Global warming is not just a big scientific, environment, economic, political and human story, it is also an interesting case study of what the media reports and doesn’t report.
On Tuesday this week, the Australian carried an op-ed from legendary botanist David Bellamy in which he claims to have been marginalised because of his global warming scepticism:
WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn’t believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.
According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming, I’ve not been allowed to make a television program.
On the other hand, some people are alarmed that global sceptics are getting too much media coverage:
Despite overwhelming evidence that global warming and its causes are real, naysayers are out there, as always is the case with any contentious issue. But what’s unique and alarming about the global warming debate is that journalists are actually spreading the views of these “climate skeptics” without actually taking a look at the facts.
Take an article posted recently on Politico that’s titled, “Scientists urge caution on global warming,” by Erika Lovely. In it, the writer cites several global warming skeptics such as the infamous Senator James Inhofe—known to have relied onfaulty theories to support his skeptical stance on climate change—to give the impression that the facts behind global warming are still up for debate, even though they clearly are not.
This idea that there are ‘facts’ that are no longer ‘up for debate’ is nonsense. As with everything in science, theories as well as facts are always up for review.
For example, earlier this week, the CSIRO reported on a study that suggested global warming may not be happening as quickly as previously thought because earlier predictions of the Southern Ocean’s demise as the world’s largest carbon sink have been vastly exaggerated. The CSIRO release said:
The new study suggests that Southern Ocean currents, and therefore the Southern Ocean’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide, have not changed in recent decades, despite a large increase in winds.
The ABC reported that the Southern Ocean is ‘adapting’ to climate change. The idea that the Southern Ocean is adapting is clearly ludicrous and seems to be an attempt to suggest that we were right just nature is wrong. The reality is that some scientific speculation has been reviewed in light of some new evidence coming to light.
More interestingly, an article in the Australian today points out that this new evidence didn’t even get reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:
In May last year, The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reported that climate change had reduced the Southern Ocean’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide, claiming that as a result global warming would accelerate even faster than previously thought.
The story was picked up and repeated in a number of different journals around the region.
But this week the CSIRO suggested the exact opposite…This time the story got no coverage in the SMH…
The ABC and SMH bias on global warming only plays into the hands of global warming sceptics and is a clear disservice to their audiences.
Critics of blogging and social media are keen to point to the role of editors and the higher standards of content in heritage media, things like objectivity and fact-checking. Yet, so often in important debates these standards are more honored in the breach.
4 Comments
I agree. Bring the facts out into the open whatever they may be.
The other side of this coin is the editorial requirement for ‘balance’.
Thus,if 99% of scientists agree that X is true, when there is a report on it in the newspaper, instead of devoting 99% of the article to X, editorial ‘balance’ says that 50% of the article should be given to the 1% who dissent.
This isn’t balanced at all – it give the impression that ‘the jury is out’ on an issue when it isn’t.
Climate change has been treated in this way (I have been told this by both climatologists and environmental journalists, on separate occasions, without prompting). In the interests of ‘balance’ the few scientists who are sceptical about cc are trotted out in article after article and given equal time.
One of the dead giveaways is that, when it comes to supporters of climate change, a myriad of names can be quoted, so many that we’re not aware of any individuals particularly pushing the barrow. However, because of their limited number, the same handful of sceptics get trotted out again and again – and so it’s easier to name them.
This personalisation of sceptism (we recognise them, therefore they’re familiar, therefore we tend to trust them more) unfortunately gives these scientists more weight than they deserve, or they would get if they were only reported 1% of the time.
Bellamy has only himself to blame for media disconnection, at least in this part of the world. Early in the decade he claimed NZ’s glaciers were advancing, which was completely untrue. NZ’s glaciers, in those cases where they are not disappearing completely because the snow accumulation line is higher than the former snow catchments, are thickening in their upper reaches because of higher snowfall, and wasting away in their lower reaches because of higher rainfall.
For David to make the claims he did was an act of self harm.
The loss of ice overall in the NZ glaciers may be strongly influenced by the legacy of the Little Ice Age in some cases, as well as anthropogenic warming. The tendency in media reports to simplify or categorize all warming as entirely due to human activities is at times shrill and silly and I think reflects constructive exaggeration by some climate change authorities who do not believe lay readers can be engaged with the true complexity of the issues.
This has lead to an immense amount of nonsense about the evils of carbon, where in fact the issue is the overwhelming of the natural cyclical carbon processes by the excessive release of fossilized carbon from coal, oil and natural gas combustion.
It is a mistake to believe anything on global warming published by the Australian. Bellamy’s claims are, at best, delusional. He stopped making TV shows in 1994. He publicly came out against mainstream climate science in 2004. If this caused the BBC to blacklist him in 1994, they must have used the Tardis to travel back in time.
As for Stapleton’s article accusing the SMH of bias see my post.