One Blue World: notes on communication & public understanding of climate science

USA TODAY: fossil fuels and ocean acidification

2012-01-28T08:53:00.000-08:00

In "Study: Man-made ocean acidity threatens sea life," (1/23/12) Wendy Koch at USA Today explains recent findings published in the journal Nature Climate Change, "Detecting regional anthropogenic trends in ocean acidification against natural variability" (1/22/12).

USA Today excerpt: "Scientists have found that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, from the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 to 200 years, have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations. [T]hey say these emissions, which increase water acidity by reacting with saltwater, may significantly reduce the calcification rate of marine organisms such as corals and mollusks."

Peter Gleick on Wall Street Journal editorial bias

2012-01-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

In "Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the WSJ," published at Forbes.com (1/27/12), Dr. Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute) responds to Wall Street Journal opinion piece (1/27/12), "No Need to Panic about Global Warming."

Of course, the denier blogosphere is afire but also weighing on the side of science are:

 Peter Frumhoff (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1/27/12): "Dismal Science at the Wall Street Journal"

 Ed Kilgore (1/27/12): "'Cui Bono' Indeed!" (Political Animal Blog, Washington Monthly)

 Joe Romm (Think Progress, 1/29/12): "Panic Attack: Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal Finds 16 Scientists to Push Pollutocrat Agenda With Long-Debunked Climate Lies"

 Andrew Glikson (Australian National University, 1/30/12): "We do need drastic action on climate change: a response to the Wall Street Journal" (The Conversation)

Washington Post Op-ed: Maxwell Boykoff on climate change rhetoric

2012-01-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

Dr. Maxwell Boykoff (U of Colorado at Boulder) remarks on changing climate rhetoric (1/27/12): "A dangerous shift in Obama's 'climate change' rhetoric."

Michigan Forum: cures for climate confusion

2012-01-26T20:11:00.000-08:00

The University of Michigan's Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and the Union of Concerned Scientists recently joined forces (in Ann Arbor) to host both a workshop and Town Hall discussion aimed at increasing public understanding of climate change.

Bud Ward (Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media) has posted (1/25/12) a synopsis of key messages and insights: Better Understanding and Improving Climate Communications

Event details including video of Town Hall event

Naomi Oreskes: the verdict is in

2012-01-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

LA Times (1/22/12): excellent op-ed by climate science historian Naomi Oreskes, "The verdict is in on climate change: when it comes to climate change, open-mindedness is the wrong approach"

Gavin Schmidt: climate expert - expert communicator

2012-01-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

MAJOR CONGRATS to Dr. Gavin Schmidt for being recognized as the top climate/science communicator for 2011 by two science organizations, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Earthsky. Dr. Schmidt is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and co-founder of RealClimate.org.

AGU Press Release (10/11/11): "Inaugural Climate Communications Prize Winner Announced"

Read/listen to interview of Dr. Schmidt by EarthSky (1/15/12): "Gavin Schmidt on communicating climate change"

Real Climate (10/18/11): "A well deserved honor"

Book review (Jan 2011) by Dr. Schmidt: "Sowing Seeds of Doubt" (review of Merchants of Doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.)

Details on above pictured book "Picturing the Science" by Dr. Schmidt (with Josuha Wolfe)

Physics Today: communicating climate science

2012-01-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from and the link to the (full) article by Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Joy Hassol published (Oct. 2011) in the journal Physics Today:

"Climate researchers know that the case for human-induced climate change has become stronger, more compelling, and increasingly urgent with each passing year. Yet in some countries, notably the US, the proportion of the pubic and policymakers who reject the science has grown."

"Communicating the science of climate change"

Nature editorializes on climate awareness

2012-01-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from an insightful editorial in the journal Nature:

"With US politics in gridlock, Europe in financial turmoil and minimal progress at the climate conference in South Africa in December, 2011 was a bad year for political progress in tackling climate change. In addition, surveys of public opinion show a declining belief that climate change is an urgent problem. Clearly, the need to make the public aware of the threat has never been greater. In the face of climate-change contrarians and denialists, some of them with political clout and voices amplified by the media, climate scientists must be even more energetic in taking their message to citizens."

The complete version (1/5/12): "Reach out about climate"

Aljazeera Roundtable: denier Myron Ebell gets his say

2012-01-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a well known media savvy climate denier. In an otherwise well-informed discussion, this episode of Aljazeera's "Inside Story" provided Ebell yet another high profile opportunity to disinform audiences on climate and clean energy.

See also my 7/31/11 posting.

Watch the video of Inside Story (1/14/2012): Are environmental concerns being sacrificed?

This Aljazeera webpage includes a "SEND FEEDBACK" function button - please let them know what YOU think.

Wikipedia: media coverage of climate change

2012-01-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

READ AND WIKI :

"Media coverage of climate change"

The Associated Press: a shift in focus?

2012-01-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

A new climate study just published in Science has led to some curiously framed media coverage. This research, led by NASA's Drew Shindell, built upon an earlier report by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization (also led by Shindell).

An Associated Press story under the headline, "Scientists say cut soot, methane to curb warming," received wide coverage. Here the AP's Seth Borenstein reported: "An international team of scientists says it's figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide [CO2]. They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming - methane and soot."

Subsequent to the attention-grabbing headline and opening statement, the AP clarifies [perhaps we CAN work on multiple pollutants at the same time?], "Scientists say [CO2] from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes."

The AP frame which seems to encourage a "shift in focus away from CO2" is out of step with Shindell's comments in a NASA Q&A, "Over the long-term, [CO2] increases are the primary driver of climate change. In order to mitigate climate change, there is no way we can ignore or overlook [CO2]."

This AP article is, however, an improvement over their 12/23/03 story, "Scientists blame soot for global warming," based on an earlier NASA study (my analysis of this older story frame was included in "Climate of Scepticism").

Shindell, et al. (2012) Science: Vol. 335 no. 6065 pp. 183-189

NASA Press Release (1/12/12)

NASA Q&A with Drew Shindell (2/20/11)

Associated Press story (1/12/12)

John Tierney of the New York Times also seems to wish for such a shift. In "Climate proposal puts practicality ahead of sacrifice (1/16/12)," Tierney went further than Borenstein in actually denigrating, and misleading about, groups working to reduce CO2 emissions, "Mainstream environmental groups haven’t put them [methane and soot] on the agenda. One reason is the lack of glamour...."

The Union of Concerned Scientists is just one such organization that has promoted reduction of methane, see "Global Warming and Pasture-Raised Beef Production in the US"

Integrity in Climate Science

2011-12-31T19:01:00.000-08:00

The journal Science published an important letter from an impressively large group of members of the US National Academy of Sciences; this letter (2010) is available for free here:Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

The following is an excerpt:

"We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels. We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively."

Overshadowing the contrarians via expert credibility

2011-12-31T18:38:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from a 2010 research paper published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA) by Anderegg, Prall, Harold and Schneider. This article in its entirety is available for free here: Expert credibility in climate change

"[A] large-scale quantitative assessment of the relative level of agreement, expertise, and prominence in the climate researcher community [shows] that the expertise and prominence ... of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of [anthropogenic climate change] vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians.... Despite media tendencies to present both sides ... which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding ... not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise.... This extensive analysis of the mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums...."

PBS Newshour on 2011 extreme US weather

2011-12-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

A welcome example of climate coverage sans denialism. Watch the video or read the transcript (12/28/11): How 2011 became a "Mind-Boggling" Year of Extreme Weather

Rush Limbaugh: still a top denier

2011-12-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

Limbaugh has lost no steam (or hot air). Media Matters for America (12/19/11) names him climate misinformer of the year.

The Washington Times: bunking the science

2011-12-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times remains a hotbed of climate denial editorals. On 12/19/11 they complained,

"... the scientific validation of global-warming theory crumbles .... [There is] a growing consensus that climate-change theory is all bunk."

This editorial board shows no sign of grasping reality as the year closes with worries over “A Climate of Fraud” (11/29/11) and “Climate talks, then climate tax” (12/11/11).

Wikipedia: The Washington Times

Inhofe to Durban Delegates: "you are being ignored"

2011-12-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

From Democracy Now (12/9/11): While no members Congress attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, Republican Senator James Inhofe (Oklahoma) recorded a video message aired at a press conference of climate change deniers at the summit. "Tossing out any remote possibility of a U.N. global warming treaty is one of the most important things we can do for the economy ... I’m making this announcement from Washington, D.C., where I am confident that the only person left talking about global warming is me. The message from the Washington to the U.N. delegates in South Africa is this, this week, could not be any clearer: you are being ignored." Watch video HERE.

USA TODAY: denier James Inhofe ok

2011-12-11T07:21:00.001-08:00

Per usual, Sen. Inhofe (R, Oklahoma) finds a welcome home for his climate denialist rhetoric. In "Durban climate summit unlikely to get big commitments," (11/25/11) the Inhofe claim of an Obama EPA "job killing global warming agenda" receives huge coverage in the newspaper enjoying the second largest circulation in this country. Inhofe's denialist views are well documented in USA TODAY. Just last May, USA TODAY published an editorial by Inhofe, "All pain, no gain," blasting the "hysteria over global warming."

List of Inhofe quotes in USA TODAY.

More on Inhofe's climate myths.

UPDATE: In Scientists warn of warming tipping point (12/1/11), USA Today quotes some of our top scientists but no climate deniers. Improvement indeed over above discussed article.

W. Lance Bennett, Town Hall Seattle: "manufacturing climate controversy ~ why the news doesn't work for many citizens in the digital age"

2011-12-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

Video of lecture (2010) by esteemed University of Washington Professor W. Lance Bennett, including a short interview of Liisa Antilla, is found HERE.

2011-12-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press Continues to "Balance" Climate Stories: polar bears & biologist Monnett

2011-07-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

A recent flurry of articles clearly illustrates how climate misinformation is inserted into major media stories -- how these articles are then manipulated by climate skeptics -- and then quickly spread like fire.

A July 28, 2011 AP story by Becky Bohrer was "balanced" with a quote from well-known climate skeptic Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprises Institute (CEI): "Arctic scientist under investigation"

AP EBELL QUOTE: "Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the case reinforces the group's position that people should be more skeptical about the work of climate change scientists. Even if every scientist is objective, 'what we're being asked to do is turn our economy around and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on the basis of' climate change claims, he said."

The next day (July 29th), the AP's Bohrer reported: "Official: suspension unrelated to polar bear paper"

THE JUNK SCIENCE EFFECT
But the anti-climate action lobby had already jumped on this story as evidenced by blog postings and also editorials appearing in publications such as Investors.com (Investors Business Daily): "Junk Science Unravels"

Some media sources ADDED an additional Ebell quote (see below) that does NOT appear to have been included in the original AP story - such as Forbes.com's version of "Arctic scientist under investigation"

ADDITIONAL EBELL QUOTE: "If global warming really takes hold here in the next few years and bad things start to happen, then we can act. But right now, I think we should just be sitting on our hands, observing."

The above Forbes.com story also included references to the email "Climategate" controversy - again, also not appearing to have been included in the original AP story.

Fox Nation posted: "Global warming industry rocked by polar bear fraud"

FACTS NOT BALANCE
Felicity Barringer at The New York Times improved upon the original AP story by dropping the Ebell quote completely in: "Report on dead polar bears gets a biologist suspended"

See also Andrew Revkin's NYT DotEarth blog: "Polar bear science and the spin cycle"

And for coverage by the Guardian: "Arctic scientist suspended 'over integrity issues' "

MEDIA SAVVY EBELL
Ebell has no problem getting his climate myths into mainstream press, for example, check out this USA Today list of articles containing such Ebell quotes or (not surprisingly) this list from The Washington Times.

FOR MORE ON MYRON EBELL:
See: Exxon Secrets Fact sheet

and Wikipedia's "Ebell page"

and Vanity Fair on Ebell: "A convenient untruth"

and DeSmogBlog's: "Ebell page"

Also see below: "Excerpts from Open Letter to Washington Post"

And below: "The Climate Con"

As I stated in below referenced paper "Climate of Scepticism" (Global Environmental Change, 2005), Ebell, a longtime climate sceptic with industry ties once told the BBC that the UK's former chief scientific adviser Sir David King, "is an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change."

My Climate of Scepticism paper included a focus on the exponential spread of misinformation via wire stories picked up by regional newspapers across the US. This problem continues as community newspapers such as Summit Daily News (Frisco, Colorado) ran the Forbes.com version with the expanded Ebell quote.

TAKE ACTION
The Associated Press should engage in thorough screening of their sources before running stories. I've sent an email conveying my sentiments to the AP. I strongly encourage readers to do the same by writing to: info@ap.org

Jules Boykoff in the Guardian: climate change & the US military

2011-05-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jules Boykoff (Pacific University) highlights acceptance of the risk of catastrophic climate change by the US Department of Defense in "US military goes to war with climate sceptics" (5/20/11)

RealClimate.Org on Recent Climate Media Coverage:

2010-03-15T10:49:00.001-07:00

"Whatevergate"

by Gavin Schmidt

RealClimate.Org Wiki Debunks Climate Nonsense in the Media (Click Here)

2010-03-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

According to the Wiki: "This site is a supplement to the RealClimate.org website. It is primarily an index for debunking of various popular media occurrences of climate-related nonsense."

Current Climate: case studies of US media climate coverage ~ self-censorship and denial

2009-03-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

After many years of scientific consensus on the reality and critical nature of anthropogenic climate change, there has of late been some improvement in the manner and extent of US press coverage on this issue. Surely, better news reporting has had some role in the documented growth of awareness of climate change by the US citizenry. But US carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise even as the level of CO2 in our atmosphere has reached its highest level in human history. In the words of NASA climate expert James Hansen (2008), there is “a wide gap … between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public.”

A recent national survey by the Pew Research Center (2007) indicated that global warming is only a top-tier priority for a minority of US adults and only 47% believe that humans bear most of the blame for climate change. A more recent Gallup poll (2008) found that although there is growing attention to climate change, there hasn’t been a consistent increase in the amount of “worry” about it in the US since Gallup began asking back in 1989. Although polls show that a majority of US residents would support climate mitigation policies (Pew, 2007), these findings help explain why some US voters continue to elect political representatives that fight measures to address this crisis.

Research shows that when a topic is granted a substantial amount of media coverage, that issue increases in priority with the public. Trumbo (1996) found that in the past, the US population became less concerned about global warming as news coverage declined. Good news reporting increases the chances for related political action, but sub-par coverage disempowers society by preventing full knowledge of what is happening in the world. Despite some recent enhancement of media reports, quite often, lines of mass communication are still constructed with rhetoric emphasizing uncertainty, controversy, and climate skepticism.

Scholars in the field of communications explain that media outlets produce a marketable daily product of news, packaged to be pleasing to advertisers and which at least appears to be informative. These (mostly) for-profit companies set the agenda as to the amount of importance we attach to an issue and even what we think and talk about. But agenda-setting also includes downplaying or keeping an issue out of the public spotlight. A study by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV)[1] counted how often the topic of climate change was raised on major Sunday morning political TV programs while interviewing presidential candidates during 2007. Out of well over 2,000 questions asked, only three mentioned global warming. Three programs, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, and CBS’s Face the Nation completely ignored global warming in questioning candidates that year.

Of course, the US political impasse on climate change cannot be blamed entirely on the mainstream press, but this sector has a special role in society. The “code of ethics” of the US Society of Professional Journalists[2] states that members “believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy [and that] [t]he duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” Journalists, according to this code, should “[t]est the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error,” “be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know” and “[d]eny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.” It would seem that adherence to this code might be increasingly jeopardized as the US commercial media system continues on a path towards greater conglomeration where profits are a priority, staff cuts are common, and journalists are more regularly left to rely upon a shared pool of sources in building a story, rather than their own investigation.

What is more difficult to quantify, although it is a genuine problem in the US, is how often the issue of climate change is relevant to a story, be it about energy, loss of species, dwindling water resources, weather, etc., but global warming is glaringly omitted from the piece. Also often excluded from US press reports is the contextual fact that there are increasing numbers of extreme weather events around the world. While such meteorological phenomena may not be, on an individual basis, blamed directly on climate change, the scientific community has for many years indicated that this is what we can expect in a warming world.

Because the mass media are so influential and central to a functioning society, their selection of stories to report upon, or “news judgment” leads to pressure from all directions—including persuasion to change or omit stories. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center and Columbia Journalism Review (2000) of US news reporters, editors, and executives indicated that self-censorship is prolific and that some stories are ignored because they conflict with the interests of news organizations or their advertisers. Research has shown that self-censorship serves many functions including dropping stories that might bring about unwanted tension and criticism. Avoiding stories which might lead to such repercussions without official directives is one definition of self-censorship.

Recent work has focused upon the role of self-censorship in climate news coverage. Scientific research has established a new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system, but as pointed out by the US National Academies’ National Research Council (2002), this predicament has not been well understood or appreciated outside the climate science community. Climate tipping points or positive feedback mechanisms[3] are a robust area of research and yet remain an unfamiliar concept in the US. In comparing two years (2006-2007) of media coverage on the topic of climate tipping points by US news outlets to that of English-speaking news agencies worldwide (Antilla, 2008), self-censorship in the US was apparent as journalists outside the US, especially in the UK, reported on climate feedback loops substantially more than their US counterparts. Even more surprising was that during the year 2006, nearly one-half of the small number of US pieces that discussed such tipping points were commentaries by syndicated opinion writers.

The opposition

We have preciously few representatives in Congress with a background or interest in science, and some of them display an active contempt for the subject. As long as we continue to elect scientific illiterates like Senator James Inhofe, who believes global warming to be a hoax, we will lack the ability to engage in intelligent debate.
Kerry Emanuel, MIT professor of meteorology (2007: 67)

Rather than attempt to publish in peer-reviewed journals, the very few climate deniers with any scientific background choose to make their voices heard via mainstream media. The following statement was made to this author in 2006 by an editor of a US nationally read newspaper. This helps to articulate the landscape of the US press corps when it comes to contrarian voices:

Until the day comes when there’s no disagreement anywhere on the nature, extent, and causes of global warming, and on the possible policy responses to it, we think it’s our obligation to search out the disagreements that do exist, understand them, and report on them as appropriate in each story.… We disagree that it is never appropriate to have non-scientists or advocates comment on or respond to scientific findings. [T]hat smacks of giving science a sort of priesthood status that no human endeavor deserves. It would also open us to the charge of censoring dissenting views.

Some climate skeptics hold high profile media positions while others find little resistance from the US press in dispersing their messages while being assisted by PR agencies that have long been promoting conservatives as guests or news sources. Conservative media personalities with skeptical leanings towards climate change, such as George Will (one of the nation’s most widely recognized and read commentators), Rush Limbaugh (the nation’s top talk radio persona), Ann Coulter (nationally syndicated columnist and frequent TV guest), and Glenn Beck (nationally syndicated radio personality and Fox News talk show host) have great influence over their enormous audiences.

The progressive group “MediaMatters for America” monitors and reports on conservative misinformation in the press (www.mediamatters.org). In 2007, this group found that after Glenn Beck began his former CNN program in May 2006, he had hosted guests that challenged the science of climate change at least 17 times and on only two occasions interviewed guests who accept the consensus.[4] George Will also frequently downplays the reality of climate change, concern for which he has dismissed as manufactured hysteria.

The following headlines from opinion pieces published in the national press demonstrate the continued strength of this contingent:

· “Global warming? Hot air.” George Will, Washington Post, 12/23/04
· “The theology of global warming.” James Schlesinger, Wall Street Journal, 8/8/05
· “Kyoto’s big con.” Editorial Staff, Wall Street Journal, 1/19/06
· “Climate theology and its exponents.” Editorial Staff, Washington Times, 4/3/06
· “Spinning global warming.” Robert D. Novak, Washington Post, 4/3/06
· “The greenhouse myth.” Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com, 4/20/06
· “There is no ‘consensus’ on global warming.” Richard Lindzen, Wall Street Journal, 6/26/06
· “Stern review: the dodgy numbers behind the latest warming scare.” Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, 11/2/06
· “Be not afraid: global warming delusions; the popular imagination has been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.” Daniel B. Botkin, Wall Street Journal, 10/21/07
· “Dark Green Doomsayers.” George Will, Washington Post, 2/15/09

The print press may be the most studied venue exploited by climate deniers, but TV punditry, talk radio, magazines, journals, and the blogosphere have also been highly accessible to these individuals. In fact, traditional radio, still one of the most widely utilized media formats, is a bastion for climate skeptics. An analysis in 2007 of 257 news/talk radio stations held by top commercial station owners revealed that 91% of the total weekday talk programming was conservative[5]. Rush Limbaugh regularly rants on climate change:

I don’t believe the emissions warm the planet in the first place. I don’t buy any of it. But your kids are being sold this bill of goods, folks. They are eating it up. Keep a sharp eye on them. They might soon qualify for Climate Change Delusion Syndrome.
9 July, 2008.

Climate case studies
A. Melting Arctic
The following is an analysis of media coverage of recent scientific findings relating to a climate positive feedback loop—melting Arctic ice. This provides an opportunity to compare multiple press stories (inside/outside the US) covering the same scientific study. Researchers Holland, Bitz, and Tremblay authored “Future abrupt reductions in the summer Arctic sea ice,” published (12/12/06) in Geophysical Research Letters,[6] and stated in their introduction:

[C]hanges have led to the suggestion that a 'tipping point' may have been reached in which strong positive feedbacks accelerate ice retreat and result in an era of thinner, less extensive ice cover in the Arctic [Lindsay and Zhang, 2005[7]].
…
Evidence is mounting that the observed changes are associated with anthropogenically driven climate change and climate models predict Arctic change to continue into the foreseeable future. The transition from perennial to seasonal Arctic ice cover has numerous implications for the climate system.

An essay posted at RealClimate.org (1/12/07) by co-author Bitz listed some of the news outlets that reported on this study. By conducting further research, additional coverage was identified and here seven stories are compared: Reuters (12/11/06), the Times (UK, 12/11/06), CBC News (Canada, 12/11/06), Fox News.com (12/11/06), the New York Times (12/12/06), the Independent (UK, 12/12/06), and BBC News (12/12/06).

All of the above outlets—except the New York Times—included the concept of positive feedback mechanisms. The BBC, the Times, and FoxNews.com included the following quote from Holland:

As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice. This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region.

The story frame constructed by the New York Times which excluded the concept of climate tipping points—a major component of the science—left this audience with an incomplete understanding of the implications of the melting Arctic. This reinforces the findings of the above mentioned research on news coverage of positive feedback mechanisms (Antilla, 2008), in that generally speaking, the US press has been censoring itself on this particular aspect of our climate system—even though improved understanding of climate feedback loops is imperative when it comes to effective climate mitigation.

B. Skeptic Convention
By comparing the story frames of two US nationally read newspapers (the New York Times and Washington Post) with one popular UK newspaper (the Independent) in coverage of the same climate-related event, we gain insight into cross-Atlantic media cultures. Members of the climate countermovement held a conference in New York in March of 2008 (another is set for March 2009). The Post and the Times provided substantial coverage, together publishing 1,591 words on this event. The headline used by the Post, “Global warming skeptics insist humans not at fault,” must have greatly pleased the conference organizers.

While both the Post and the Times provided some context as to the relatively miniscule size of this group, the skeptic message was strongly highlighted. The Post (3/4/08) gave a great deal of space to the contrarians including “high-profile” skeptic S. Fred Singer, who told this paper, “his group surveyed the same peer-reviewed studies the IPCC did” but anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are “not a cause for concern, at least not yet.” The president of the Heartland Institute (a “free-market think tank funded by energy and health care corporations”) told the Post, he believes skeptics “are now on the verge of overturning the idea that humans are driving climate change … [and] we’re at a tipping point that’s going in exactly the opposite direction.”

Also on 3/4/08, the New York Times ran “Cool view of science at meeting on warming” and quoted well known skeptic Patrick Michaels (“a climatologist with a paid position at the antiregulatory Cato Institute”) who “says humans are warming the climate … but disputes the value of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases.” Singer’s message was also driven home by the Times, “climate change was mainly driven by vagaries in the sun” and the science points to “natural causes and a moderate warming trend with beneficial effects for humanity and wildlife.” While the spectacle of this convention may be news, these national press outlets provided highly influential venues for climate disinformation.

In juxtaposition, London’s Independent published a 192 word article, “Tobacco and oil pay for climate conference,” which included no quotations from, nor explanations of positions held by, organizers or attendees. Instead, the Independent’s article stated:

The first international conference designed to question the scientific consensus on climate change is being sponsored by a right-wing American think tank [Heartland Institute - -Competitive Enterprise Institute was named as one of the co-sponsors] which receives money from the oil industry. The same group has tried to undermine the link between passive smoking and health problems and has accepted donations from a major tobacco company.

The frame of the Independent’s story sits in sharp contrast to the balanced approach employed by the Post and the Times. Here US audiences were once again left with mixed messages as to the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Media criticism and solutions

My general impression is that the coverage of climate change over the last 15 or 20 years will be seen in the future as the single greatest failing of American professional journalism ….
Bill Blakemore, ABC News reporter, May 2008. Panel on covering climate change, Columbia Journalism Review[8]

The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by George Bush Sr. in 1992 and as of this writing, we still have no substantive national climate policy in the US—this is clear evidence that efforts to maintain the status quo (including excessive consumption) have been highly successful. This predicament would not be possible without the complicity of mainstream media organizations.

In order for US voters to elect a greater number of leaders that are willing to tackle global warming, the public must be better informed. Climate change must be a major and recurrent story in the news. Depth, breadth, accuracy, and consistency are required. But it is important to note that the power of the US press is formidable; when news agencies cover an issue consistently, the public reacts by changing policies and passing laws (Gelbspan, 2004). Media stories that provide context and frame climate change as real and urgent as well as a tremendous challenge to be met by all of us, significantly enhance public understanding.

Concern for improved communication between climate scientists and the press has led to increased cross-discipline dialogue on this topic as well as a new area of academic study. Also on a positive note, there has been, for some time now, a number of organizations (academic and non-academic) critiquing the US mainstream media and/or working towards national media reform.[9] In addition, new venues have opened up for communication on climate science, such as the award-winning blog managed by a panel of international climate experts, RealClimate.org.

The Washington Post recently published a story that made the rare connection between “human-generated heat-trapping gases” and the intensity of extreme weather. “Report on climate predicts extremes” (6/20/08) covered a study issued by the US Climate Change Science Program which provided an assessment of how global warming has “helped to transform the climate of the United States and Canada over the past 50 years—and how it may do so in the future.” Hopefully, this type of coverage will increase and survive the minefield of environmental skepticism.

REFERENCES
Antilla, L. (2008) “Self-censorship and science: a geographical review of media coverage of climate tipping points,” Public Understanding of Science OnLineFirst 9/16/08 doi:10.1177/0963662508094099.

Emanuel, K. (2007) What We Know about Climate Change. Cambridge, MA: Boston Review.

Gallup, Inc. (2008) “Little increase in Americans’ global warming worries: public just can’t seem to get worked up about it.” http://www.gallup.com/.

Gelbspan, R. (2004) Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists have Fueled the Climate Crisis—and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. New York: Basic Books.

Hansen, J. (2008) “Global warming twenty years later: tipping points near.” Congressional Testimony. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/.

National Academies’ National Research Council (2002) Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074347/html.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press [in Association with Columbia Journalism Review] (2000) “Self censorship: how often and why: journalists avoiding the news,” http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=39.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (2007) “Global warming: a divide on causes and solutions: public views unchanged by unusual weather.” www.pewresearch.org/pubs/282/global-warming-a-divide-on-causes-and-solutions.

Trumbo, C. (1996) “Constructing climate change: claims and frames in US news coverage of an environmental issue,” Public Understanding of Science 5: 269-83.

[1] www.democracynow.org/2008/1/10/study_of_over_2_000_sunday
[2] www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
[3] Climate system responses to climate change which lead to additional/enhanced changes.
[4] http://mediamatters.org/items/200705020001
[5] ‘The structural imbalance of political talk radio’ (joint report by the Center for American Progress and Free Speech, 22 June 2007) www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/talk_radio.html.
[6] 33:L23503, doi:10.1029/2006GL028024
[7] Lindsay, R.W. and Zhang, J. (2005) ‘The thinning of Arctic sea ice, 1988-2003: have we passed a tipping point?’, Journal of Climate 18: 4879-94.
[8] www.cjr.org/the_observatory/covering_climate_panel_video.php
[9] www.MediaMatters.org, www.FreePress.net, www.FAIR.org, and www.ReclaimTheMedia.org.

Journal Article: Self-censorship and Science

2008-04-23T20:28:00.001-07:00

Author: Liisa Antilla

Self-censorship and science: a geographical review of media coverage of climate tipping points, Public Understanding of science, March 2010 (online September 2008) Vol. 19, No. 2, 240-256 DOI: 10.1177/0963662508094099. Available at: http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/2/240

Abstract: Public perception of global climate change is strongly influenced by media constructions of scientific knowledge. This paper explores recent scientific findings and the press coverage thereof and is based on a content analysis of two years of global reporting on climate related positive feedback mechanisms (climate system responses to global warming which lead to further warming). Results indicate that non-US news organizations, especially in the UK, are at the forefront of the discourse on climate feedback loops. Poor US press coverage on such climate thresholds might be understood not only as self-censorship, but as a "false negative" error.

UN Conference on Climate Change in Nairobi: panel discussion on communicating climate change

2006-10-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

CICERO event program and video (including my presentation): Click Here.

Report on event published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development: Click Here.

Associated Press story (International Herald Tribune):
11/14/06 NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A spokesman for the U.S. senator who described global warming as a hoax showed up at a gathering of believers Tuesday, claiming scientific dissent on the issue was being suppressed and demonized.
One scholar shot back that the Senate aide must be living on another planet. The exchange took place at the UN conference on climate change, which has drawn more than 5,000 diplomats, activists and scientists to consider new steps in combating global warming.

"The skeptics who get vocal are vilified," said Marc Morano, director of communications for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee chairman, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, has enraged environmentalists by calling global warming alarmist and a hoax.

Morano was invited to be part of a panel discussion on how best to convey the issue of climate change in the media. His fellow panelists, including Jules Boykoff of Pacific University in Oregon, argued that skeptics actually get too much attention in the press.

Efforts by journalists to create "balanced" stories on global warming allow "a handful of skeptics . . . to be treated as equals to thousands of scientists," said Boykoff, an assistant professor in the department of politics and government.

Liisa Antilla, a geographer and scholar of global warming, said it was wrong for journalists to "frame climate science as uncertain."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN network of more than 2,000 climate and other scientists, says rising temperatures will expand oceans via heat and runoff of melting land ice; shift climate zones, disrupting agriculture, and lead to more frequent and intense climate events, such as the drought now in its fourth year in East Africa.

Major climate scientists point out that skeptics on global warming rarely publish in peer-reviewed journals, the cornerstone of modern science. As evidence of climate change has mounted in recent years, the skeptics' voices have lessened.

"The shrillness of these skeptics and their numbers have been on the decline," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, told The Associated Press before the panel discussion.

But Morano referred to the two-week UN conference as an "echo chamber" where "the media and climate alarmists demonize climate skeptics."

Pal Prestrud, director of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, shot back that "we're on different planets or maybe even different galaxies."

Scientists attribute at least some of the past century's 0.6-degree- Celsius rise in global temperatures to the accumulation in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil-fuel-burning sources.

The United States and Australia are the only major industrialized countries to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases. U.S. President George W. Bush says it would harm the U.S. economy, and that it should have required emissions cuts in poorer countries as well.

The Climate Con: media, misinformation & the masters of spin

2006-10-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Despite climbing US greenhouse gas emissons and in the face of international consensus, the Bush administration—enabled by industry influence over both Congress and big media—continues to suppress and distort climate science while pushing regressive energy policies. A prime sponsor of the “Bush stance” is ExxonMobil. While earning record-breaking profits, Exxon joins other business interests in spending millions on political campaigns, lobbying efforts, and financing groups and individuals willing to publicly controvert global warming. The lavish funding of climate deniers and the unregulated market ideology behind it have generated a hostile, unrelenting PR machine that not only disputes peer reviewed science with specious commentary, but specializes in character assassination.

This Gordian knot is due, in no small part, to a corporate media focused on entertainment and profit. Although the nefarious stratagem of deploying so-called experts to engage the press was revealed over a decade ago and notwithstanding repeated confirmation of anthropogenic climate change, many reporters and editors are amnesiac as to these facts. Worse, some journalists and commentators are key players in the deception.

Myths & mythmakers
Regrettably, the journalistic standard of “balance” is misguidedly and frequently employed when covering climate change. For years, contrarians with ties to industry and/or free-market organizations such as Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, S. Fred Singer, Myron Ebell, Robert Balling, Jr., John Christy, Roy Spencer, George Taylor, Exxon lobbyist William O’Keefe, and others—have exploited the practice of reporting “both sides of the story.” Attempting a balanced frame, the Washington Post last May quoted Republican Senator James Inhofe (Oklahoma)—another payee of energy companies who infamously called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Inhofe, reported the Post, “maintains there is no evidence that human activity is warming Earth.” A sampling of Post climate stories over seven months (1 July 2005 - 31 January 2006) by this author uncovered eleven articles that incorporated industry-affiliated voices.

By publishing misinformation in this fashion, top news providers betray our trust in their informed review of the science. A major player in this media spectacle is conservative pundit George Will who laments that Americans “got their anxiety” about global warming from “crusading journalism.” During a recent episode of ABC’s This Week, Will grabbed his decades-old reports on “global cooling” and began reading them to host George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos: George Will … we’ve been debating [global warming] for ten years now. You’ve been doing it for 20 … Will: 30. … Will: New York Times 1975, sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. Northern hemisphere glaciation. ... [Other panelists argue scientific consensus.] Stephanopoulos: This debate – we’re going to come back to it many times. At RealClimate.org, Eric Steig explained: [T]here was cooling in the 1940s to 1970s. But the cooling is a small variation superimposed on the overall warming of the last century…. [N]o one is claiming that CO2 is the only influence on climate. Indeed, far from being an embarrassment to climate scientists, this short period of cooling is in good agreement with model calculations …

Further, William Connolley has shown that Will cites scientific findings “grossly out of context” when repeating a snippet from a 1976 paper published in Science which examined the effect of the earth’s orbit upon ice ages—a study that ignored human factors. Obsessed with “Northern Hemisphere glaciation,” Will disingenuously omits the fact that these scientists were referring to a “long-term trend over the next 20,000 years.” Any public discourse on climate change seems to spark a firestorm from right-wing pundits. Last April, Robert Novak (Post) asserted that “scientists are divided” and quoted Roy Spencer who disagreed with the “crusade” of climate expert James Hansen of NASA. That same month, columnist Jonah Goldberg (Los Angeles Times) ironically worried that news media “have gone after scientists” not interested in plunging “into some half-baked environmental jihad.” But titanic spin operations are being carried out on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and FoxNews.com. Authors Chris Mooney and Paul Thacker have both published exposés on the ties between industry lobbies and Steve Milloy, columnist at FoxNews.com and frequent contributor to the Washington Times. This clamor of misinformation—forged from myths, uncertainties, and free-market rhetoric—thrives in the welcoming media echo chamber.

Talking points and talking heads There’s a debate over whether [global warming is] manmade or naturally caused. (George W. Bush, ABC News, 26 June, 2006) This countermovement is just one component of the larger effort by conservative ideologues to maintain power, profits, and the status quo. This constructed polemic is one in a series of phoney controversies. This “debate” is exacerbated by political insiders such as Inhofe, Republican strategist Frank Luntz, and former cabinet member James Schlesinger (Schlesinger’s op-eds have appeared in the Post, L.A. Times, and Wall Street Journal)—all peddle myths such as global cooling (Mooney has also uncovered Schlesinger's energy ties, see American Prospect Online 8/23/05). In his critique (God Willing?) of Bush rhetoric, scholar David Domke examined the influence of religious fundamentalism upon White House communiqués. Domke discovered a messaging strategy that capitalized on fear. Also employing this tactic are climate spinners such as Schlesinger (Post) who warned: “The CO2/climate-change relationship has hardened into orthodoxy—always a worrisome sign—an orthodoxy that searches out heretics and seeks to punish them.” Intensifying the danger (be very afraid) is the “crusade” of Hansen (Spencer and Novak), “crusading journalism” (Will), and the “environmental jihad” (Goldberg).

Media reform now The release of Al Gore’s latest book, An Inconvenient Truth, along with the film of the same title serves as a pretext for the dissemination of climate myths via news programs, commentaries (e.g. Michaels, “Gore’s inconvenient lie,” Washington Times), and advertisements. This crisis of disinformation is a consequence of the crisis of journalism—a direct result of corporatization and anti-democratic tendencies within the existing media system. Until there is a renewed interest in an informed citizenry, the denialist cabal shall enjoy primetime coverage of their propaganda—further constraining our ability to address oncoming climate chaos.

The Counterbalance of Climate News

2006-05-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

In a recent Washington Post op-ed (1/18/06), David Ignatius observed:

Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early effects of global climate change—but that isn’t news, by most people’s measure. Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic. We can’t see these changes in our personal lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they don’t grab us the way a plane crash would—even though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life on the planet.… The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.

Occasionally the U.S. mainstream media emphasizes the broad international agreement that most of the global warming of recent decades is caused by human or anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Receiving far less prominence is the consensus that we must begin immediately to reduce these emissions; our lack of knowledge on some aspects of climate change notwithstanding.

Certainly, there are journalists who understand the gravity of this predicament and frame their work appropriately. Still, too many reporters—in a misguided effort to “balance” global warming coverage—regularly interject their stories with commentary from climate skeptics that downplays the urgency, scale and causation of climate change.

Most contrarians who exploit this opportunity to distort the news are affiliated with industry and/or anti-regulatory lobbies and the think tanks and groups they finance. Rather than constructively participate in scientific debate via the forum of legitimate scientific literature, for the most part, these well-funded skeptics—some with limited scientific background—prefer to engage with journalists and politicians. George Monbiot of the Guardian Unlimited (2/25/05) refers to these individuals as “PR people” or “loyalists of ExxonMobil” who are “commissioned to begin with a conclusion and then devise arguments to justify it.”

Adherence to the standard of balance while reporting on the climate crisis results in a never-ending run of story frames that invoke a false controversy—not only about the study or governmental affair covered in the piece, but even as to whether we should have any real concern about global warming.

Climate skeptics have long circulated a false idea that the Medieval Warm Period is evidence that the current level of increased global temperatures is not unusual. Scientifically, this myth has just suffered a lethal blow; however, as we shall see below, it is likely to live on within mainstream media.

Earlier this year a press release from the University of East Anglia in Great Britain (2/9/06) explained the findings of a new paper published in the journal Science (2/10/06):
[This] study found evidence for periods of significant warmth (890–1170) in the Northern Hemisphere during medieval times and for clearly colder periods (1580–1850) during the so-called “Little Ice Age.” [The key conclusion of researchers Osborn and Briffa] was that the 20th century stands out as having unusually widespread warmth, compared to all of the natural warming and cooling episodes during the past 1200 years [since the year 800].

In illustration of how the fable associated with the Medieval Warm Period has been spread, Republican Senator James Inhofe (Oklahoma)—who has received substantial financial support from the energy sector—told the Washington Times (7/30/03): “If the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages than the age of coal-fired power plants and SUVs, what role do man-made emissions play in influencing climate? I think any person with a modicum of common sense would say, ‘Not Much.’ ” More recently, the Wall Street Journal (6/21/05) editorialized that since the Earth has “undergone large temperature variations within recorded human history” including a Medieval Warm Period, “the slight warming believed to have occurred in the past century could well be no more than a natural rebound.”

This Science study was not the first to contradict the delusion surrounding the Medieval Warm Period but these scientists were the first to analyze a variety of temperature records from across the entire Northern Hemisphere. The significance of this work was highlighted by Michael Mann of Penn State University, a well-respected climate scientist, who told the National Geographic News (2/9/06): this “might be the nail in the coffin for the small minority of very vocal climate change denialists who continue to challenge the conclusion that the recent warming … is out of the ordinary.” Blogging at RealClimate.org, Mann (2/09/06) reminded the contrarians (and reporters who cite them?) that “paleoclimate evidence comprises only one of many independent lines of evidence indicating a primary role of human activity in modern climate change.”

Although it is an important addition to our understanding of global warming, within the U.S. this study attracted relatively scant coverage. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Toner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was one of the few to report on this research but regrettably his article, “Global Warming Biggest Since Viking Era” (2/10/06), exemplifies the influence of the climate counter-movement upon our news.

In Toner’s second paragraph he reported: “The analysis of data … shows that the current warming trend is the most extensive change—warm or cold—since the time of the Vikings.” Mention of the Vikings in this manner brings to mind the Medieval Warm Period during which time reduced ice pack allowed the Norse explorers to colonize new areas such as Iceland and Greenland. Although the Journal-Constitution article opened with “The warming of the world during the last century is greater—and more widespread—than any other shift in the global climate in the last 1,200 years,” due to the well-known myth, the Viking references in the headline[i] and second paragraph lead to unnecessary confusion.

Aware of the denialist talking point, Toner noted that “The Medieval warming which encouraged the Vikings to settle previously inhospitable regions … is sometimes cited by critics of modern global warming theories as evidence that the Earth can experience widespread warming independent of human activity.” Confounding readers further, the Journal-Constitution story included a rebuttal from S. Fred Singer—perhaps the “dean of contrarians” according to climate expert Stephen Schneider (stephenschneider.stanford.edu). Singer told the Journal-Constitution: “It’s good that they acknowledge that the last thousand years contained two warm periods with a cold one in between.… But it still doesn’t prove that the 20th century was unique.”

Singer’s background is rich in industry and anti-regulatory connections. He has been vociferous on various scientific issues as well as “regulatory excess” for many years. Singer is also the president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). One of Singer’s papers appearing on the SEPP website contains the outrageous assertion that “observational evidence … suggests that any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations … and … inconsequential.… [T]he impacts of warming and of higher CO2 [carbon dioxide] levels are likely to be beneficial for human activities.”

Toner has been covering the climate beat for years and seems to be proficient on ecological concerns. Therefore, the frame constructed in his piece—especially the insertion of Singer’s scientifically untenable position—is all the more perplexing. When asked what factors led to the inclusion of Singer’s comments, Toner told this author that this was done “in an effort to provide some balance to what would otherwise have been a single source story.”

A small number of newspapers picked up the Journal-Constitution article. Remarkably, while reprinting the Journal-Constitution piece, the Albany Times Union (2/10/06) and the Kansas City Star (2/11/06) both excluded the erroneous remarks of Singer and changed their headlines to “Warm-Up Greatest Shift in 1200 Years” and “Warming Trend Dwarfs Others,” respectively. By improving upon the headline and dropping Singer’s fabrication, the frame was significantly reconstructed by these two papers. Nevertheless, Singer’s disinformation was spread exponentially and internationally when the Waco Tribune Herald (2/10/06), the Philadelphia Inquirer (2/13/06) and Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (2/11/06) ran the Journal-Constitution story.

The perversion of science by media-savvy skeptics is not news itself—and has even been previously recognized by the Journal-Constitution. Ironically, the Journal-Constitution ran a story within the last few years (6/1/03) covering a climate study, related to the Medieval Warm Period, underwritten by “energy interests” that helped “finance the groups … promoting it.” This Journal-Constitution article carefully outlined the financial ties between certain scientists and industry lobbies. In this piece, journalist Jeff Nesmith quoted a representative of the Climate Institute: “By relying on the news media’s inclination to include both sides of a story, the industries were able to create the impression that scientists were deeply divided over climate change.… It was all very shrewdly done.”

In spite of (limited) recognition by the mainstream press of this Gordian knot, but in service to powerful forces intent on maintaining confusion and federal inaction, the entrenched balancing act continues. When journalists disseminate manufactured climate myths they betray our trust in their informed review of the science. This is both unforgivable and folly, as our opportunities to reduce the destructive effects of climate change—like glaciers and the polar ice caps—are rapidly melting away.

[i] Toner advised this author that he does not write headlines.

Excerpts from Open Letter to Washington Post Ombudsman: climate skeptics as sources

2006-02-11T22:04:00.000-08:00

Open Letter to The Washington Post

February 11, 2006

Deborah Howell, Ombudsman
The Washington Post

RE: Coverage of climate change news

Dear Ms. Howell,

I am a reader of the Washington Post and a human geographer with an interest in media coverage of science....

I have just completed a LexisNexis review of seven months of climate change coverage by the Washington Post. While I commend the Post on providing some fine reporting on this vital issue, I believe that there is one aspect of your coverage that should be reviewed. Articles that grant equal space to “climate skeptics” severely limit the understanding of readers by diverting their attention away from the fact that there is international scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change being a dangerous, current reality. I hope that you will share this letter with the science writers and editors at the Post so they might reconsider some of their reporting procedures.

As you are aware, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded (2001) that there is strong evidence that most of the observed warming of the Earth over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities, and other scientific bodies agree.
...
In 2004 scholars Boykoff and Boykoff found that “balance,” one of the standards of professional journalism, can lead to biased news coverage of climate change. These researchers found that:

[A]dherence to the norm of balanced reporting leads to informationally biased coverage of global warming. This bias, hidden behind the veil of journalistic balance, creates both discursive and real political space for the US government to shirk responsibility and delay action regarding global warming.

This balancing technique often includes rebuttals by other climate “experts” who happen to be affiliated with industry lobbies that benefit from our fossil fuel addiction and/or anti-regulatory groups holding a radical “free-market” ideology; these sources have deep vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Consequently, this framing tool can create a false impression that the scientific findings or proposed mitigation policies that are the subject of the news article are highly controversial. While recognizing that a number of the Post articles reviewed here did mention the industry connections of the climate contrarians, including their comments still gives them some legitimacy.

Within the seven month period of July 1, 2005 to January 31, 2006, I found 43 articles that substantially related to climate change. Eleven (or 25%) of these 43 articles contained remarks from persons affiliated in some way with think tanks or organizations that have received funding from industry and all eleven articles were written by Juliet Eilperin.

Beginning with the Post article, “G-8 Urges Action On Global Warming, With General Goals; U.S. Resists Gas-Reduction Levels” (07/08/05, Section A19) the Post used William O’Keefe, of the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) as a source. Here I shall point out that the GMI receives funds from ExxonMobil ($170,000 in 2004). In addition, O’Keefe is a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil and is a former executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. trade association of the petroleum industry. On 12/16/05 the Post quoted O’Keefe questioning the significance that three institutions (NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NOAA, and the U.K. Met Office) had all found 2005 to be the hottest year in recorded history for the Northern Hemisphere—this, according to O’Keefe, was “trying to make news where none exists.”

A Post article from 10/13/05, “World Temperatures Keep Rising with a Hot 2005” .... After mentioning that there was “A vocal minority of scientists [who] say the warming climate is the result of a natural cycle,” the article quoted “skeptic, state climatologist George Taylor of Oregon” who told the Post that he just didn’t trust the calculations of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. While Mr. Taylor holds no doctorate degree he is a “scientific and policy advisor board member” to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change which has received funding from ExxonMobil ($40,000 in 2003).

Taylor has written a number of essays in which he is dismissive of anthropogenic climate change. On 8/20/00 Taylor wrote: “I believe that the human contribution to climate change is a great deal smaller than natural variations” and in “Science wake-up call: there’s more hype than truth” (5/04) Taylor claimed: “[E]xtreme [weather] events are becoming LESS common.” And for the on-line journal Tech Central Station (TCS, more details on TCS follow), Taylor (11/22/04) critiqued the intergovernmental Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report; although Taylor had not “thoroughly examine[d]” this study, based on his review it “appear[ed] to be guilty of selective use of data” and was essentially “bad science.”

The 10/13/05 Post article also included comments from ExxonMobil lobbyist O’Keefe who asserted that policymakers should not rush to impose new rules on industry when it remains unclear whether the current warming worldwide reflects natural climate variability or a human-induced trend. O’Keefe informed the Post that “It still remains very complicated.”

Shortly thereafter, on 10/18/05, the Post ran “Warming to Cause Harsher Weather, Study Says” (Section A2) which included a confident statement by longtime skeptic Patrick J. Michaels who is affiliated with a number of conservative groups that distort the science of climate change and receive funds from ExxonMobil. Michaels told the Post that doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations was “not going to happen”—in contradiction to a team of scientists from Purdue University and an Italian research group whose findings were consistent with a paper published by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Known industry affiliates and climate skeptics Myron Ebell and John R. Christy have been recent commentators in Post articles as well and both have ties to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)—also a recipient of substantial funds from ExxonMobil ($405,000 in 2002; $465,000 in 2003; $270,000 in 2004). In December 2003 Ebell told Scripps Howard News Service: “the warming of recent decades is not surprising since the planet had been in a ‘little ice age’ until the early 19th century … It isn’t much to worry about.” And an article published by the Independent (UK) on 1/17/05 relating to climate skeptics reported that Ebell declared that Sir David King, chief scientific advisor to the government of the United Kingdom, “is an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change.”

A Post article on 7/2/05 noted that Ebell was (not surprisingly) “pleased with the firm and consistent position Bush is taking on climate change.” On 12/11/05 the Post provided space to Ebell and his dismissal of the outcome of the Montréal climate negotiations. The following month (1/19/06, “Ex-EPA Chiefs Agree on Greenhouse Gas Lid,” Section A4) the Post quoted Ebell (with the qualifier “whose think tank [CEI] receives contributions from companies opposed to mandatory carbon limits”): “EPA administrators like to regulate things … That’s their only approach to anything.”

According to the website of the conservative Independent Institute, John R. Christy is on this group’s panel on global warming. A press release (7/28/03) from this organization stated that a report based on the research of Christy and others, which appears to be non-peer-reviewed, included findings that satellite data show “significantly less [warming] than forecast by climate models that are based on bad science” and that EPA bias is traceable to “a Clinton [a]dministration product that was based on bad science.” According to corporate records, ExxonMobil contributed $10,000 to the Independent Institute in 2002 and $10,000 in 2003.

Myron Ebell is also the ‘group leader’ of the Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC). The CEI, GMI, and The Independent Institute are members of the CHC and essays by Christy appear on this group’s website. The CHC website is designed and maintained by member Consumer Alert. Consumer Alert has also received funding from ExxonMobil ($10,000 in 2002; $15,000 in 2003; $25,000 in 2004).

Roy Spencer, another recent Post source has similar affiliations. Writings by Spencer have appeared in a publication of the Heartland Institute—another member of CHC. The Heartland Institute accepted $100,000 from ExxonMobil in 2004. A Post article published 11/27/05 quoted Spencer, who also is (according to the Post) a “[contributor] to … [TCS], which is in part funded by oil companies opposed to mandatory carbon limits.” Spencer told the Post he “does not believe the climate will warm as rapidly as many computer models predict” and that “[a]sking people to cut their energy use is like asking people to stop eating.”

Christy and Spencer have received a great deal of media attention due to their controversial work on tropospheric temperature trends—their studies found little warming. These (now proven erroneous) findings have been used by Christy, Spencer, and others to dispute the reality and magnitude of anthropogenic climate change. According to NPR, Republican Senator James Inhofe (Oklahoma)—who also has received generous financial contributions from the energy sector—was in part relying “on the work of Christy” when he (first) proclaimed that “Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Not surprisingly, Senator Inhofe has also cited George Taylor (inaccurately referring to him as Dr. Taylor) when dismissing the reality if climate change. Incidentally, the 12/11/05 Post article also included the perspectives of Senator Inhofe who spurned the Montréal pact which would lead only to “a dead end economically.”

According to a team of scientists whose research helped to substantiate tropospheric warming:

On the basis of [the Christy/Spencer] records, it has been argued that the troposphere has not warmed … thus casting doubt on the usefulness of climate models (which predict that anthropogenic warming should have occurred) … and the reality of human-induced climate change (Santer, et al., Science 300, 1280 [2003]).

Finally, the Christy/Spencer work is recognized as being overturned. After roughly a decade of peer-reviewed, published studies that found errors in the work of Christy and Spencer, the faulty Christy/Spencer results are now regarded as, in the words of editors at Science (9/2/05), “inconsistent with our understanding ….” Yet for some inexplicable reason Christy and Spencer continue as commentators on climate stories by the Post and other media outlets.

The 11/17/05 Post article “Climate shift Tied to 150,000 Fatalities; Most Victims are Poor, Study Says” (Section A20) noted that “Some experts … questioned whether it was fair to attribute death and illness in the developing world to global warming” and then immediately quoted Christy who blamed “Thugocracies … [that don’t have] free markets and therefore free people.” More recently, on 1/29/06 the Post quoted Christy as saying “it is possible increased warming will be offset by other factors, such as increased cloudiness that would reflect more sunlight. Whatever happens, we will adapt to it.”

Christy seems to hold an optimistic vision of our ability to adapt to the substantial climatic and physical changes to our planet that are and will be caused by climate change. On 2/1/05 Christy told the New York Times: “If we just significantly minimize our vulnerabilities to the extremes which occurred during the last 250 years, we’ll be O.K. for the next 100 …. [As for rising seas] … [y]ou’ve got 100 years to move inland.”

The following excerpts from Christy’s (2002) contribution “The Global Warming Fiasco” to Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death are insightful; this book was a project of the CEI:

The IPCC 2001 claims the following: There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human factors.
…
But is this evidence truly “convincing” or “beyond doubt” or “stronger than a DNA test?” The evidence is described only as “new and stronger” and hides the fact that uncertainties and inconsistencies are not only still present but in some cases growing.
…
The alarmist media reports … become the source of downstream hysteria promoted by those with extreme environmental agendas. Such pronouncements by ideological environmentalists that the globe’s weather is worsening are actually false.
…
The types of bad weather people really care about are not changing enough to notice.

Now, to the last of the eleven articles reviewed here. To begin, Senator Inhofe’s spokesman Bill Holbrook was consulted for a Post article published 9/16/05 that discussed peer-reviewed scientific articles that had concluded “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes.” Holbrook flatly dismissed any correlation between warmer oceans and hurricane intensity. This same article quoted James O’Brien who [like Taylor] “writes for the online free-market journal [TCS],” (in fact, O’Brien, Taylor, Spencer, and Michaels are all “roundtable members” of TCS) O’Brien said he had found “no indication of an increase in intensity.”

The climate contrarians identified above play an essential role in the well-funded effort by industry lobbies and other special interest groups to cast doubt upon or downplay the reality, urgency, scale, and causal factors of destructive climate change. The continuing false prognostications by industry-affiliated skeptics is reprehensible and has contributed to our current dilemma—being that the U.S. has, in many aspects, fallen behind the rest of the world on the urgent issues of mitigation of climate change and energy modernization.

When mainstream media prints or broadcasts disinformation relating to the gravity or causes of climate change it violates the trust of an audience that assumes some level of informed interpretation of the situation. Again, while I praise the Washington Post and Ms. Eilperin for having published some highly informative and important articles on this topic, I ask the Post staff to act as vanguard against the spurious assertions of industry-affiliated climate skeptics.

I look forward to your response.

Respectfully,

Liisa Antilla
Seattle, WA

cc: Juliet Eilperin

The New York Times & Denier John Christy: abbreviated versions of 2 open letters to ombudsman

2006-02-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

Open Letter to The New York Times

December 27, 2005

Byron Calame, Public Editor
The New York Times

RE: Coverage of climate science news

Dear Mr. Calame,

I am a reader of the New York Times and a human geographer with research interests in science and the media. As you are aware, our nation presently faces many formidable challenges—not the least of which are the ramifications of our dependence on foreign oil and the well-documented changes in the earth’s climate.... As I present the below case study involving coverage of the issue of climate change by the New York Times, I ask that the same be brought to the attention of your science reporters and editors so that they might reconsider some of their procedures.

Research has shown that “balance,” one of the standards of professional journalism, can at times lead to biased news coverage. While reporting on science, journalists often attempt to balance their story by including rebuttals by other experts. This framing technique can create a false impression that the scientific findings are highly controversial. Particularly troubling is the use of industry-affiliated “skeptics” as commentators in articles relating to climate change. Repudiations from a handful of “climate contrarians” engenders confusion among readers, leaving them unaware that the scientific knowledge is robust and the international scientific community agrees—significant anthropogenic climate change is a current reality.

Case study: John Christy and the New York Times
Beginning in the early 1990s, John Christy and Roy Spencer (C/S) have published a number of analyses of tropospheric temperature trends derived from satellite microwave sounding unit (MSU) data. These researchers had (erroneously) found little warming in the troposphere and the paradox created thereby has not only become a hotbed of scientific inquiry but a highly valuable device for climate skeptics. In the words of the Santer, et al. team, whose research has helped to substantiate tropospheric warming:
On the basis of [the C/S] records, it has been argued that the troposphere has not warmed … thus casting doubt on the usefulness of climate models (which predict that anthropogenic warming should have occurred), the reliability of thermometer-based observations of surface warming, and the reality of human-induced climate change (Science 300, 1280 [2003]).

The confirmation of our warming troposphere is one segment of a plethora of scientific findings evidencing dangerous anthropogenic climate change; yet many, including some of our policy-makers, have referred to the (now discredited) MSU findings of C/S while attacking efforts to mitigate global warming. According to NPR, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma was at least partially relying on the C/S work when he (now repeatedly has) proclaimed, on the floor of the Senate, “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” John Christy (University of Alabama in Huntsville) has testified to Congress that “numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2 [carbon dioxide]…. CO2 is not a pollutant.” While Inhofe has received generous financial contributions from the energy sector, Christy is affiliated with conservative think-tanks and groups that receive funding from the fossil fuel industry.

Now I shall recount an apparent “tipping point” in the “controversy” surrounding the scientific evidence of tropospheric warming. The below trio of new studies published in Science (9/2/05) should silence those relying on the C/S findings to dispute the reality of anthropogenic climate change:
C.A. Mears, F.J. Wentz, Science 309, 1548 (2005).
B.D. Santer et al., Science 309, 1551 (2005).
S.C. Sherwood, J.R. Lanzante, C.L. Meyer, Science 309, 1556 (2005).
Advance notice of the above research led to a story by the New York Times, “Studies find atmosphere is warmer” (8/12/05, Section A, National Desk), that explained:
[C]limate experts … said that the new studies were very significant, effectively resolving a puzzle that had been used by opponents of curbs on heat-trapping greenhouse gases…. [The Mears and Wentz paper] identifies a fresh error in the [C/S findings] that, more firmly than ever, showed warming in the troposphere, particularly in the tropics.

This Times article also noted that Christy and Spencer “conceded … that they had made a mistake but [and this is significant] said that their revised calculations still produced a warming rate too small to be a concern.”

Notwithstanding the fact that the Times has published many exceptional and informative stories on climate change, there has been a trend of including dismissive comments from John Christy when reporting on this topic—here are three examples:
Ø “Report warns New York of perils of global warming” (6/30/99, Section B, Metropolitan Desk):
[Christy] said people mistakenly considered the climate to which they were accustomed the normal one. “I get the feeling people think they have the right to a particular climate” [Christy] said. “The system doesn’t let you have that.”

Ø “Can global warming be studied too much?” (12/3/02, Section F, Science Desk):
“We are still struggling with the ‘what will be’ question, especially at regional scales, which makes answering the ‘what will be dangerous’ question too difficult to handle,” said [Christy]. As a result, he said, any emissions plan should be “economically benign.”

Ø “Deciding how much global warming is too much” (2/1/05, Section F, Science Desk):
“If we just significantly minimize our vulnerabilities to the extremes which occurred during the last 250 years, we’ll be O.K. for the next 100,” said [Christy] who has long opposed cuts in emissions. As for rising seas, he said “You’ve got 100 years to move inland.”

While attracting minimal press coverage, others within the scientific community have, over the last decade, published peer-reviewed findings that indicated a warming troposphere. At this point I shall attempt a précis of the extensive body of MSU derived tropospheric temperature studies that contradict C/S; ... First of all, Prabhakara, et al. published the following three MSU analyses but failed to receive coverage from the Times or any other mainstream media outlet:
C. Prabhakara, J. J. Nucciarone, J. -M. Yoo, Clim. Change 30, 349 (1995).
C. Prabhakara, R. Iacovazzi, J. -M. Yoo, G. Dalu, Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 1927 (1998).
C. Prabhakara, R. Iacovazzi, J. -M. Yoo, G. Dalu, Geophys. Res. Lett. 27, 3517 (2000).

The below findings were discussed in a Times article headlined “As debate persists, new study confirms atmospheric warming” (8/13/98, Section A, National Desk):
F.J. Wentz, M. Schabel. Nature 394, 661 (1998).
This team is associated with the research group “Remote Sensing Systems” or “RSS.” Comments from Christy constituted a substantial portion of this Times piece that closed with a statement from him connecting the 1997-98 El Niño to the warming atmosphere.

The following two studies received some newspaper coverage; however, rebukes by Christy appeared in many of the press reports.
C. Mears, M. C. Schabel, F.J. Wentz, J. Clim. 16, 3650 (2003).
The following are excerpts from the Times story, “New view of data supports human link to global warming” (11/18/03, Section F, Science Desk), that was based upon this later RSS study:
The finding is subtle but significant, experts say, particularly because previous studies … showing no warming, have been highlighted by opponents of curbs on heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions linked to recent warming.
…
[Christy], who has long been an outspoken critic of catastrophic climate predictions, said, “We’ve had enough years of this human-induced forcing to get some boundaries on it, and it’s just not going in the dramatic and catastrophic direction.”
…
[C/S] … [drew] strong interest … from companies and elected officials questioning whether global warming was happening. More recently … [C/S] concluded that there had been a slight, but inconsequential warming.

B.D. Santer et al., Science 300, 1280 (2003).
This Santer, et al. work compared the C/S MSU data set with that of RSS (2003); while attracting no coverage by the Times, it did receive attention from a handful of other newspapers, such as the Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA). The Press story (6/12/03) included: “Christy said [his work] indicates global warming is a natural Earth cycle. ‘Why hasn’t the troposphere not warmed if the climate is changing? Or maybe the climate is not changing like some think’ [Christy] said.”

When, in 2003, researchers Vinnikov and Grody published their MSU study in Science (302, 269), Cox News Service (9/11/03) reported that “[Grody] said Christy got a copy of the report … and tried to persuade Science editors not to publish it. ‘He was very harsh in his reaction,’ Grody said.” Reference this same study, the Wall Street Journal (9/12/03) reported that “[Christy] went so far as to say he believed the journal [Science] had a strong bias in favor of global warming.”

Teams led by Qiang Fu have published three refereed MSU papers:
Q. Fu, C. M. Johanson, S. G. Warren, D. J. Seidel, Nature 429, 55 (2004).
Q. Fu, C. M. Johanson, J. Clim. 17, 4636 (2004).
Q. Fu, C. M. Johanson, Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L10703 (2005).
A Nature article (5/6/04) introducing the analysis of Fu, et al. (hereafter “Fu”) published in that journal quoted Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who explained that these findings were “a stunningly elegant and accurate method of clarifying global trends.” Although the Nature story included Christy’s criticisms of this study, Christy took the unusual step of posting a critique of this analysis on the Internet—at the website of the Cooler Heads Coalition (5/5/04). Not only is this a non-refereed venue, but the Cooler Heads Coalition also has connections with the fossil fuel industry.

The Fu Nature study received international coverage: “Scientists claim final proof of global warming,” the Times [London] (5/6/04); “Scientists claim new evidence of warming,” the Guardian [UK] (5/6/04); and “New interpretation confirms global warming,” the Hindu (6/3/04). The Times [London] reported “The discovery resolves one of the most contentious anomalies in climate science, which has often been invoked by the Bush Administration to question whether man-made global warming is happening.”

At the same time, this Fu analysis received far less notice by the US media and was ignored by the New York Times. (The two later Fu, et al. studies attracted even less media coverage.) The Seattle Times (5/6/04) and the UPI (5/10/04) ran articles on this Nature paper and both included discordant comments from Christy. The Seattle Times noted: “Christy … believes that humans are changing the climate, but that the changes are modest and not likely to cause ecological disaster. ‘Most of the predictions are too alarmist,’ he said.” And the UPI reported: “[Christy] said the [Fu] … results are wrong. Furthermore, Christy said, he and his colleagues previously had tried the method Fu used and found it did not work.”

At least two mainstream science magazines mentioned the Fu Nature article, such as the Scientific American, “New study may resolve long-standing global warming debate” (5/6/04), and Discover, “The Year in Science (2004): top 100 stories” (January 2005). In rating climate change as the #1 science story, Discover observed:
[S]keptics have long argued that the [climate] models … can’t explain why the lower atmosphere has apparently warmed less than Earth’s surface. That argument took a knock in 2004.… [Fu] concluded [there was a] masking [of] what is in fact a large warming of the lower atmosphere.

One might expect that with this profusion of scientific findings that invalidate the work of C/S, John Christy would no longer enjoy the highly influential role as a source for the New York Times. However, only eleven days after the 8/12/05 Times article, Christy reappeared on the pages of this newspaper in a related story, “Panelist who dissents on climate change quits” (8/23/05, Section F, Science Desk), that mentioned Christy’s skepticism of “human-caused warming” posing a “serious threat.”

Although hardly alone, Christy has been an outspoken, driving force in the well-funded effort to cast doubt on the reality of destructive climate change. It is not my intention to portray the New York Times as the chief promoter of Christy’s sophisms; nonetheless, it is hard to overstate the significance of how this story has been covered. I ask that, in an effort to better inform readers about climate change, the New York Times place more emphasis on scientific consensus rather than balance. Lastly, it is my hope that this letter persuades the Times to assume a leadership role, a position not unfamiliar, and act as vanguard against the fallacious assertions of industry-affiliated climate skeptics—such as John Christy.

I look forward to your response.

Respectfully,

Liisa Antilla
Seattle, WA
[Footnotes excluded here]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Second Open Letter to The New York Times

January 9, 2006

Byron Calame, Public Editor
Andrew C. Revkin, Environment Reporter
The New York Times

RE: Rebuttal on topic of coverage of climate science

Dear Mr. Calame and Mr. Revkin:

This letter is in response to emails from Mr. Revkin. (Thank you Andy for responding rapidly and in such detail. Also, thank you for all of your work on important ecological issues.) I had no intention that my letter of December 27th would be interpreted as personal criticism of the work of any journalist; I sincerely hope that it has not been perceived as such. I copied my letter to Andy as a courtesy as he had written most—but not all—of the articles referenced in the same.

That said, I understand why Andy responded as he did. Nevertheless, I wish to refocus on the big picture that I was attempting to address—not only in my letter of December 27th but in my article published in Global Environmental Change—which is how climate skeptics affiliated with the fossil fuel lobby manipulate science and exploit journalism in order to delay mitigation of dangerous climate change.

My original letter set forth some of the background of John R. Christy. There has been a distinct pattern since the 1990s relating to the MSU work of Christy and Spencer (C/S of the University of Alabama at Huntsville [UAH]) in which a number of scientists have published work that disputed the UAH findings, C/S would then reprocess their data and arrive at results similar to their original findings (minimal tropospheric warming). Christy and Spencer would then discount the contradictory study as having been dealt with. It appears that at times, Christy actively worked to suppress the publication and/or media coverage of such error-finding studies.

At long last, the UAH work has been discredited. As I pointed out in my first letter, John R. Christy has affiliations with the fossil fuel industry and over the years has accumulated a great deal of press for his prognostications that minimize the severity of climate change. John Christy has been and is still successful in confusing the public and policy-makers while he continues to deny the fact of a substantially warming troposphere.
...

There is a concerted and well-funded effort by industry lobbies to maintain a constant drum beat, within mainstream media and the public forum in general, of deceptively downplaying the urgency and scale of climate change. This pounding away by an ensemble of fossil fuel industry affiliated skeptics including Christy is reprehensible and has contributed to our current dilemma—being that the U.S. public has, in some aspects, fallen behind the rest of the world on this urgent issue. When mainstream media prints or broadcasts disinformation relating to the potential gravity of climate change it violates the trust of an audience that assumes some level of informed interpretation of the situation by the media.

As to Christy’s input on “policy issues,” I for one am deeply suspicious as to why Christy is vociferous in his repudiation of any policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is scientific consensus on the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
...

In juxtaposition, I offer additional published statements of John Christy in order to flesh out his policy positions; these perspectives are highly dismissive of the international scientific consensus. The following are excerpts from John R. Christy’s (2002) “The Global Warming Fiasco” in Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death; this book was a project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ronald Bailey, Editor; the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), received from ExxonMobil: $405,000 in 2002, $465,000 in 2003, and $270,000 in 2004:

Has human activity been responsible for some of the last century’s temperature rise? The IPCC 2001 claims the following:

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human factors.

Note carefully what the preceding IPCC quote actually says. The evidence is “new and stronger.” But is this evidence truly “convincing” or “beyond doubt” or “stronger than a DNA test?” The evidence is described only as “new and stronger” and hides the fact that uncertainties and inconsistencies are not only still present but in some cases growing.
…
The alarmist media reports … become the source of downstream hysteria promoted by those with extreme environmental agendas. Such pronouncements by ideological environmentalists that the globe’s weather is worsening are actually false.
…
The types of bad weather people really care about are not changing enough to notice.

And in John R. Christy’s writing (03/11/2001) “Global warming distress signals overblown” posted on the UAH website he argues:

In recent weeks a torrent of reports have proclaimed that the Earth’s climate will become so catastrophically bad in the coming century that we must do something to stop it.
…
Despite recent headlines … the bulk of the scientific findings in the IPCC report, in my view, don’t support the doomsday scenarios.
…
Incidentally, reports that new computer model forecasts prove that human-induced global warming is a reality are misguided. Computer models can’t prove anything.
…
“Uncertainty” appears everywhere in the IPCC text …
…
What does the present rhetoric and, in my view, misrepresentation of the IPCC report really mean? It could mean government-mandated higher prices for energy from fossil fuels, which produce [CO2].
…
[R]egulations passed to force reductions in CO2 emissions (i.e. limit access to energy) will have no measurable effect on the climate or sea level—no matter what direction the climate chooses to take.
…
I think the Earth’s temperature will rise in the next century, but not to the extent you would notice in terms of weather affecting your particular spot.

Reference the Fu et al. studies, I note that in 2005 the National Research Council, in reviewing the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on temperatures trends in the lower atmosphere, found:

[Beginning] with a summary of the most important, major comments …
…
The Fu et al. results are potentially of key importance to the issue of tropospheric temperature trends … Currently, there is minimal discussion, and the data are labeled as “controversial”. A more thoughtful and balanced appraisal is necessary …
…
The Fu et al. work may be central to the issue of measuring and interpreting the vertical profile of temperature change and is no more difficult or controversial than addressing the spurious radiosonde trends or the differences between the [RSS], [UAH], and University of Alabama* [*it appears that “Alabama” is an error here and should be University of Maryland] (UMD) interpretations of the MSU data.
…
Given that the Fu et al. results appear in the peer reviewed literature, it is inadequate to dismiss them as “controversial”.
…
The Fu et al. results have the potential to be centrally important to the issue of tropospheric temperature trends and should be discussed more thoroughly … The only published criticism of the Fu et al. approach is by Tett and Thorne (2004) with other criticisms in the grey literature. The Fu et al. method has since been followed up by several studies which show that it is robust … The potential clarification that the Fu et al. method can contribute to the central issues is very significant.

I conclude by reiterating my request to Mr. Calame: that he consider the merits of my argument, now contained in these two letters, for discontinuing the use of John Christy and other industry-affiliated climate skeptics as sources for climate change articles in the New York Times.

Respectfully,

Liisa Antilla
Seattle, WA
[Footnotes exluded here]

Journal Article: Climate of Scepticism

2006-02-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

Author: Liisa Antilla

Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change
Global Environmental Change 15(4): 338-352 (December 2005)

Abstract:This two-part study integrates a quantitative review of one year of US newspaper coverage of climate science with a qualitative, comparative analysis of media-created themes and frames using a social constructivist approach. In addition to an examination of newspaper articles, this paper includes a reflexive comparison with attendant wire stories and scientific texts. Special attention is given to articles constructed with and framed by rhetoric emphasising uncertainty, controversy, and climate scepticism.

Article available at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.08.003