Comments on: Balance required in media coverage of global warming

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:34:40 +0000

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.

By: Ben Sandilands

Ben Sandilands — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:23:16 +0000

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.

By: zoomster

zoomster — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:38:10 +0000

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.

By: lifeasdaddy

lifeasdaddy — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:41:32 +0000

I agree. Bring the facts out into the open whatever they may be.