Media coverage of climate change is at a crossroads, as it moves beyond the science of global warming into the broader arena of what governments, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens are doing about it. Consider these recent examples: a decade from now, Abu Dhabi hopes to have the first city in the world with zero carbon emissions. In a windswept stretch of desert, developers plan to build Masdar City, a livable environment
for fifty thousand people that relies entirely on solar power and other renewable energy. Science correspondent Joe Palca reported from Masdar’s construction site as part of National Public Radio’s yearlong project “Climate Connections.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s Peter N. Spotts went to the Biesbosch, a small inland delta near the Netherlands’ city of Dordrecht, to research “How to Fight a Rising Sea.” In an effort that could be instructive for others, the Dutch are developing ways to protect their small country’s vulnerable coast against rising sea levels that could result from climate change.
Wang Suya lives in Japan but sends a YouTube greeting to fellow visitors at Dot Earth, the innovative blog started by Andrew C. Revkin, the New York Times environment reporter. Having traveled the globe to cover global warming, Revkin now posts and exchanges ideas on Dot Earth about climate and sustainability issues, particularly the energy, food, and water demands on a planet that may house nine billion people by mid-century.
These reporters are in the advance guard of an army of journalists around the world who are covering what Time magazine has dubbed the “War on Global Warming.” Journalists will play a key role in shaping the information that opinion leaders and the public use to judge the urgency of climate change, what needs to be done about it, when and at what costs. It is a vast, multifaceted story whose complexity does not fit well with journalism’s tendency to shy away from issues with high levels of uncertainty and a time-frame of decades, rather than days or months.
In 2009, climate-change coverage will grow in significance on a number of domestic and international fronts:
In science, the impact of global warming will be followed closely at the two poles as well as Pacific island hot spots, like the low-lying islands of Papua New Guinea, that are in the greatest danger.
In politics, after eight years of relative inaction by the Bush administration, the new U.S. president and Congress will be under pressure to pass legislation to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.
Internationally, the United Nations has scheduled key conferences—in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008 and in Copenhagen in December 2009—to hammer out a new international treaty that is practically and politically feasible. Shortages and high prices are bringing the role of biofuels in the global food crisis under added scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the efforts of countries, businesses, communities, and even individuals to reduce their “carbon footprints” will increasingly be examined.
Climate change will require thoughtful leadership and coordination at news organizations. Editors will need to integrate the specialty environment, energy, and science reporters with other beats that have a piece of the story—everything from local and national politics to foreign affairs, business, technology, health, urban affairs, agriculture, transportation, law, architecture, religion, consumer news, gardening, travel, and sports. “News organizations are increasingly asking what other beats are going to be affected by climate,” says veteran environment reporter Bud Ward, who edits a respected online journalism site, The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media. He notes that even Sports Illustrated has tackled climate change and its potential impact on everything from cancelled games to baseball bats. But, Ward worries, “it will be extremely difficult to explain the policy side of the debate” in the months ahead. Unless editors push hard for it, “there’s generally not the time or space for that kind of explanatory coverage.”
To that end, Ward has organized media workshops on global warming for top editors as well as reporters. A daylong meeting last fall at Stanford University attracted heavy hitters like Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and top editors from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and metropolitan papers from Detroit to Des Moines. Eighteen news executives spent the morning with leading scientists, who emphasized the strong agreement among international experts that the earth is warming and that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are largely to blame. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year issued a widely publicized report (in four parts) that provided the most comprehensive scientific agreement to date on the causes and potentially devastating impact of global warming. Yet, recalls Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford climatologist, “several editors were surprised there was so much consensus.”
In the afternoon session, the consensus dissipated when it came to a discussion of the potential economic impact of climate actions. One expert saw climate change as a profitable business opportunity; another warned that solutions would be difficult and costly: “There are no silver bullets…only silver birdshot.” Ward says that one editor later commented: “It looks like economists are going to need their own IPCC.”
Daniel P. Schrag, a climate geologist who directs the Harvard University Center for the Environment, says, “We’re in a transition in which the climate science is no longer the primary issue. More and more it’s about how we stop it, not whether it is happening.”
And Matthew C. Nisbet, an American University communications professor, says, “We have had more science coverage on climate change than at any time in history. The next challenge is to find ways to cover the story across news beats and in ways that engage new readers.”
Here are some thoughts as to how coverage might be sharpened in the year ahead in the broad areas of science, politics, and business.
Science and Technology
The ongoing science story. After several years of stumbling, mainstream science and environmental coverage has generally adopted the scientific consensus that increases in heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels and tropical deforestation are changing the planet’s climate, causing adverse effects even more rapidly than had once been predicted.
But the devil is in the details. New findings on why, where, how fast, and with what impact climate change might occur will take time to assess, and there is a danger that the subtleties of the science, and its uncertainty, might be missed by reporters unfamiliar with the territory. The process of science often involves studies that contradict one another along the way; scientists look for consistency among several reports before concluding that something is true. Journalists should avoid “yo-yo” coverage with each new study and try to put the latest findings in context.
Scientists are debating, for example, how global warming may affect hurricanes, with an “ongoing tempest among meteorologists and climatologists spouting off at one another on whether hurricane activity in the Atlantic is up due to a warming ocean,” noted Charles Petit in the MIT Knight Science Journalism Tracker. He cited a recent computer simulation of late twenty-first-century hurricane patterns by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists that predicted fewer tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic. Experienced journalists reported the findings cautiously, noting that some studies have suggested more and more powerful hurricanes due to global warming. Jim Loney, a Reuters reporter, concluded his story with a scientist’s caveat: “We don’t regard this as the last word on this topic.”
You can’t see climate change out the window. “Weather is what you get; climate is what you expect,” says Stanford’s Schneider. “Weather is the day-to-day fluctuations; climate is the long-term averages, the patterns and probability of extremes.” The basic difference is time: weather equals short-term, climate the long haul. Ward uses a clothes analogy—weather helps us decide what to wear each day; climate influences the wardrobe we buy.
“The earth is getting hotter,” says John P. Holdren, a Harvard scientist and international climate-policy leader who has addressed the UN—and been on the Late Show with David Letterman. He cites climate patterns showing that twenty-three out of twenty-four of the hottest years on record have occurred since 1980. The thirteen hottest all have occurred since 1990, with 2005 the hottest ever recorded. But “the heating is not uniform geographically,” cautioned Holdren, who uses the term “global climate disruption” because some regions may experience more extreme—and less predictable—environmental changes than others.
This message was echoed in a landmark Agriculture Department report, released in late May and signed by three Cabinet secretaries, that Juliet Eilperin, the national environment and politics reporter for The Washington Post, called the “most detailed look in nearly eight years at how climate change is reshaping the American landscape.” It concluded that the West is already vulnerable to forest fires, reduced snow pack, and drought.
It is a good rule of thumb to avoid attributing any specific weather event directly to climate change. A single summer heat wave may or may not be part of a long-term climate trend. A cold winter in New England does not mean that global warming is not happening.
Environmental forces may also interact in ways that can be hard to explain. German researchers, writing recently in Nature, used a new climate model to suggest that natural variation in ocean circulation might “temporarily offset” temperature increases from human-caused global warming in Europe and North America over the next decade. Some misleading media reports turned the preliminary forecast into a definitive statement that, as a British Telegraph reporter put it, “global warming will stop until at least 2015.”
Watch out for techno-optimism. Proponents of new energy technologies often hype the potential benefits—without knowing the effectiveness, cost, time frame (always longer than expected), risks, or potential impact on the larger energy picture. It’s a reporter’s duty to explain the potential downside as well as conflicts of interests.
Renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, have garnered enthusiastic publicity. But it will take time for them to make a dent in the overall U.S. energy marketplace because of higher costs, lower scale, and public opposition to sitings of wind farms and solar grids. Nuclear power is popular in France but still largely radioactive in the American public’s mind. Another area for further media follow-up is the touted technology for carbon capture and storage at coal-burning power plants, which has stalled in the U.S. because of political squabbling and unexpected cost overruns.
In a related vein, beware the law of unintended consequences. The biofuel ethanol was ballyhooed as a big win for U.S. energy security, farmers, and the environment, but a funny thing happened on the way to the fuel tank. A February 2008 study in Science magazine concluded that producing ethanol from corn may exceed or match the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
More recently, of course, ethanol has been blamed for contributing to the world food crisis, since farm acreage previously used for food is now devoted to lucrative fuel-producing corn. Suddenly many elected officials want to cut back on congressional mandates to produce far more ethanol. Once again, the public is left wondering what happened. An excellent April 30 front-page piece from Charles City, Iowa, by Washington Post energy reporter Steven Mufson, explored the links between “food and fuel prices.” But where were the skeptical scientists, politicians, and journalists earlier, when ethanol was first being promoted in Congress?
Choose your experts carefully. Experts are always a minefield, so the Times’s Revkin has a simple rule: when writing about climate science, seek comments from respected scientific experts who have published in major journals in the field, not the experts offered by various policy think tanks and interest groups with axes to grind.
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. Last year, a meteorologist at CBS’s Chicago station did a special report entitled “The Truth about Global Warming.” It featured local scientists discussing the hazards of global warming in one segment, well-known national skeptics in another, and ended with a cop-out: “What is the truth about global warming?…It depends on who you talk to.” Not helpful, and not good reporting.
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.
Politics and Policy
After the horse race. A Gallup election poll in early February about what issues would influence Americans’ votes put the economy, Iraq, education, health care, and gas prices in the top five considered “extremely or very important.” Environment and global warming weighed in at number thirteen.
Politicians pay attention to public opinion, of course. In the 2008 presidential race, Obama and McCain both favor mandatory caps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—though McCain’s plan is not as strict on this—and both candidates push nuclear power, though McCain pushes it more aggressively and with fewer caveats.
In Congress, a groundbreaking cap-and-trade “climate security” bill to reduce key greenhouse gas emissions by about 70 percent by 2050 came to the Senate floor for the first time in June. GOP critics argued that it would raise energy costs further, and the bill was blocked. The debate foreshadowed the difficulties such measures may face in the next Congress.
Think China. Estimates suggest China has passed the U.S. for the dubious distinction as the world’s leader in total greenhouse gas emissions. Its rising emissions are fueled by coal-burning power plants—on average, about one new one fires up each week—to meet the energy demands of a growing middle class. But the Pew Center on Global Climate Change said that, on a per-capita basis, U.S. carbon emissions are still about five times greater than those of China, whose enormous 1.3 billion population dwarfs America’s three-hundred million.
Neither the U.S. nor China has agreed to international restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. While the conventional wisdom is that China will wait for the U.S. to act first, a recent opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle predicted that “China just might surprise the U.S. on climate change” because of growing domestic concerns about pollution, droughts, flooding, and other environmental hazards. The University of California authors predicted that China could also take the lead in the development of clean-energy technology—a good area for journalists to track, in addition to coal and cars.
Business and Commerce
Costs and benefits. Evaluating economic forecasts is even tougher than evaluating the science and precipitates fierce debate. A seven-hundred-page report for the British government in 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern said the costs of enacting global measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could amount to about 1 percent of world economic output annually. But not doing so, he said, might ultimately lead to a massive global “market failure,” ranging from five to more than twenty times that amount. It drew international coverage for its methods and both praise and criticism from fellow economists. Yale economist William D. Nordhaus’s new book concludes that the Stern approach is too “ambitious” in requiring “extreme immediate action” and is therefore not cost-effective. He favors global carbon taxes that ramp up more gradually.
Many players are weighing in on the how-to-fix-it political issue. A May Reuters story, that ran before the Senate floor debate on cap-and-trade legislation, cited environmental groups as saying “the cost of doing nothing would be far higher” than taking action, while Washington Post columnist George Will called the bill a “radical government grab for control of the American economy.” A New York Times editorial noted that despite Bush administration contentions that “mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide would bankrupt the country,” every “serious study” has found that a market-based program “could yield positive economic gains” and that the “costs of inaction will dwarf the costs of acting now.”
Times science writer Cornelia Dean wrote last year about the Interface Corporation, a Georgia carpet tile manufacturer that went on a full-court sustainability press by cutting waste, recycling, lowering energy use, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions—and saved money in doing so. “We have made the point in everybody’s mind that the cost of reducing carbon emissions will be painful,” Dean noted. But “it can also work to your advantage.”
Track “green” promises. In the absence of federal action, more than 850 mayors have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement to reduce local carbon emissions by using goals set by signatories to the international Kyoto Protocol. States like California and regional efforts in New England have also led in climate-change initiatives. Some corporations, too, have set ambitious goals for reducing their carbon footprints. Reporters need to hold private and public enterprises accountable by analyzing and comparing how well all of these bodies are doing in carrying out their bold promises.
In the meantime, there’s a great risk of green fatigue in the media. The number of articles in U.S. newspapers mentioning “going green” in the first quarter of 2008 was about twelve times greater than the comparable period in 2005, according to LexisNexis. Worse, it is also the darling of the advertising business, and the mixing of news and commercial messages is starting to give the phrase a sour green-apple taste.
Still, the trend does give reporters an opportunity to expose examples of “green-washing” that promise eco-friendliness but don’t deliver.
As climate change encompasses virtually all aspects of contemporary life, reporters need to tell the story on their watch. A number of Web sites provide helpful information (see the list posted with this article). In the meantime, here is a starter set of possible stories for reporters to consider and readers to request:
In the realm of science, what is the stability of ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, and how will this affect rising sea-level estimates? What plants and animals are at most risk of extinction, and what can be done about that?
What about adaptation to climate change, both here and abroad? Regardless of new control efforts, greenhouse gas emissions already in the pipeline will continue to have warming-related impacts for decades to come. How will Americans cope with changing conditions?
In land use and transportation, what efforts are under way to push auto makers to improve gas mileage? What can drivers do today? Hint: it’s not just what you drive, it’s how often and how far (eco-driving anyone?). How does air travel compare? How can city planners encourage compact living to reduce a community’s carbon footprint? What else can consumers do?
In technology, what are the R&D prospects for biofuel alternatives like cellulosic ethanol, made from grass, wood chips, and other inedible plants? What about futuristic ideas like genetically engineered carbon-eating trees?
In policy, what lessons does the European Union’s experience have for the U.S. about possible carbon cap-and-trade schemes? How are the world’s countries doing at meeting their Kyoto Protocol targets, which expire in 2012, and how do they compare to the U.S.?
In economics, what can be done to make tough emission caps in the U.S. more cost-efficient? How can developing countries balance economic growth and better living conditions against rising greenhouse gases?
Internationally, what is being done to slow deforestation in the tropics, from Indonesia to the Amazon, which is estimated to cause almost one-fifth of human-induced global carbon emissions? What about population growth and the increasing number of environmental refugees forced to flee because of flooding, drought, or other problems? How will global health be affected by climate change?
How will climate negotiations affect the geopolitics of energy, and what does “energy security” really mean?
There are countless such questions for reporters to tackle on a story that is only going to get bigger and more complicated in the decades (yes, decades) ahead.
And there is some urgency. Despite increased coverage of climate change, it is still not at the top of the media or public priority list. “If you don’t have climate change as a headline in the press,” says Nisbet, who writes the blog Framing Science, “it’s unlikely to be a top-tier issue in the public or among policy makers.” A 2007 ranking by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that among all media, environmental coverage ranked nineteenth, at 1.7 percent of the newshole—just behind sports and celebrity coverage.
A Gallup report last November found that only about four in ten Americans believes that immediate, drastic action is needed to deal with global warming, and just one in four says there will be “extreme” effects of global warming in fifty years if efforts are not increased. Is this a failure of the experts and politicians to communicate the situation or a failure of journalists to dig and report?
Yet journalists should not be cheerleaders. As climate change moves further into the policy and political arena, the traditional wall between analytical reporting and advocacy is in danger. The issue is coming to the fore at a time of major change in mainstream journalism and the growth of opinionated Web sites and blogs that have helped to blur the old lines.
Nisbet, for one, sees a dramatic shift in media rhetoric on climate change. In the spring of 2006, fear was at the heart of Al Gore’s documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, which jump-started media coverage of global warming after years on the back burner. Suddenly, climate change—that term is gaining ground over global warming, by the way—was on front pages and magazine covers, including Time’s iconic image of a lone polar bear and the warning, “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”
Today, says Nisbet, “the underlying appeal is a moral message: ‘We’re all in this together.’ It’s a moral call to arms.” Gore’s new $300-million “We” media campaign seeks to cross the partisan divide with the optimistic motto: “We Can Solve It.” The cover of Time’s Spring 2008 environment issue, bordered in green instead of Time’s customary red, took the famous World War II photo of Marines raising a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima and substituted a tree to illustrate its bold headline: “How to Win the War on Global Warming.”
Did Time cross the line into environmental cheerleading? It would seem so, perhaps reflecting the magazine’s more general shift into opinion and away from pure news. Managing editor Richard Stengel called the cover story “our call to arms to make this challenge—perhaps the most important one facing the planet—a true national priority.”
Others are feeling their way more carefully. “Sure, I care about the environment,” says Steve Curwood, host of “Living on Earth,” a weekly environmental show on more than three hundred public radio stations. “But it’s not our job to decide what should be done. It’s our job to inform the citizenry. Right now we have an alarmed citizenry, but still not a very well-informed one,” he said at a recent journalism forum.
“We don’t set policy, we tell stories,” says David Ledford, executive editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, and president of The Associated Press Managing Editors. “But it’s important to not just throw out that the earth is on fire without giving a sense of what they can do.”
“It’s very simple. The job of a professional journalist is to give the audience information that is a good thing for them to know,” says seasoned ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore, who has led the network’s new multiplatform approach to global warming. Yet he finds that the momentous nature of the climate-change story carries even more of a responsibility and psychological burden than the dozen wars he has covered. “The unprecedented nature of this story,” says Blakemore, “is quite grave.”
Dear Cristine,
this is an important and timely piece. I've perhaps gone a little overboard and written a reasonably long response at my blog, www.alexlockwood.net, which I hope you get the opportunity to read.
My main response is that there is much more to be said, particularly around the 'how' journalists report climate change, that won't fit in the confinements of this article. Especially around the interface between the structural changes occuring in journalism and the even larger structural changes we are facing in the way we live our lives--moving to a low-carbon economy.
Local living may mean the renewal or rebirth of local/community media franchises, where local/global are connected via the digital media presences/brands that people trust. So while journalism reinvents itself, low-carbon living could, repsonsibly, be at its centre.
Thanks again for a considered and thought-provoking essay.
Posted by alexlockwood
on Wed 9 Jul 2008 at 05:45 AM
Actually, TIME was widely accused of crossing the line into environmental activism on climate change nearly two decades ago, when we declared Earth "Planet of the Year." The response of science editor Charles Alexander was, in essence, "Yeah, and we're not ashamed of it."
So that horse left the barn long ago.
Posted by Mike Lemonick
on Wed 9 Jul 2008 at 09:15 AM
Since the oceans take about 800 years to reach thermal equilibrium, and hence expand and cause a sea level rise, aren't we seeing the results of climate change that occurred perhaps in the 12th and 13th century or before? Whatever effect we have on the oceans will not even be detected for centuries. Since Antarctica and Greenland appear to be getting thicker and actually accumulating more ice than they lose, it's unlikely that the sea level increase is caused by global warming (at least for now). This is a complicated subject and I wish we would NOT "get beyond the science", since the science is so poorly understood.
Posted by Marwan
on Fri 11 Jul 2008 at 02:07 PM
I should have added that I am one of those scientists who are skeptical of the popular viewpoint - I guess the consensus isn't as complete as it could be.
Posted by Marwan
on Fri 11 Jul 2008 at 02:10 PM
Time magazine is quite possibly the worst example of judicious journalism (see: http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/1653/218/). In the last year alone, more and more research is coming to light that is actively discrediting the notion that CO2 is the cause of the now-stilted global warming. It's a lot easier to show both sides of an issue rather than having to backpedal from a stance you have taken. And that applies to both sides.
Posted by nejking
on Thu 17 Jul 2008 at 02:32 PM
The article fails to note the damage sustainable energy projects are causing. Massive CO2 releases from clearcut forests to grow crops for biodiesel and ethanol; kill zones from runoff from fertilizer used to grow biofuel crops; increased acetyldehyde and formaldehyde emissions from ethanol; deteriorated fuel systems from ethanol caused corrosion; increased N2O (296X more effective as a global warming gas) emissions from the fertilizer used to grow corn; more water usage; more natural gas usage; etc.
Posted by RD
on Thu 17 Jul 2008 at 08:52 PM
Thank you, Cristine, for this thoughtful and timely piece. You're right that it's time to move beyond the science and into some action. Although that action must remain rooted in science. It's nice to get a thoughtful, level-headed article when so much of what surronds the global warming debate is rhetoric (from both sides of the aisle).
I also want to respond to RD. You criticize "sustainable energy projects" and the problems they are causing. However, the only project you cite is ethanol production. As a community, many environmentalists have moved way past thinking ethanol is a viable, sustainable alternative. And all the problems currently surrounding it are caused by wrong-headed agricultural policies and the current administration's ridiculous ethanol-use mandate.
http://www.sierraclub.org/wildlegacy/blog/
Posted by Matt Kirby
on Fri 18 Jul 2008 at 03:28 PM
Are you shure that the deforestation in Amazon is responsable for one fifth of the carbon footprint in the atmosphere?
Posted by Angelo Müller on Mon 28 Jul 2008 at 09:55 PM
Thanks Cristine - well done, and timely.
One area of coverage that's probably _more_ important than any of those you mentioned, though, is the industry effort to disinform the public on this topic. It's been covered in Newsweek by Sharon Begley, and in the alternative press, but most people I talk to - even the sharp ones - haven't the foggiest idea that this is just Big Tobacco all over again.
Before you can inform the public, you need to shine a little sunlight on the disinformation effort that's befuddled them - you can't heal the wound without first disinfecting it.
See Naomi Oreskes on this.
Posted by Anna Haynes on Wed 30 Jul 2008 at 05:15 PM
There may be lots more to cover.
The final countdown -
"Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster."
Also worth reading - Cal alumni mag article on research - revealing indications that runaway climate change may be coming - by John Harte of UCB's Energy and Resources Group.
Posted by Anna Haynes on Thu 31 Jul 2008 at 11:42 PM
"Journalists will play a key role in shaping the information that opinion leaders and the public use to judge the urgency of climate change, what needs to be done about it, when and at what costs."
Let's get something straight here, journalists are not trained in climate science, sociology, engineering, manufacturing, medicine, psychology, forensics, chemistry, biology, physics, political science, meterology, geophysics, astrophysics, cosmology, tarot card reading, dog catching, food science, agriculture, ergonomics, economics, astrology, microbiology, management, law, foreign languages, cryptography, deep sea fishing, computer science, mathematics, sanitation, public health, or even finding their bottoms with both hands and a flash light.
They are trained to observe and report. PERIOD.
So where in the world does the author of this inane article get the idea that journalists are supposed to "shape opinion?"
They do not have the qualifications necessary to do so. If they did, they would be doing something more useful than being a journalist.
I say that sarcastically, because there is nothing more valuable than a truly objective journalist who can present all sides of a debate to help everyone (even those directly involved) understand the different points of view in it, is the most valuable person in the world.
But an unqualified journalist that makes up her mind and takes it into her own hands to "shape opinion" is a totally worthless waste of space and a complete disservice to her profession.
Posted by woodwose on Fri 8 Aug 2008 at 10:28 PM
Dear Christine,
Why not lobby for a law to outlaw scepical speach. These dangerous subversives should be jailed.
Or perhaps it's you that is the really dangerous one. Yes I'm sure it is. Green is the new religion except it takes an approach to heretics that reminds me of the 1500's. Disgree and we'll burn you at the stake. Fear is really the motivating factor here. Your've been so terrified by the melting world polemic you don't even want to spend enough time to find out if it's even true.
Posted by Tim on Sat 9 Aug 2008 at 10:07 AM
"In science, the impact of global warming will be followed closely at the two poles as well as Pacific island hot spots, like the low-lying islands of Papua New Guinea, that are in the greatest danger."
Are you seriously trying to imply that the 13,000+ ft Owen Stanley mountains of New Guinea are low lying? Really? Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what you are talking about? I doubt it.
I guess you also completely missed little things like the first snow in Buenos Aires since 1918 and the first snow in Baghdad since the 1800s, the Antarctic has record levels of ice, etc.
Did you know that when Hansen gave his most recent speech to Congress the global average temperature was actually lower than when he gave his "landmark" speech there 20 years ago according to all the major services except the one he runs (GISS)? Coincidence? I think not.
Posted by John H on Sat 9 Aug 2008 at 06:41 PM
Mr. Kirby. "And all the problems currently surrounding it are caused by wrong-headed agricultural policies and the current administration's ridiculous ethanol-use mandate."
Oh goodness - help us all. Most intelligent environmentalists long ago understood that ethanol was a dead end. That's why, when VP Al Gore started pushing mandates (cast the tie breaking vote in 1995), so many were in shock. Pres. Clinton, as with his love fest with corporate/lobbyists on his push for genetically modified foods, jumped on the same bandwagon on behalf of his ag support.
Just a few short months ago, there was a wild foot race amongst the Democrat (and some R's) as to who would push for the most invasive mandates for how much ethanol and how fast it would come on line.
The D's led on this major blunder. It was a waste of time. It caused much grief - perhaps even much death - in the world, and it severely hurt the effort for the long awaited well thought out for and intelligent dialog amongst "we the people" on what and how and in what time frame is reasonable and possible.
Posted by forprity on Mon 11 Aug 2008 at 01:39 PM
Christine, I would be very interested in your response to Ron Rosenbaum on Slate, who completely blasted you because of this article. http://www.slate.com/id/2197130
Posted by adrianne on Thu 21 Aug 2008 at 02:16 PM
Dear Editor:
Having read the article, I still can't figure out what the author means by "climate change". It sounds like some sort of catastrophic weather, but with no
specifics. Why does one have to go to some remote Pacific island to see if a purported 25-foot rise in the sealevel is to hit North America? So far it's
nearly zero. What's even more troubling that the author thinks there is only one side to these enormous issues. It's a strange posture for a professional journalist to espouse. Is there any other public policy issue that has this one-sided bias? What about those 31,000 scientists on www.oism.org who say that devastating climate changes are either imminent or human-caused? Who has
determined that the current global temperatures are the best of all worlds, and all ups and downs are frightful? Does Dr. Pangloss still live? Voltaire would
be proud.
Sincerely,
Carl Olson
Journalism '68
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Posted by Lisa P on Thu 13 Nov 2008 at 05:10 AM
what challenges does a reporter who major's in science and technology reporting such as issues like global warming?
Posted by martha Banda on Tue 18 Nov 2008 at 04:04 AM
New Guinea is not one of the low-lying Pacific Ireland under threat. Islands such as Tuvalu are the ones threatened by rising sea levels.
Posted by Terry Ryan on Wed 24 Dec 2008 at 05:48 PM
Vegetarians have long pointed out that a meat-based food system is wasteful. In the United States, over 90% of all agricultural land is devoted to livestock agriculture in some form. That includes two-thirds of the cropland and all of the grazing land. Most water consumption in the United States and the rest of the world goes to livestock agriculture; and agriculture is the leading form of water use everywhere, as water needs continue to expand in the face of dwindling supplies. We have financial options, such as if we need payday loans as a source of some emergency cash, we have that option, and if we decide to go to Wal-Mart instead of Safeway, we can do so. There are many across the globe who wouldn’t even know what to do with those sorts of choices, because theirs are so limited. There are some who will do anything to stave off death by starvation, that they literally have been eating dirt, like people in Haiti are doing. They mix salt, shortening, and dirt into cookies, bake them, and eat them, and feed them to their children. Just recently, the UN voted on a resolution as to whether or not food was a fundamental human right, and 180 countries voted so. Only 1 didn’t, and it isn’t going to be anytime soon that many forget it. The one nation that didn’t agree with the idea was the United States of America. The reasoning is that the resolution wasn’t properly worded, and as it was, it couldn’t be accepted by the government of the United States. Take this idea to heart - that if you feel ashamed eating Ramen from time to time, or having to get payday loans to stave off a sudden cash crunch, it is a blessing that you have those kinds of options. For more about the UN and world news, read this article at the payday loans blog.
Posted by Mandy O. on Sat 3 Jan 2009 at 04:54 AM
Are you seriously trying to imply that the 13,000+ ft Owen Stanley mountains of New Guinea are low lying? Really? Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what you are talking about? I doubt it.
I guess you also completely missed little things like the first snow in Buenos Aires since 1918 and the first snow in Baghdad since the 1800s, the Antarctic has record levels of ice, etc.
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Posted by Aliok on Thu 15 Oct 2009 at 01:39 AM