On Wednesday, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker listed only two blog posts—one by Andrew Revkin at The New York Times and one by John Cox at Discovery News—that took at a crack at explaining the winter weather. They pointed to the Arctic Oscillation, a pattern of atmospheric pressure that has two phases, positive and negative. According to Cox’s post:
The pressure pattern drives a ring of winds that blows counter-clockwise at about 55 degrees north, over places like Moscow and Belfast and Ketchikan, Alaska.
When the pattern is positive, the winds are strong, and the power of the vortex holds the storms in its embrace. When the pattern is negative, the winds are weak, winter storms slide farther south and their sub-freezing temperatures grip much deeper into the Northern Hemisphere. As Andrew Revkin at the New York Times has pointed out recently, the Arctic Oscillation is more deeply negative this year than it has been since the 1980s.
In fact, Revkin not only did that, he had Ignatius Rigor, a senior mathematician at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, generate a graph for his blog showing changes in the Arctic Oscillation since 1950. The graph by itself doesn’t say much, of course, but more reporters should be seeking out such exclusive, “value-added” components for their stories.
The Associated Press, for instance, ran a story on Wednesday, under the headline, “Experts: Cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming,” that delivered a helpful, but somewhat vague explanation of the current state of the Arctic Oscillation (“large rivers of air” that usually run west to east and have “become bent into a pronounced zigzag pattern, meandering north and south”) and did not actually refer to it by name.
So Williams seems to be right—useful stories explaining the current cold-weather patterns are “missing in action.” Whether that exacerbates, or is exacerbated by, some of the problems that Homans cited in his cover story about climate skepticism television weather forecasters is difficult to tell. It’s probably a little of both. But journalists and weathermen alike would be well advised to read Williams’s entire post. He lists a number of good questions that anybody seeking to cover the current cold patterns would want to ask, as well as a number of resources from places like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society.
> "The Associated Press, for instance, ran a story... a helpful, but somewhat vague explanation of the current state of the Arctic Oscillation... did not actually refer to it by name."
Grrr. That's one for Jay Rosen's ExplainThis.org - why not make space for the two words that name the phenomenon? What is the rationale for leaving such information out?
The only one I can think of is "we prefer to talk down to our readers and not burden them with too much knowledge"; but perhaps I'm missing something?
Kudos to Andy Revkin for going beyond this. (and a note or posterity: the AP story was *not* written by Seth Borenstein.)
#1 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Sun 10 Jan 2010 at 04:17 PM
> "The Associated Press, for instance, ran a story... a helpful, but somewhat vague explanation of the current state of the Arctic Oscillation... did not actually refer to it by name."
Grrr. That's one for Jay Rosen's ExplainThis.org - why not make space for the two words that name the phenomenon? What is the rationale for leaving such information out?
The only one I can think of is "we prefer to talk down to our readers and not burden them with too much knowledge"; but perhaps I'm missing something?
Kudos to Andy Revkin for going beyond this. (and a note for posterity: the AP story was *not* written by Seth Borenstein.)
#2 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Sun 10 Jan 2010 at 04:18 PM
How the American Meteorological Society is like SF bathhouses in the early 80s:
Reading the Homans piece brings up the issue of responsibility/blame - if your actions and processes are facilitating the spread of disease, epistemologically speaking, do you have a moral responsibility to change them?
One example: hosting unmoderated, untended comment sections that've been co-opted into a platform for spreading disinformation.
(Related: does Google distinguish, weight-wise, between information appearing in a post, and disinformation appearing in its comments?)
Another example: the American Meteorological Society's Seal of Approval, which has been granted to people who lack academic study of climate change and are clueless about it, and clueless about their cluelessness.
Yes, the AMS no longer grants this Seal, but if the Sealholders are still brandishing theirs as they spread disinformation, isn't stronger AMS action called for?
(like, "we rescind our Seals of Approval because our standards are higher now with the stronger science, and the truth is that we *don't* approve.")
#3 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Sun 10 Jan 2010 at 04:49 PM
(sorry for hogging comment bandwidth here)
I think there's a primate-social-behavior angle to this - that if you anoint a (stereo)typical man an Alpha Male, he is going to act like one; and they *never* say "aw shucks, the real experts are actually better", since over evolutionary history, the ones that said so didn't get the girls. Unwarranted self-confidence will be a consequence of alpha-male-hood, whenever the latter isn't achieved based on knowledge of the area in question.
(Dick L's gonna kill me for bloviating like this - sorry Dick)
And it's not just men either - when I first got a blog (and no audience), I started expounding far beyond what I had actual knowledge of, while only semi-aware of doing so.
So (IMO) the solution involves demotion from the alpha male pedestal - knock 'em down a few status pegs, to where they're humble enough that they can learn; and for those who can't learn, take care not to grant them credibility.
#4 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Sun 10 Jan 2010 at 07:31 PM