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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 »

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 »

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 »

Courtesy and the Monckton Paper

Courtesy may be a lost art. That’s according to Christopher (Viscount) Monckton of Brenchley, who claimed that the decision of the Committee of the American Physical Society (APS) to retract support for his paper Climate Sensitivity Revisited was ‘discourteous’.

The APS originally published Monckton’s paper in its online journal, Physics and Society, editor Jeff Marque.

Yesterday, APS put this disclaimer in red over the paper:

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

Monckton writes:

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

More »

Channel 4 ‘did not mislead’ on global warming

Ofcom will rule next week that Channel 4 did not mislead the public over the science of climate change with its programme the Great Global Warming Swindle, according to Owen Gibson in the Guardian this morning.

There is some criticism of Channel 4 and the GGWS programme, produced by Michael Durkin:

Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme… Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts…

But the bigger story is around what Channel 4 won’t be censured for: More »

Response to Cristine Russell: climate change, now what?

Online now at the Columbia Journalism Review, Cristine Russell has put forward an essay on how we were, are, and should be covering climate change across the media. It’s a great piece, full of excellent examples, and picked up by other respected media commentators.

Cristine is president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a fellow in Harvard’s Kennedy Center. She explores a number of different areas, and is particularly good on the development of themes for coverage over the next year, and how climate reporting is affecting every beat.

I’ve written a long response (which is in full below), but in summary:

1. We are living in unprecedented times
Both for journalism and for our relationship to the environment. The press in the US and UK is going through a step-change which seems pretty painful and disastrous. Commentaries from Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis in the US, the Guardian and bloggers in the UK, show that the old press industry will not survive in its present shape. Couple this with the fact that people will spend more time local as we shift to a low-carbon economy. This may be working from home, growing their own vegetables, or staying within the ‘rationed’ driving area.

There is an opportunity for the media to expand their focus from ‘how people live their lives’ to ‘how people live their lives in low-carbon ways‘—putting environment at the heart of the media offer. I do not see a contradiction between providing “information that is good for them to know” and a clear, ethical, transparent choice to become advocates for low-carbon living. Not today, with what we know about climate change. A shift in the ethics of journalism perhaps, but one that remains fair, accurate and unbiased in its “good to know” informational role.

2. The problem of online
Cristine rightly points out that “the era of “equal time” for sceptics who argue that global warming is just a result of natural variation and not human intervention seems to be largely over” with the caveat of “except on talk radio, cable, and local television.” And also, critically, online. This is not a small issue.

Public forums that followed an appalling piece of TV called ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ broadcast on Channel 4 were anecdotally recorded as “supporting the programme’s sceptical stance by about six to one”. This forum ‘result’ has been held up as justification by Channel 4 as reason to screen similar junk-science programmes in the future, in the name of ‘objective’ debate. The question is: how much time to do we have to encourage media freedoms that freely amplify uncertainties that may be helping hold back political action on such an unprecedented issue?

3. Getting over green fatigue
It’s happening. People are fatigued, and yet coverage of the environment is appallingly low. What can those of us who analyse the media contribute to how to cover climate change in the future so that it does not suffer from cyclical phases of fatigue?

4. The Rhetoric Beat
Echoing the thoughts of Brent Cunningham writing in the CJR a few days ago, we need to increase the awareness of the abuses of rhetoric promoted to and also used among journalists.

I’m hugely thankful Cristine has written this piece and prompted me to comment. Any responses from Cristine or the CJR I’ll post here.

The full response is below: More »

Wordle images of today’s top stories

Wordle is a very cool tool. Put in any bunch of words and it creates a text cloud based on most commonly recurring words.

Here is today’s lead story (and all peripheral links and stories on the homepage) on DailyMail.co.uk: More »

Is incoherency the Republican ticket?

Lots of questions this week on why John McCain is ditching his green credentials and environmental strategy to deliver a mix of messages to the American public.

Earlier in the week Grist and Politico both commented on the launch of McCain’s new environmental TV ad coming on the same day as his call for the lifting of restrictions on offshore drilling (this to an audience of Big Oil in Houston). Commenting on this, Lester Feder at the Huffington Post suggests that:

McCain’s wholesale abandonment of a month-long environmental PR strategy is more than a knee-jerk response to a new peak in oil prices. It is a sign that the McCain campaign’s efforts to define the 2008 election narrative are in disarray.

And Feder quotes a number of political commentators who see this reversal as McCain “grasping at straws” to re-focus his campaign on the economy, in line with American voters’ views.

But I wonder if, at some deeper lever, McCain and his campaign are ingrained into an incoherency (it’s in the title of Feder’s article) that won Bush the last (two?) elections. Is incoherency a card the Republicans have become too used to playing in sowing doubt in the minds of the voting public? More »

‘Churnalism’ strikes with earthquakes

News sites and the Associated Press in America are being criticized by a leading climate blog for failing to check the veracity of a report that was pushed in a press release last week, claiming that earthquakes are linked to global warming.

Did you miss it? This story was published on:

• Yahoo Biz
• Investigate Express.co.uk
• MSNBC
• Free Republic (grass roots conservatism)
• Ad Hoc News (says it all…)

Erm. That’s about it. Thanks to RyanM on the Climate Audit site, Sans Pretence, the comments on Pat Dollard, and Wesley Smith for picking up on the news items. As Wesley says, “Does anybody do any fact checking anymore? Or are the words “scientific study” on a press release all that it takes to make the news?” (filed under: Stupidity in Media). The story was picked up by a number of other climate and political blogs, many of which are providing normally excellent citizen journalism, and, as such, (e.g. Deprogram your mind) quickly removed.

So where’d they get the story? More »