A scientist does a study of how Arctic seabirds die. It's not a bad idea: die they do, but not from the usual diseases and predators that kill birds in more temperate zones. So what does kill them?
He pores over thousands of records from birdwatchers in the Arctic and concludes that weather-related events kill a lot of them. Fulmars run into cliffs in fog, Murres get buried in landslides when cliffs collapse. Birds get swept away in storms. And so on.
Now the scientist has two options. He can say in a paper that a lot of Arctic birds die due to `factors related to weather' and bask in perpetual obscurity. Or he can slip in, just before the word `weather', the phrase `climate and'.
Kazam!
He could even add a little speculation that
`If temperatures warm and intense storms in the Arctic increase, along with otherclimate factors, "we might see mortality in these birds from these things increase from what they are now."
Note:if, and, might. Note too:
Mallory adds that he and his team are not sounding an alarm bell that climate change is going to kill off all of the seabirds.
Yet suddenly he's on the front page of the Huffington Post! `Strange, Random, Arctic Bird Deaths Caused by Climate Change' shouts the headline. No ifs and mights there. No `not sounding an alarm bell'.
It's not his fault, of course. None the less, now do you understand why scientists are tempted to link their work to climate change whenever possible? Why the incentives -- financial and reputational -- to sound alarm bells are so massive?
Here's a list of just some of the things that have been `linked to climate change'.
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