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Climate Attribution Studies

Linking specific disasters to climate change.

It wasn’t that long ago that the common remark would be “no individual disaster can be specifically linked to climate change.” Well, that might not be so true anymore.

Check out World Weather Attribution. The whole issue of attribution studies came to my attention when I was trying to get a University of Washington professor to come on my Disaster Zonepodcast to talk about heat-related events and their impacts on the human body. In my correspondence with her, I think she had the opinion I am a climate change denier.

Anyway — that didn’t turn out so well! Then I listened to this The Dailypodcast: “A ‘Code Red for Humanity.’” In it, the topic of attribution studies was brought up.

All of the above made me check out the term and my thinking has “moved on down the street” to the point where individual disasters can have direct attribution to climate change.

The only caution I would say is to remember that we are dealing with science and scientific knowledge advances. Sometimes, because of that progress, “the truth changes.” Call it the scientific process!
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.