Rajendra K. Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, speaks at a press conference in Geneva in March. (AP Photo/Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi/FILE)
UN climate chief says media not getting it
By Eoin O'Carroll | 10.24.08
Speaking at a gathering of US environmental journalists last week, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the news media has not done enough to communicate the severity of global warming.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, who last year shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore, told those gathered at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ (SEJ) annual meeting in Roanoke, Va., last Friday that many news outlets have been missing the story since February 2007, when the IPCC released its landmark report that concluded that global warming is very likely caused by human activity. The Worldwatch Institute’s Ben Block reports:
“In the last year and a half, there has been a massive explosion of awareness; however, the media has not reported enough about the emergency and depth of action,” said Pachauri, who has led the United Nations panel since 2002.
The fact that only half of Americans polled consider human activity to be the main cause of climate change is often blamed on media coverage. But news reports of climate change have steadily increased in recent years, especially since government reports, a major Supreme Court hearing, and the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” brought attention to the climate crisis in 2006.
Pachauri suggested that major news agencies now rely too much on high-level science reports or large climate-related events for their stories, rather than examples of climate change’s ongoing effects. “We need to go beyond the cyclical coverage of climate change and emphasize the day-to-day relevance,” he said.
Worldwatch’s Mr. Block quotes outgoing SEJ President and Baltimore Sun reporter Timothy Wheeler, who says that news stories often reflect public opinion polls. For most US voters, climate change is not a top policy concern. “When the economy is the way it is, a war is going on, these are the things that grab the headlines and network news,” Wheeler is quoted as saying.
But leaving it at that would ignore the press’s role in shaping public opinion. The news isn’t a one-way street: Most people’s policy concerns are greatly informed by what they watch, hear, and read in the mass media. A newspaper that plays down climate change will end up with a readership that plays it down, too.
Mr. Pachauri’s criticism – that coverage of climate change needs to be made more relevant to readers – has been making the rounds in media circles lately.
It wasn’t always this way: In the past, the biggest criticism of climate change coverage was that it gave too much credence to those who deny the scientific basis of global warming. In 2004, mass media scholars Jules and Maxwell Boykoff examined climate change coverage in the New York Times , the Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal over a 14-year period. Their study, which they summarized here on a website for the media watchdog FAIR, concluded that attempts to create “balance” between those who affirm and deny human-caused climate change promoted the deniers’ point of view far beyond what was warranted by their representation in the sciences and by the merits of their arguments.
But more recently, the mainstream press has become more comfortable with discounting the small percentage of scientists who continue to deny global warming. As Cristine Russell, a science reporter for the Washington Post, wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review earlier this year, environmental coverage has largely accepted the thesis of human-caused climate change:
The era of “equal time” for skeptics who argue that global warming is just a result of natural variation and not human intervention seems to be largely over – except on talk radio, cable, and local television…. As the climate issue moves further into public policy, journalists will face new challenges in sorting out the political and economic interests of experts with a dizzying array of opinions about the costs and benefits of combating global warming. The he-said, she-said reporting just won’t do. The public needs a guide to the policy, not just the politics.
One way to do that has been to make climate coverage more local. Last week, Ms. Russell wrote in the CJR about efforts to bring this global issue into readers’ backyards, as with stories about how it will affect local water supplies, real estate prices, and energy bills.
Two examples that stand out for me are Boston Globe reporter Beth Daly’s series on how climate change is affecting New England and Sacramento Bee reporter Tom Knudson’s ongoing work on warming in the Sierra Mountains.
But as long as the overall proportion of stories about climate change remain low, localism alone probably won’t be enough to convey the severity of the problem. It’s hard to fault news outlets for prioritizing the financial crisis, war, and national security over climate change, but what about other stories? As Public Radio International chief Alisa Miller pointed out in her talk at the March 2008 TED conference, in February 2007 US news coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith exceeded coverage of the IPCC report by a factor of 10 to 1, a fact that leaves me wondering exactly whose priorities are being reflected.
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2. Eve Stevens | 10.24.08
Rajendra, didn’t you have people freeze to death in your country last year?
3. R James | 10.24.08
What newspapers does this guy read? I bet he read how last year Arctic ice reached the lowest level in recorded history (only 35 years). I wonder if he read that in September 2008 Antarctic ice reached the highest level in the same period. I bet he hasn’t read that Arctic ice as of today is within one standard deviation of the 30 year average ie back to normal. Earth has stubbormly refused to take any notice of his predictions for the past 10 years. The media is way biassed in his favour. Yet, he’s struggling to retain and credibility.
4. Mike Higgins | 10.24.08
For honest seekers of truth, hereʻs evidence to support Eveʻs observations:
5. Brad Arnold | 10.25.08
Having experimented extensively informing people about climate change, I found that it is impossible to warn most people and have them take it seriously. The reason is that humans generally interact with the environment using the simulus/response reaction. In other words, if a certain behavior is punished, it tends to be extinguished, whereas if a behavior is rewarded, then it is encouraged. This human psychology called behaviorism has the disadvantage of failing to immediately extinguish behavior that is rewarded in the short term (i.e. burning fossil fuel for energy), but punished in the long term (i.e. global warming). Compounding the problem is the psychological response of denial, where the punishment is denied (dispite overwhelming evidence) because the behavior rewarded is addicting (i.e. cheap and plentiful energy).
My conclusion is that no amount of media “education” will change people’s addition to burning fossil fuel for energy, until the behavior is clearly and repeatedly punished by global warming. On the other hand, if another another form of energy production was to be cheaper and more convenient (and coincidentally clean), then mankind would rapidly switch to the new technology.
I would like to announce the arrival of a clean, cheap, abundant, and portable form of energy production that will make burning fossil fuel obsolete. Wind a solenoidal coil around a magnet, and apply electricity. The magnetic field is amplified, and the magnetic gradient can be exploited to yield more electricity than was used powering the solenoidal coil. A private California company called Magnetic Power Inc ( http://www.magneticpowerinc.com ) exceeded breakeven (i.e. produced more electricity than it used) with a prototype in late 2004. They plan to market their revolutionary solid state power generator starting next year. By the way, I am NOT associated with MPI.
6. Lynn Vincentnathan | 10.25.08
For those who don’t believe in global warming, I would suggest going to RealClimate.org and finding out about it. It’s run by working climate scientists, and if you can’t understand what they write, they have some links in the right column to some materials written for layreaders.
BTW, I agree the media has been atrocious re global warming coverage over the past 18 years — the silent treatment or pro-con format, esp up until Katrina. No wonder people don’t believe it’s real. The Christian Science Monitor has been better than others :)
7. Eoin | 10.25.08
Brad, I tend to be inclined toward your belief that the mass media probably won’t change the minds of most die-hard global warming skeptics. RealClimate is a great site, but I have trouble imagining climate deniers reading several posts there and then having the scales fall from their eyes. I think you’re right that most people don’t come to accept uncomfortable facts when they see the light, but when they feel the heat.
But come on, a device that produces more energy than is uses? Yes, I understand the Casimir effect (well, sort of), but I’ll need a lot more evidence before I will accept that you can heat your home with virtual particles.
8. Arielle Ocel | 10.25.08
As one humble member of the billions of flourishing humans on planet Earth, I think that climate change is the single most important issue of our time - and the single largest opportunity. If we, as a nation, do not choose to do anything about it (reduce our fossil fuel use and encourage renewable energy development,) we will be sentencing our entire globe to the results of our own inactions. Because of the global interconnectedness of our world, our inaction is a moral failure.
Whether you “believe” or not that climate change is occuring and a result of humanity’s use of fossil fuels, I beg you to read books on the topic. I’ve read at least 10, on both sides of the issue, including “The Hot Topic”, “Rough Guide to Climate Change”, “Meltdown”, “Frozen Earth” (about past ice ages), “Earth, The Sequel”.
I do not think that we can control the climate of the Earth, but in our own interests we must try to understand the complex workings of Earth’s climate and not cause harm.
9. Mike Higgins | 10.25.08
Scientist: Climate Fear Promoters ‘Woefully Misinformed’
Walter Starck is one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs. He grew up in the Florida Keys and received a PhD in marine science from the University of Miami in 1964.
He says, “Those who claim a high degree of scientific certainty regarding global warming can only be woefully uninformed, overly impressed with themselves or less than honest.”
“There are serious doubts and uncertainties about every aspect. The fundamental radiative physics involved in the complex and variable mix of gases and conditions that comprise the global atmosphere is far from clear. The distribution of heat through the myriad pathways of atmospheric and oceanic circulation is only poorly understood. The innumerable interactions and feedbacks involved in this immensely complex system have only barely begun to be recognised, much less understood well enough to be accurately modeled.”
“In contrast to the virtual world of computer simulations, real world evidence presents a very different picture.”
To list but a few key facts: see http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2008sep27_g.html .
10. Ted Clayton | 10.25.08
The basic premise described here by author Eoin O’Carroll, that journalists and media-managers should be cajoled into doing their journalism & reporting in a basically different way than they are inclined by nature & their professional ethics, flies against the perennial effort & watchfulness both the press-advocacy and the public exert in hopes to reduce the amount of ‘influence’ brought to bear upon journalism to ‘tune’ its message for the prefered puposes and ‘outcome’ of selected points of view.
I think there is a clear falacy before us, and I think everyone here knows better. The best-quality journalism we can have, comes from the most-independent media-base that is attainable. Encouraging international bodies etc to bring pressure upon journalism to ‘adjust’ the way a particular story is ‘handled’ will promote a predicable outcome.
That outcome is alluded to within this article: the public largely ignores large-scale media on the topic of climate, and listens instead to local outlets and the deprecated talk-radio. The implication is clear: the larger-scale media has already lost credibility with much of the public, who perceive them to be excessively accomodating of assorted forms of external influence on this subject.
Twisting journalisms’ arm to filter out non-conformist scientists, etc, will in all likelihood actually reduce the capacity of the mass-media to effectively reach the public with the desired version of the message.
11. bob bretell | 10.27.08
Lets face it- half the population of this country are either idiots or in denial. The science is overwhelming, all you have to do is pay attention. Yet half of the good citizens of the United States still choose to hold on to their archaic belief systems. Unfortunately, we are all in this together, humans and the rest of the species, and we all suffer. New technology may buy us some time
but it will not undue the mess we have got ourselves in. The media can play an important role as well. But until there is a fundamental shift in our awareness and priorities I see things only getting worse . The question is how long it will take for half of us to wake up - … and have a nice day !
12. Jan van Beilen | 10.27.08
The media are responsible for the impression that there is a great deal of doubt about climate change, its causes and its consequences. This a completely wrong impression: by the year certainty increases, current effects are more severe, and predictions of two years ago turn out to be to conservative and optimistic.
A freak winter or a cold March somewhere doesn’t change the general trend. Glaciers in the Alps are melting ever faster, this autumn the Arctic is 5C warmer than average, and the volume of Arctic sea-ice in 2008 is as low as in 2007. If you add it all up, the world is heating up, not evenly and not gradually, but in leaps and bounds, in the Arctic much stronger than in other places, but it’s heating up.
If you doubt climate change, please check the original scientific papers. Scientists like me are dismayed and extremely worried. This is not about politics or influence or funding, this is about our own lives and the next generations. We’re making an awful mess of our world.
13. Steven Crow | 10.27.08
The real truth of the matter is NASA discovered a large planet that orbits our sun in an eliptical pattern in the early 80’s passing near the earth every 3600 years and it has been covered up for fear of mass panic. It’s not just causing climate change. It’s effecting sun solar flare activity, our earth’s magnetic field, and many unusual phenomenon. Don’t believe me-take the time to scratch beneath the surface and let your own intuition guide you. Start with the news articles that came out in the Washington Post and New York Times when they discovered the planet in 1983.
14. Eoin | 10.27.08
Global warming is caused by a massive, yet secret, planet that passes near the earth. That’s one I hadn’t heard before.
15. ted | 10.28.08
The debate over global warming tends to sidetrack from us from taking immediate action to find solutions to the serious problem of relying on crude oil fuels for our primary transportation energy source whether they cause global warming or not. To continue on the present course will only lead to more wars, the deterioration of the environment and the down grading of our quality of life. Even without true shortages, the economy of most countries is now suffering from manipulated high fuel prices. Future projections predict real shortages of crude oil to meet an ever increasing worldwide demand. So there is much to gain by making rapid changes to wean us from relying on crude oil fuels even if they don’t cause global warming. Global warming may be debatable but we are living out the negative impact of relying on crude oil fuels which is not debatable. Developing clean sustainable energy to phase out polluting fossil fuels can only have a very positive effect on the health and welfare of the planet and all its inhabitants.
16. richard brooke | 10.28.08
This UN group is already revised their projections by some 10 to 15 years.
According to long term historical data over 400,000 years we are in what is I believe called an interglacial period. According to this same data it was warmer around 1000 ad and at the time of Jesus. Also within 100 to 200 years of 1000ad date the english channel was frozed and formed an ice bridge to France. The start of this interglacial period started around 11,000 years ago and before that much of the world was under ice. At prior times the frozen siberian wasteland supported large mammal life as evidenced by fossils. The subject should be how to evolve into better energies without the fear mongering. It is already happening many great discoveries are advancing us into a new paradigm but it is not getting covered as this would reduce the fear that this man and others rely on to try to control us. There are plenty of good motives for evolving to other sources for power so let us state these and procede without the fear to better sources That will lift our nation and the world out of the cuurent energy situation, but let us not forget that without this so called evil oil many more would still be walking and starving.
17. Green | 10.29.08
The denial of Global Warming is the hoax. If the comments are proving that so many people are still embracing denial, the media must not be getting it. By the way, whoever dreamed up a giant, secret planet causing Global Warming?
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1. Eve Stevens | 10.24.08
The problem is that the globe is not warming. The first change I have seen in the climate in over 30 years was this year. Every year my forsythia blooms in March and the chipmunks show up in March. This year we could not get outside untill the end of April because of the snow. And there were no chipmunks. I thought they had died in the brutal winter. My forsythia finally bloomed in May, 2 months late and the chipmunks finally showed up in May, also 2 months late. My lilac which has bloomed every year in May, finally bloomed in June and the hummingbirds who show up in May and look in our window if the feeder isn’t up finally showed up at the end of June. Then they left early, at the beginning of Sept. I had the furnace on until the end of June and had to turn it on a few times in July and August, then turned it on in Sept for good. This is the first time in over 30 years the furnace has been on all year. I heard the Canadian geese leave in Sept, they usually leave in October. The fall produce came in early, luckily the fall color peak was at the same time, mid October. I planted 8 tomato plants in May and by the end of August I had 1 little green tomato which never grew or ripened.
Please do not blame this on the media. They are spewing out all the false data you feed them. But we can all see with our own eyes that the planet is not warming. I have just given you an honest acount of the changes in temperature, arrival of animal and birds and flowering of plants over the last 30 years.
I ask you to please cease this global warming hoax.