For some time, the media has failed to appropriately cover the climate crisis. A new report from Oxford University's Reuters Institution for the Study of Journalism provides us with a snapshot of the problem:
Less than 10 percent of the news articles written about last year's climate summit in Copenhagen dealt primarily with the science of climate change, a study showed on Monday.
Based on analysis of 400 articles written about the December 2009 summit, the authors of the report for Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism called for a rethinking of reporting on future such conferences.Author James Painter concluded that "science was under-reported" as the essential backdrop when about 120 world leaders met in Copenhagen but were unable to agree on a binding treaty to slow climate change.
Our media has a responsibility to educate the public on issues affecting the planet. Covering the climate crisis only as a political issue shields from public view the vital scientific and moral elements of the debate.
This post originally appeared at Al's Journal.
The US Global Change Research Program disagrees with your assessment.
"Northeast annual average temperature has increased by 2°F since 1970, with winter temperatures rising twice this much. Warming has resulted in many other climate-related changes including more frequent very hot days, a longer growing season, an increase in heavy downpours, less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain, reduced snowpack, earlier break-up of winter ice on lakes and rivers, earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier peak river flows, rising sea surface temperatures, and rising sea level."
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/regional-climate-change-impacts/northeast
JEP57: "If it's "global" warming, it has to be taking place where we live too."
Wrong, even though where you live it is anyway. You do understand the concept of averages, don't you?
or is that "an Inconvient fact"?
He would NOT have been on vacation when the CIA briefed him that AlQueda was determined to strike in US. He would have prevented the 9-11 attacks. We would NEVER have wasted life, time or money in Iraq. The Social Security Trust Fund would be in a lock box and sound for 75 more years. And we would be leading the world in green technology and high paying jobs.
GWB is the worst person EVER!
I think it's time for the top 1-2% of income earners in this country to start leading more environmentally conscious lives. After all, they are the ones who have made out like bandits during this crisis, while the middle class and poor struggle to pay their energy bills. They can afford to build homes that are off the grid. They can afford to invest directly in alternative energies, not in some financial scheme related to carbon trades.
Why don't you try to convince your fellow wealthy class members to give up their yachts, their second and third homes, and quit flying around the world? If you members of elite society serve as role models, other Americans might begin to believe in this issue and not see hypocricy staring them in the face.
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010
Interview: Bernard Potter
NZZ am Sonntag: Mr. Edenhofer, everybody concerned with climate protection demands emissions reductions. You now speak of "dangerous emissions reduction." What do you mean?
Ottmar Edenhofer: So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas. And therefore, the emerging economies fear CO2 emission limits.
First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
Whatever journalism involved is at a third grade level.
Real news always gives way to sensationalism and reporting on the latest societal or political fad.
(i) investigate the seminar and ensure that the record is corrected in a
suitably transparent fashion
(ii) investigate how it was that the public came to be misled on the nature of
the seminar
(iii) report on the role of BBC journalists and senior decision-makers in the
seminar series
(iv) report on the role of CMEP and its seminars in formulating BBC policy on
environmental issues
(v) report on the appropriateness of a private organisation and NGOs
formulating BBC policies
(v) consider the impact of the spurious conclusions of the seminar in the
period since it took place.
It is clearly unacceptable for the BBC to use the description of the seminar published
in its 2007 report as an example of the lengths it has gone to in order to ensure that
its reporting of climate change, and the science that underpins it, is impartial and
accurate, and then refuse to reveal who the ‘best scientific experts’ they consulted
were.
Unless this matter is addressed in the present review, there is a grave danger that
information about the seminar will emerge by other means."
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/bbc-science-review-submission-final.pdf
What a surprise.