PBS Newshour did another great job with this interview with two climate scientists regarding the recent historic floods in Louisiana. After the set up (about 3:00 minutes in), Hari Sreenivasan tosses the question of whether or not this 1,000 year event can be blamed on climate change. It was very refreshing to see scientists talk about it instead of pundits. Neither one of these scientists are comfortable stating that climate change is the smoking gun here. They talk about evidence, they talk about chances and statistics, they make predictions about what changes in the climate might produce in regions like this, etc.
We could all stand to take some advice from the professionalism and restraint demonstrated in this clip. They weren’t trying to push an agenda or force the answer on the audience… they were being as honest as they could with some pretty sensational anecdotal evidence. In fact, I would imagine some people might even leave this clip frustrated that the scientists weren’t more militaristic in pointing the finger solely at climate change.
Unfortunately, reasonable conversations like this don’t grab headlines, so be thankful we get them when we do.
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