions would itself be dangerous.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Government says ambition for 2036 will be good for food and climate resilience, but concerns remain over funding

The government has set an ambition to increase the share of English land farmed organically to 10% by 2036, but concerns remain over how the transition will be funded.

Currently, just 3.4% of England’s agricultural land is farmed organically, one of the smallest shares in Europe. France, for example, farms 10.4% of its land organically, and aims to increase this to 18% by 2027.

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The film has been panned by critics and shunned by audiences, but its message about the climate crisis is one we need to hear.

The emissions might occur elsewhere, but they generate global harm that scientists can now quantify

The Coalition has come up with the perfect solution to deal with the climate pollution from when Australian fossil fuels are burned overseas.

We should either just pretend they don’t exist, or ignore the reason why people are concerned about them, even if those people include a majority of high court judges or the international court of justice.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

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He’s been linked to someone called “The Hawk.” He named his company “This Isn’t a Dentist’s Office.” The feds say he hacked American environmentalists.

Insurers are taking on more risk than they should. If – or when – a major disaster hits, the catastrophe will have far-reaching consequences

I work for a major insurer, assessing the risk posed by natural disasters on properties around the world, from family homes to schools, government offices and multibillion-dollar commercial centres. The world is facing greater risk than ever from extreme weather. We are not prepared – and that inaction could have profound consequences for the global financial system.

In the face of ever more extreme and unpredictable climate risks, I am coming under pressure to cut my forecasts for the losses that disasters will cause in order to make insurance more affordable – and get my employer more business. In some instances, the questioning of our numbers and models is justified. But too often, it is not being done to produce more accurate models, but to artificially lower prices. If this is happening at my firm, which is struggling to compete with rivals’ prices, it’s happening elsewhere.

The writer is a modeller working in the insurance industry. A version of this piece originally appeared with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as part of their Secret Source series, a regular column featuring industry whistleblowers

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