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

 

Is Global Warming Taking a Break...The Worst Title for a Video trying to do Good!

The video was put together by Climate Desk at the IPCC conference in Stockholm(a very good organization that publishes good, short videos for the sake of climate science and its effetcs!) They attempted to make the ever popular recent hiatus in atmospheric temperatures understandable, which is a very good cause.

However there a few things i noted:
the title! saying "Global" in the very title denotes that the entire Earth is not warming, which is NOT true as the Oceans are. this is the very reason why the public doesn't understand it and when they watch videos like this that use wording in a confusing manner or one that can be misused by a skeptic it just makes the situation that much worse.



my favorite comment from another reader on the website:
If we scientists were smart enough to start a conspiracy in the 1800's to score grants 120 years later, we are so smart that we *deserve* to be your overlords.
Grovel before us, peon.

At Least People are googling Climate!?

On MotherJones.com, another great website for things from ebvirnonemnt to general social culture,  i found this great image showing the google searches for global warming pause during the time that the 'pause' in atmospheric warming was discussed in the media and published by the IPCC. After the IPCC draft "came out" a bit early in September, 2013, the searches for it jumped dramatically! This begs the question, is at least a good thing that the public is becoming engaged/interested in climate change, even if the internet search may not have/probably not made it clear what the pause was really about. I would assume (but one would hope incorrect) that an average Joe heard that the global warming had stopped and thought "hey I'll look that up!"

www.motherjones.com

I thought it would be interesting to do a more updated look at the searches for Google trends of Global Warming Pause as of today (9 December 2013). The highest points in September of "100" denote that at least 10% of all searches within a geographic region were for your chosen term. Both graphs show a bit different story. The first graph, the last 12 months as actually rather interesting, as it shows that interest in the pause (which is really not a new idea or hypothesis if you are up to date with published scientific literature) began in the beginning of June, before the Economist or IPPC was released. The second one, the last 90 days show that after IPPC was released, the searches were actually rather steady until beginning of November where it gradually went to "60" mid November and as of today, the values are so low as to denote no percent.This is a pretty handy tool i found! my graphs are below. For a run-down in the pause and some explanations for all the confusion on it, a good link is here:

Mooney, C. 2013. Is Global warming really Slowing Down? Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/global-warming-slowdown-ipcc

More People Now Believe in a Warming Climate!...But Not so Fast...

According to the PEW Research Center, the overall percentage (67%) of Americans believe that the climate has warmed. And is going up, up 4 points since 2011, and up 10 points since 2010!

Before you get too excited, This is JUST the belief that "the Earth is warming." Only 42% believe it is because of human activity! While it may be good that more people believe that the climate warming, it is different than understanding it, and that it is due to our activities.

http://www.people-press.org
 

A very large part of the public also is still confused as to whether scientists agree on a consensus of human caused warming. A very fascinating and unique part of the paper was the numbers on elderly populations, as only 28% of people over 65 year old think human activity is linked to climate change, if they believe in warming at all (28%)!

Another interesting part of the paper was the split in political parties. not surprisingly, Democrats are more informed and their numbers of  believers are always over the 50% mark, whereas 51% of conservative liberals dob't think their is ANY evidence that the Earth is warming, regardless of natural or anthropogenic forcings.

http://www.people-press.org

Another downer from the research is that these numbers have actually been higher, as 2006 was the best year for the amount of "believers."

This research actually generated some pretty interesting data, the last few pages of the report give all the answers that the people interviewed answered, separated by political affiliation, seriousness, and other factors. (Though, interestingly, not by sex...?)

Reference:

Keeter, Scott. 2013. More Say There Is Solid Evidence of Global Warming. The Pew Research Center. http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/10-15-12%20Global%20Warming%20Release.pdf

Media Silent About the Scientific EXPLANATION of the Warming Pause they Propogated!

One of the many studies recently being published about the atmospheric warming pause has been ignored by the media. The key there was ATMOSPHERIC pause, not global Earth pause. Rosenthal et al. found that in the last 60 years, the Pacific Ocean has absorbed heat 15 times faster than the previous 10,000 years by suing foraminifera shells found in sediment cores. If this was widely available to the general population by way of popular media outlets, perhaps they would understand that this heat is really just going somewhere else! One of the authors noted that "We're experimenting by putting all this heat in the ocean without quite knowing how it's going to come back out and affect climate."
This is just one of many published material that can explain this momentary pause. Media Matters reported that 41% of media on the UN's IPCC report mentioned the slowdown.  A CBS clip about the report (watch below!) actually called it an "inconvenient truth that the global atmosphere hasn't been warming." Which is technically true, but the heat is just going elsewhere. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50155923n



Wikimedia commons

It is also interesting to point out that the short time period being used (around 15 years) may drastically skew data since most time lines are begun in 1998, a strong El Nino year, it shows a stronger temperature hype. Shindell at NASA points out that if you shift the time period to two years prior (1996-2010) the warming is actually 0.14 Celsius warmer than the long term trend. The fun graphs below could explain bit more...





(Next look for my blog on what the actual media outlets (CBS, FOX said about the pause and how they use their influence to confuse the people that watch the nightly news expecting to receive correct information!)



Rosenthal, Y, Linsley, B, and Oppo, D. Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years.
Science. 1 November 2013: 342 (6158), 617-621. [DOI:10.1126/science.1240837]

Greenberg, Max et al. 2013. Media Sowed Doubt In Coverage Of UN Climate Report. False Balance And "Pause" Dominated IPCC Coverage. http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/10/10/study-media-sowed-doubt-in-coverage-of-un-clima/196387