‘An honest reckoning’ for climate discourse
I’m not holding it together very well today. Natural personal sensitivities aside, I’ve this morning read James Risbey’s excellent paper: “The new climate discourse: Alarmist or alarming?” published in the peer-reviewed Global Environmental Change, (Issue 18: 2008, pages 26-37). It is, well, alarming.
A quick summary. The papers asks: is the discourse that talks of climate change as ‘catastrophic’, ‘rapid’, ‘irreversible’, ‘worse than we thought’ etc. either alarmist rhetoric, or is it in line with the actual science? Risbey’s analysis finds that these terms, used by NGOs, green activists, politicians and scientific spokespersons to urge for action (and reported in the media as such), are not exaggerated rhetoric or over-the-top; they are in fact in line with scientific consensus. It is worth taking one example in some detail. Read more
