In a January 19 editorial, The Washington Times attacked Al Gore for discussing climate change and the recent flooding in Australia, claiming that Gore is “look[ing] at tragedy and spot[ting] opportunity.”

The Times is seizing on this blog post by Gore, in which he states that “ABC News makes the link between...natural disasters” in Australia and Brazil “and the climate crisis”:

In a report on flooding in Australia and Brazil, ABC News makes the link between these natural disasters and the climate crisis.

[...]

As the earth warms, scientists tell us that we will see more and more extreme weather conditions. Each of these occurrences further underscore why we need to take immediate action to solve the climate crisis.

Gore also included video of ABC's report on climate change and the Australian floods.

But here's the thing. Gore is simply forwarding what some climate scientists have been saying in the aftermath of the Australian floods: that global warming is linked to an increase extreme weather such as the recent flooding. In fact, in the video Gore included in his post, Derek Arndt, chief of NOAA's Climate Monitoring Branch in the National Climate Data Center, said, “We are measuring certain types of extreme events that we would expect to see more often in a warming world, and these are indeed increasing.”

Further, in the ABC report, climate scientist Richard Sommerville stated, “If left unchecked, climate warming will continue so the things that we're having hints of now, foretastes of now, will become stronger.” A separate ABCNews.com report further quoted Sommerville stating: “Because the whole water cycle speeds up in a warming world, there's more water in the atmosphere today than there was a few years ago on average, and you're seeing a lot of that in the heavy rains and floods for example in Australia.”

Moreover, as Reuters reported on January 12, scientists have said that "[c]limate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state." Reuters quoted several climate scientists linking climate change and the Australian floods:

“I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change,” said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon,” he told Reuters.

[...]

Prominent U.S. climate scientist Kevin Trenberth said the floods and the intense La Nina were a combination of factors.

He pointed to high ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia early last year as well as the rapid onset of La Nina after the last El Nino ended in May.

“The rapid onset of La Nina meant the Asian monsoon was enhanced and the over 1 degree Celsius anomalies in sea surface temperatures led to the flooding in India and China in July and Pakistan in August,” he told Reuters in an email.

He said a portion, about 0.5C, of the ocean temperatures around northern Australia, which are more than 1.5C above pre-1970 levels, could be attributed to global warming.

“The extra water vapor fuels the monsoon and thus alters the winds and the monsoon itself and so this likely increases the rainfall further,” said Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

“So it is easy to argue that 1 degree Celsius sea surface temperature anomalies gives 10 to 15 percent increase in rainfall,” he added.

Reuters further noted that "[s]ome scientists said it was still too soon to draw a definite climate change link to the floods," quoting a scientist who said, “We have no strong reason at the moment for saying this La Nina is any stronger than it would be even without humans.” However, this scientist also noted that global warming is having an affect on the climate:

Some scientists said it was still too soon to draw a definite climate change link to the floods.

“It's a natural phenomena. We have no strong reason at the moment for saying this La Nina is any stronger than it would be even without humans,” said Neville Nicholls of Monash University in Melbourne and president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

But he said global atmospheric warming of about 0.75C over the past half century had to be having some impact.

“It has to be affecting the climate, regionally and globally. It has to be affecting things like La Nina. But can you find a credible argument which says it's made it worse? I can't at the moment.”

Not only did the Times editorial board smear Gore as an opportunist trying to capitalize on the deadly flooding, but it also misrepresented his comments, falsely claiming that Gore that “impl[ied] that last week's devastation has been so unprecedented that only mankind could be responsible.”

But, of course, Gore never suggested that the flooding was “unprecedented.” He merely echoed the assertion made by the NOAA's Derek Arndt, stating that "[a]s the earth warms, scientists tell us that we will see more and more extreme weather conditions."

The Washington Times has been one of the leaders of the right-wing media in attacks on global warming science. And once again, the attack badly misses the mark.