The boxing-match analogy leads back to Huggins’s concerns about “clarity” and “cohesiveness.” The fact is, there are many points of climate science—the rate of warming and sea-level rise, the intensity of hurricanes, drought and flood patterns—on which there is still substantial disagreement among scientists. Given that most climate-science coverage these days is devoted to impacts and solutions, the single greatest impediment to public understanding may be that journalists have done a poor job of specifying what question (or questions) is being covered in any given article.

In a talk at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference in 2006, Revkin urged listeners to think of each point of science as corresponding to its own bell-curve like graph representing the relevant state of consensus. For the questions of warming and humans’ contribution to that warming, the curves are high and narrow. For many others, however, the curves look less like bells than rolling sand dunes. Based on Revkin’s talk, Boykoff published two similar graphs in the journal Nature that illustrated that media has indeed reflected the mixed opinions about hurricane intensity and success of the Kyoto Protocol.

“One of the things I hope I’ve said consistently is that it’s not that balanced reporting needs to be shunned when addressing climate-change issues,” Boykoff said in an interview. “It just needs to be used much more carefully.”

Because journalists have not clearly explained that each question has its own curve, news consumers typically conflate them. In other words, when the public sees uncertainty about the various impacts of climate, they tend to extrapolate that to mean there is uncertainty about the link between human-caused greenhouse gases and warming. The predicament almost begs for a disclaimer at the top of every climate story: “Warning: this article reflects legitimate scientific uncertainty about impacts of global warming; that uncertainty, however, does not detract from the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the globe.” Journalists’ inability to communicate that more artfully probably does more than anything else to thwart the “a-ha” moment that Huggins is looking for.

There are limits to how much blame can be placed on the press, however, and contrary to Huggins assertions, one might make a strong argument that the Times has, in fact, covered climate in a way the public “gets,” or should “get.” It might even be possible to argue that the media, overall, has as well. In a blog post last December, Revkin asked, “Are words worthless in the climate fight?” After all, he noted, people have a tendency to be apathetic about long-term threats like climate change and even when the threat is apparent (as some impacts of warming already are) people tend “normalize” bad situations.

As Nisbet, the American University professor, has argued, one of the most effective journalistic strategies for breaking through such impasses is choosing the right frame for climate stories. These can include the “environmental stewardship” frame, the “public health” frame, or perhaps most importantly, the “solutions” frame. Climate alarmism can be just problematic as skepticism when it comes to the public “getting” it. Many journalists have recognized that; Nisbet has discussed how Time magazine, in particular, has shifted from a “be worried” to a “we can solve it” attitude.

Time, which recently published a “call to arms” for action on climate change, might be one of the publications that has elevated the level of urgency in its coverage to a point that critics like Huggins and others who think the public needs to be scared straight on climate, might deem acceptable. At the same time, however, those critics must realize that not all publications are comfortable in the role of cheerleader. They might also consider the argument that even if the public has not yet “gotten” climate issues, it is the process of “getting” them more and more. What would be useful, and has not occurred so far, is research that examines individuals’ opinions about global warming relevant to their specific news diets (i.e. whether they get their news from television newspapers, or blogs, and which ones).

Polls and surveys aside, however, it is hard to ignore the fact that broad swathes of global society - from politicians to captains of industry to homemakers - are now operating under the assumption that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is a good idea. People are coming to understand that global warming is inherently an energy challenge and that we are in need of an energy “revolution” comparable to some to of the greatest public mobilizations in history. The transformation in mindset over the last two years has been nothing short of extraordinary and the press, for all its shortcomings, is partly to thank for that. Huggins is right, we still need the media to strive to do better, but even if they do, “getting” it may be just a matter of time.

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