Mark Twain

The timing of climate reports and communication to the public

 “The immense collective effort to produce periodic climate assessments is typically not 

well matched with public communication and outreach efforts for these reports, leaving a

 vacuum to be filled by less authoritative sources.”

-Peter C. Frumhoff

Despite the numerous climate reports released every year by many organizations, the pubic is still not convinced by the science. Ekwurzel in 2011 et al. from the Union of Concerned Scientists, delved into this a bit deeper and found that perhaps it was the shear timing and outreach and communication efforts made to publicize them!  

The paper looks in depth at many reports and how exactly they were released but a good example of a bad choice of communicating and releasing an important report is when the first US NCA report was released in November 2000, when every US news station was focused on the Presidential election.

NCA = National Climate Assessment released in November 2000; ACIA = Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment released in November 2004; WG1 = IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Working Group 1, released in February 2007; WG2 = IPCC AR4 Working Group 2, released in April 2007; USGCRP = Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States released in June 2009; ACC = America’s Climate Choices released in May 2010; GW = Global Warming; CC = Climate Change

(Some of this information was covered in a previous post of mine, including Boykoff 2011.)

It was interesting that the ACIA covers cryospheric impacts far from where the population live and low media coverage of climate change, but received greater total and proportional coverage (17%!) than the USGCRP Assessments, or the America’s Climate Choices.

it was (nicely) surprising that WGI and WGII media coverage were still significantly higher 

than the controversy in 2010 (of the Himalayan glaciers disappearing) than they 

propagated. It was such a big issue and is still talked about today, so it goes to show that 

even if something negative is not widely released, its magnitude of controversy can 

cause it to percolate through the public ears and take a very long time to be forgotten with 

time. 

Boykoff M (2011) 2000-2011 US newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming. Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. 

Ekwurzel, B. 2011. Climate uncertainties and their discontents: increasing the impact of assessments on public understanding of climate risks and choices. Climatic Change. 108. 4, 791-802.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0194-6

National Assessment Synthesis Team (2001) Climate change impacts on the United States: the potential consequences of climate variability and change, report for the US global change research program. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

international climate negotiation comics

Precautionary Principle and Skeptics

The framework of my previous post on the paper “Climate Science as Political Art”  by Wynne 2010 reminds me of something called the precautionary principle. This environmental law and ethical principle(not a scientific one!) it is that despite scientific uncertainties that may arise, certain precautionary measures and policies must be taken that could prevent the harm from being inflicted; any burden of proof that it is NOT harmful falls on those taking the action. it was coined in the 1990's by the UN, but many definitions are used by countries and international organizations, an issue in itself.  The burden part is being undertaken by every skeptic of climate change, and there are many. No one can really (intelligently) say extreme temperatures, sea level rise natural disasters (from global warming) are not harmful. So instead the approach is to say CO2 is good for the environment and we need it to live (yes but...) OR to simply say global warming is not happening at all.

This is a very important principle, and rather late in the game in 2006 Deloso finally wrote a paper on it, international law and climate change that explains it very well. It was even reviewed by an IPCC chairman.

Deloso, R.  2006. The Precautionary Principle - International Law and Climate Change, Munich, GRIN Publishing GmbH, http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/183852/the-precautionary-principle-international-law-and-climate-change

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 1992. Rio Declaration on Environment 

and Development. UNEP. Retrieved December 9, 2010.

World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST)

 2005. The Precautionary Principle). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural 

Organization (UNESCO). 

Wynne, B. 2010. Strange Weather, Again Climate Science as Political Art. Theory, Culture & Society. March. 27. 2-3. 289-305.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/27/2-3/289.short

Climate Science as Political Art

Shortly after "Climategate" in 2009 Brian Wynne at Lancaster University published a paper on how current climate policies are strictly relating to the "truth or falsity of the proposition that human behaviour is responsible" for it. The importance of it being published after the scandal when it was still very popular validated its importance of looking at climate skepticism from a different angle. He titled the paper Climate Science as political art (beautiful title for a science article!). He brings up a ‘translation’ model, in which policies are, or are not, implemented depending on is somethings is disputed or having a high level of uncertainity. He shows how the actual science of the discipline is more about the understanding and having the possibility of it being true, and that the social and economic human acts are creating understatements on what may happen. Its a very interesting article relating it back to the public readiness. 

Alexander (2009) discussed the efforts behind skepticism and climate myths. He reasoned that the whole point for making false statements was merely to "forestall the implementation of policies which combat climate change." So, once again it all comes down to politics, not necessarily trying to propagate information because one thinks it to be true! 



Wynne, B. Strange Weather, Again Climate Science as Political Art. 2010. Theory, Culture & Society. March. 27. 2-3. 289-305.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/27/2-3/289.short

Alexander, A. 2009. Debunking the Myths of Climate Scepticism. The New Presence. 2, 56-57.
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/40208478/debunking-myths-climate-scepticism

The Skeptics Handbook

Yes, there is actually a real "handbook" on how to be a climate skeptic. (and conveniently available in 30 languages and some nice pictures!)

It says the bottom line and the only thing that matters (really the only thing?) is if adding more CO2 makes the world warmer. The very first error on oage 2 claims that anthropogenic's definition is human CO2 emissions are the cause. There is a bit more to it than that. The guide gives no citations as to what or where their graphs or maps are of. They are completely ignoring that 

the very worst quote was: "The sun wont put out more light just because we put out more carbon." 

I cringed the whole time reading this. The worst thing was that the author was a lecturer at a university for SCIENCE COMMUNICATION. 

I won't and don't want to give it a reference like it is a real published piece of literature, but you may follow the link above to take a look.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE THERE IS A REBUTTAL AVAILABLE!

Cook, J et al. 2010. A Scientific Guide to the ‘Skeptics Handbook’ The evidence that humans are causing global warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/ScientificGuideSkepticsA5.pdf

Fox News Climate Coverage 93% Wrong

Fox News and the Wall Street Journal is wrong about science, how shocking! 

The Union of Concerned Scientists published one of the best (in my opinion) studies looking at how science is portrayed in popular news. The research showd that the main focus was consistently knocking down that there is a concensus and using such words as hoax and myth. It is interesting in that cherry picking data was one of the least popular choices, as mocking the science was the most popular. Sometimes poisoning people's minds and planting doubt is even more powerful than telling straight lies.

Two million people watch Fox news every night, this proves how strong of influence one corporation or even person can have, as Rupert Murdoch's media company owns both... Nonetheless, as an influential participant in American democracy, News Corp. has an obligation to improve its representations of 

climate science" (UCS).

“I thought we were getting warmer. But in the ‘70s, it was, look out, 

we’re all going to freeze” (Fox News Channel, 4/11/12)

It’s been warmer and warmer before there were SUVs 

(Fox News Channel, 4/11/2012). 

It definitely does not help when you have politicians (who went to university for political science, not you know, climate science) announce their error filled opinions. These are very influential figures who have the ability to reach large audiences of public and governmental bodies and misrepresent data or just plain lie. Take former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum or congresswoman Michele Bachmann, whom both don’t understand carbon dioxide and human emissions  and essentially claim all CO2 is good CO2 and "life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide

Huertas, A and Adler, D. 2012. Is News Corporation Failing Science?: Representations of Climate Science on Fox News Channel and in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages. Union of Concerned Scientists. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Is-News-Corp-Failing-Science.pdf



Pappas,S. August 2012.Six Politicians Who got the Science Wrong. Live Science.  Last Accessed Dec 2013. http://www.livescience.com/22640-politicians-science-wrong.html