alexlockwood.net

They Work For You… supposedly

Theyworkforyou.com is a superb project, and is a useful tool for journalists and political commentators alike. I’ve been using it to track climate change and global warming mentions in parliament for a few years now. This just dropped into my email, a typical exchange from Scottish parliamentarians George Foulkes and Richard Lochhead, and of no major use other than to promote the tool as a means of tracking what politicians are saying on our behalf:

George Foulkes (Labour) says:

Is the cabinet secretary aware that the average person’s carbon emission is 5.5 tonnes per year? I have used the National Energy Foundation’s carbon calculator to do some calculations on the First Minister’s carbon footprint. On travel alone—without taking account of any of his household emissions—his footprint is over six times that amount. Since he became First Minister, Alex Salmond has travelled by train only once and takes regular trips by limousine from Bute house to Holyrood. Should he not also set an example or, as is usual with the First Minister, is it another example of, “Do as I say and not as I do”?

Riveting stuff. But there’s been more important words captured by the project. The site is part of mysociety.org, which also runs Whatdotheyknow.com for Freedom of Information requests, and a number of other projects using new media to make democracy more transparent and inclusive.

Shell undermine protection for endangered whale

In a 48-hours where the ideas of geo-engineering gain prominence, it was a story in this weekend’s Observer Business and Media section that caught my eye for good environmental journalism. Oil giant Shell is accused of influencing–editing–an environmental report on the impact of the Sakhalin II oil project, which threatens the habitat of the western grey whale.

What’s good about the journalism in this story is that, while offering a balanced report and quoting perspectives from both sides, the journalist, Nick Mathiason, makes the editorial decisions to provide fundamental facts of the story that place the project in a larger context. For example, he informs the reader that the Sakhalin project will “also release 1.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide, three times the UK’s annual carbon footprint.” Identifying the wider impacts of Shell’s activities in this way is an important contribution to revealing the externalised/hidden costs (generally environmental ones) in the production of consumable resources. More »

Hockey Stick: the first climate change metaphor

In his Public Understanding of Science 2000 article ‘Knowledge, Ignorance and Popular Culture’, University of Toronto Professor Sheldon Ungar suggests the reason that public understanding and concern could coalesce around the ozone hole, where it has failed to do so for climate change, was in part due to two things: first, that the ozone hole argument found bridging metaphors from popular culture that were easily understood; and second, it engendered a ‘hot crisis’.

As Ungar suggests, these bridging metaphors for the ozone hole were simple and powerful:

The signal advantage of the ozone hole is that is can be encapsulated in a simple and widely familiar “penetration” metaphor. Stated succinctly, the hole leads to increased bombardment of the earth by lethal rays. The idea of rays penetrating a damaged ’shield’ meshes nicely with abiding and resonant cultural motifs, including Hollywood ‘affinities’, ranging from the Starship Enterprise to Star Wars.

Importantly, as Ungar notes, these metaphors are ‘pre-scientific’. That is, they’re kept simple, before they get into the scientific detail of the ways in which ‘ozone eater’ chemicals destroy the earth’s atmospheric protection.

In fact, these metaphors were so powerful, that both Ungar (2000) and Hargreaves, Lewis and Speers (2003) found that many people simply considered climate change to be a sub-set problem of/caused by the ozone hole problem. In a saturated media, people hold onto the main themes and frameworks of science stories, and not much more, with which to take educated guesses at what’s going on in the world (Hargreaves et al, 2003). More »

BBC impartiality and climate change

Tony at Harmless Sky has been following , for 18 months at least, development of BBC policy on the coverage of climate change.

He picks up on this line from a rather obscurely-titled BBC report on impartiality:

The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change]. From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40

As Gareth in the comments points out, the seminar was one of the Real World seminars the BBC holds each year, where execs from the corporation get together to debate particular issues. In 2006, it was focused on climate change. This line from the report worried Tony enough to send the BBC a request under the Freedom of Information Act, and I agree that the response from the BBC is far from satisfying. One reason perhaps is that the Real World workshop quoted was held under Chatham House Rules, so the BBC are stuck in being unable to release information about who attended the seminar.

Tony’s post has been picked up by some other bloggers, one of whom I’ve had debate with recently, who take this as proof that the BBC is proselytising the ‘climate alarmism’ cause (again, on alarmism, see my post on James Risbey’s work). There is a ‘fabulously interesting and in-depth’ post on the Hockey Stick Graph debate over at As with Bishop Hill’s views on the BBC’s position on climate change, I’m not so sure…. More »

Censorship or sense? Well, sense actually

Well, that was interesting. My post on the limits to debate on cimate change has generated 40-odd comments so far (modest in the grand scheme, but detailed, and most of which has been useful and instuctive: couple of interesing sites in Devil’s Kitchen and QuestionThat). There were a few personal attacks here and here (and here) and a few more on-topic responses, such as from Sans Pretence.

I’ve actually spent much of the day writing the paper that helped stimulate the blog post, assessing the influence of online on public perceptions of climate change. So to all those who have commented, and provided further links and thoughts, thanks. More »

Camp language: watching the media on Kingsnorth

I can’t make it to Climate Camp as I’ve got a couple of deadlines approaching for a book chapter and article (both on climate change–reasonable excuse?) But to do my bit I’m going to try and monitor the language that the media uses to report on activities at the camp.

I’ll look at the different ways in which the actors and claims-makers are treated in the media. As John Richardson says in his book Analysing Newspapers, “Successive studies of journalism have shown that there is often social or ideological significance between the choices” of how subjects are treated by the media (Richardson 2007,  56). In particular, the level of agency given to the actors in a particular situation–how are they described, how are their actions described, are they given or deleted agency? More »

Climate change: how to balance freedoms

Thanks for all the comments so far. The post in reply, and new comments have moved on to the new post, over here.

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Earlier this week, one of the key sceptical blogs, Jennifer Marohasy, re-listed a collection of quotes to do with scepticism, denial and free expression. There are pegs on which denial–denial, and not scepticism–finds itself hooked. For example, picking up on inaccuracies in the politicized science. Interestingly, Mahorasy’s list came on the same day as a leaked email from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which has ’silenced its employees on climate change’. What’s going on in relation to climate change and freedom of expression, particularly online? More »

Mark Watson’s crap at the environment

I just caught the first instalment of Mark Watson’s Radio 4 Book of the Week this morning: the story of his ‘one year of doing the environment better’ that he’s put together in his new book, Crap At The Environment.

Fair play to Mark for taking on the subject, and doing it in both a committed (in terms of time) and common sense way. The way he talks about climate change fixes firmly in the vernacular, and that’s an important way of addressing the subject. Humour helps too. However, although he apologised for being crass about it, this I found highly unfunny:

“Deforestation? Have a look on Google Earth, there seems enough of it left to me.”

Deforestation is a massive climate change and equity issue. There’s just no need to take cheap shots while doing something so worthy. This below, however, is more interesting and opens up the point from which Mark started his internal-investigation into his own crapness towards the environment (there are four more instalments this week). On the programme today, Mark said this: More »

‘Oil is everything’: Burn Up on BBC2

“Doubt is our product. We manufacture doubt.” So says Mack, the bastard PR-lobbyist in last night’s BBC2 climate change drama, Burn Up.

It wasn’t a bad attempt at taking on climate change in a dramatic made-for-TV format. The first turns at addressing a new social/political phenomena are always going to be a little cliched. Some of the first literary attempts failed by being too directly about climate change. Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, for example, and the 2nd and 3rd books of Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy. Compare to the later mastery of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which doesn’t mention the issue directly, not once.

Burn Up didn’t fail in the same way. It’s TV, not literature, and can be saved by drama. Written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) and produced by the makers of Spooks, it has the pedigree. More »

C4 Mykura’s half-right contradiction on climate change

Hamish Mykura, Channel 4’s head of documentaries, has published his reply to Monbiot’s claim that Channel 4 has harmed action against climate change.

Mykura’s central tenet is that the vehemence of people such as Monbiot do more harm to the ’cause’ of global warming than a dissenting documentary that is seen by 2.7m viewers. In Mykura’s words:

It is arguable that it is not the Great Global Warming Swindle that has bred public scepticism, but the desire of some environmentalists – evidenced by the identikit complaints orchestrated against the film – to stamp out dissenting voices. This intolerance undermines confidence in the rightness of the cause.

This one’s going to get some comments alright. Maybe aiming for the 1,500 that accumulated under the New Scientist Lynas/White debate at the beginning of the year. Some early comments on the CIF site under Mykura’s article:

• Pretendingtocare: ‘2 more articles like this and we’ll have balance’
• TheLoonyfromCatford: ‘Impact? well it sure got a lot of US right-wing bloggers talking’
• Commander Keen: Hamish, you are a (quoting Durkin) ‘big daft cock’

And isn’t that fulfilling all the promises of new media? More »