The climate police have found another thing to blame on climate change.
On Sunday, at least 36 people were injured when a Hawaiian Airlines flight suffered what the pilot referred to as “severe turbulence” during a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu. At least one mainstream media outlet — the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) — was quick to echo a claim that more such pockets of turbulence could be expected in the future due to climate change.
The highly speculative claim appears to have originated with a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants union.
“Severe weather increases chances of turbulence, and due to climate change, these kinds of incidents will only continue to grow,” the union’s spokesperson, Taylor Garland, told CBS News.
No need to worry, though.
“The summer months are normally very weather prone, with thunderstorms, and so aviation is affected by weather,” Garland said. “So while it’s typical, most turbulence is not something to be concerned about.”
Thirty-six people — most of whom were not wearing seat belts — were said to have been injured. Twenty were taken to emergency rooms, with issues including one serious head injury, lacerations, bruising, and loss of consciousness in some cases. Three flight attendants were among the injured.
The airplane showed signs of damage, with cracks and holes in the ceiling of the passenger area presumably caused when startled passengers hit it after being thrown from their seats.
According to Jon Snook, Hawaiian Airlines’ executive vice president and chief operating officer, the “fasten seat belt” sign was on at the time of the incident.
The incident occurred just before the airplane, an Airbus A330, began its descent for landing. The plane was reportedly full, with 278 passengers and ten crew members.
Possibly so that CBS wasn’t all alone in its absurd reporting, Ben Adler of Yahoo News also reported that climate change was possibly to blame for the incident and could cause more troubles in the future. And like CBS, Yahoo News also quoted Taylor Garland.
But to give Yahoo News some credit, they also sought an authoritative source regarding the possibility that climate change may have caused the problem. They cited a National Transportation Safety Board study done between 2008 and 2018 that claimed clear-air turbulence will likely increase in the future — most notably between 2050 and 2080.
“We ran some computer simulations and found that severe turbulence could double or triple in the coming decades,” Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England, said at the time.
“Typically, on a transatlantic flight, you might expect 10 minutes of turbulence,” he said. “I think that in a few decades, this may increase to 20 minutes or to half an hour. The seatbelt sign will be switched on a lot more, unfortunately for passengers.”
According to Garland, passengers need to stay alert for more incidents in the future.
“We would recommend listening to flight attendants and pilots,” the union spokesperson said. “That seatbelt sign comes on for a reason. You should not be up or going to the bathroom. That sign is on for your safety, but some passengers may think ‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ but with turbulence, you can injure yourself and other people around you.”
Garland didn’t add that the entire planet must immediately get off of fossil fuels to help stem the tide of future severe turbulence incidents.
CBS has endured some mocking for their pronouncement. “I don’t think the spokesperson for the Flight Attendants Association Union should be the climate change czar,” said Dr. Nicole Saphier, a Fox News medical contributor.
CBS and Yahoo News saw an atmospheric event and quickly went into blame-climate-change mode. Everything from acne to shark attacks has been blamed on climate change — why not severe airplane turbulence?
So a barren, uninhabitable world is, apparently, not the only possible result of man-made climate change — it seems that now our vacations and business trips are in jeopardy due to our short-sighted use of fossil fuels.
Forget that those same fossil fuels allow giant jets like the Airbus A330 to fly in the first place — and that a trip from Phoenix to Hawaii emits more CO2 in one flight than most of us will emit in a year. It’s us — not the airplanes — that are the problem.
And outlets like CBS never let us forget that — even if it’s not true.
