When journalists bypass disaster science

By Ilan Kelman

What happens when journalists bypass disaster science? This problem is prevalent in trying to link disasters to human-caused climate change.

On 13 September 2022, the UK's Science Media Centre disseminated the following query about Pakistan's floods from a journalist at the UK's The Guardian:

"I was interested in getting quotes from, or speaking to, climate scientists who could:

a] put this in some sort of perspective. ie how does this rank in terms of its impact with other climate disasters? Is this the first time a major country has been devastated to such an extent by an event so clearly and widely attributed to the climate crisis?

b] explain exactly what happened and why Pakistan is so vulnerable [my understanding is it was freakish monsoon combined with fast melting glaciers] but it would be good to unpick that a bit with an expert?

c] how likely is this to happen again in Pakistan. which other countries and or regions are particularly vulnerable?"

The news story is the disaster, yet the request is for "climate scientists" rather than for "scientists" to include "climate scientists", "weather scientists", "flood scientists", "vulnerability scientists", and "disaster scientists" among others. Additionally, the query's basis is situated in terms of "climate disasters". These two framings presuppose that climate (or climate change?) must be highlighted for Pakistan's floods. They conflate climate, climate change, crisis, and disaster as if they are inevitably the same.

The request further states that the journalist's interest is about "an event so clearly and widely attributed to the climate crisis". Consequently, the only acceptable scientific responses must link the floods or the disaster to the phrase "climate crisis". It presumes that no discussion is feasible on climate (or climate change?) as a "crisis" while implying that science would be unwelcome if it cannot connect climate (or climate change?) to Pakistan's disaster.

Any scientist trained in the basics of disaster research knows that disasters happen due to a combination of hazards, some of which are weather-related, and vulnerabilities. With some exceptions, disaster causes are not the hazards, but the vulnerabilities. For climate change influencing disasters, the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessment agrees with this baseline.

Floods are rarely one of the exceptions. From the beginning of contemporary disaster science, floods demonstrated and proved that vulnerability, not the water, creates the disaster. This point is emphasised by precipitation and snow/ice melt being disconnected from flooding through land use changes and waterway engineering including human constructions such as dams and levees.

Using these scientific basics, I replied to the journalist with disaster science:

"Pakistan's flood disaster was caused by decades of creating vulnerability through poor governance, inequity, marginalisation, inadequate warning, resource misallocation, and land use choices. In fact, the most lethal freshwater flood disasters in Pakistan since its independence (not including Bangladesh) were in 1965 and 1950--and so Pakistan's population has been increasing at the same time that recorded flood deaths have been decreasing. Yet vulnerability remains high by settling people in floodplains without adequate resources or support to assist them in dealing with flood risk.

"Consequently, attributing this disaster to climate change is not supported by the decades of science on disaster research, including extensive research on how and why vulnerability has arisen and accrued in Pakistan. This is a disaster of poor governance, poverty, and inequity."

The subsequent The Guardian article used the word "climate" over 15 times and "vulnerable" or variations once. The reason for the disaster is targeted at weather, namely "a series of deep monsoon depression systems swept across the country". Justice/injustice appears six times, five in relation to climate. Gender receives a single remark, representing "pregnant women" as hapless victims, bypassing gender and disaster science. Inequality/inequity appears once.

Without redressing baseline causes of vulnerability--including all injustice, all inequality, and all inequity--Pakistan's flood disaster would have happened no matter how human-caused climate change is influencing the weather. This statement is also shown by Pakistan's long history of disasters involving river flooding, many of which were worse than 2022's by many metrics.

Rather than detailing societal difficulties, phrases in The Guardian's article include "climate breakdown", "climate emergency", and "climate crisis". These terms display significant scientific inaccuracies and low usefulness for evidence-based action.

The Guardian article's unscientific bias is further evident in a paragraph referring to "an initial rapid attribution study of the disaster" (note the final word "disaster" in that quotation). The Guardian article's paragraph discusses weather, floods, and climate change without acknowledging the attribution study's unambiguous statement about "underlying vulnerabilities". That is, the disaster aspect is absent from The Guardian's attribution summary.

I tweeted and emailed the journalist, including disaster science details via a piece on how vulnerability in Pakistan created the disaster. No response. Prior to publishing this blog, I emailed it to the journalist inviting a response to be published alongside this blog. I enquired if the journalist would participate in an open seminar, online or in person, to discuss this blog's content. No response. The invitations remain open for the journalist to add a response here or to discuss the science and reporting in any preferred format or venue. Whenever I make scientific mistakes, please inform me, so that I could improve.

Do journalists have an obligation to report the science on a news story? Do scientists have an obligation to push science knowing that journalists' have their own mandates? What else could and should scientists and journalists do to ensure that journalists accept and accurately report disaster science?

Especially when The Guardian, at the time of writing, bypasses decades of science and current science communication to continue using the phrase "natural disasters". When journalists bypass disaster science, we all lose because the disaster message becomes hazard rather than vulnerability.