[Note: I had originally planned to publish this post last week, but Cyclone Sidr soon began to consume all of our attention--and rightly so. We will continue to track the storm and its consequences; but starting now, I'm also going to leaven things a bit with blogging on other issues. So, here goes...]
My latest Science Progress piece is up--it's about the intriguing new study (PDF) by Max Boykoff showing that the U.S. media is no longer engaging in phony media balance on global warming. Or as I put it, summarizing Boykoff's findings:
The years 2005 and 2006, in particular, saw not only a huge surge in U.S. media attention to climate change at these same papers, but also a decrease in "balanced" (as in biased) coverage, to the point that the papers were no longer significantly out of whack with scientific consensus. One focusing event that seemed instrumental here? The May 2006 release of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
That's good news, but the Boykoff paper itself unfolds as a kind of compare-and-contrast between U.S. and UK media patterns of global warming coverage--and the U.S. media really come off looking bad as a result of the comparison. As I again summarize:
Consider, for example, that even though Boykoff studied the five aforementioned U.S. papers but only three U.K. ones--The Guardian, The Independent, and the Times of London--he found that the U.K. papers not only never suffered from the "balance" problem, but they wrote more than twice as many total stories as the U.S. ones (although total coverage increased markedly in both nations over the course of the four-year period studied). That's a staggering gap, and it suggests that U.S. news outlets have served us poorly indeed.
But who else has served us poorly? Well, how about the major institutions of the U.S. scientific community? As I note:
When stories were "balanced" in the United States, who tended to get quoted providing the "other side"? Well, a small number of contrarian scientists, many of them tied to conservative think tanks that were, in turn, partly funded by ExxonMobil. This has all been documented exhaustively by now, but for far too long, our media seemed oblivious to the relationship between fossil fuel interest and global warming skepticism.
By contrast, the U.K. media got pretty uppity about "Esso's" role. Granted, it helped that the Royal Society, Britain's top scientific organization, sent the oil giant an explicit letter in 2006 challenging its support of viewpoints outside the scientific mainstream. Where was the U.S. National Academy of Sciences or the American Association for the Advancement of Science on this front? We had a much more influential denial machine, but also a scientific establishment that failed to take it on. If the U.S. media got rolled on this story, it's partly because U.S. scientists, as a group (despite stellar individual exceptions), didn't help matters.
Note: I should probably have included the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society here. Great organizations, both--but not equipped to fight in the trenches I guess. In any event, considering what the UK Royal Society was willing to do, I think all of these scientific institutions need to ask themselves: Couldn't that have been us?
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There are several interesting variations on American media coverage. I don't think that it is only a question of the space given to the story. Over the weekend, Grist Magazine and the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund held a Forum on Energy and Climate Change in LA. All Republican and Democratic (But not Green) presidential candidates were invited. Three attended: Kucinich, Clinton and Edwards.
CNN's Bill Schneider made the story to be that of why this issue is not front and center in the presidential campaign. Near the end, Grist's Dave Roberts blames the media for not being able to frame the question in any terms other than that of the political horse race. There is that framing question again.
I posted a quick comparison of coverage between Roberts's blog commentary at Grist and Cathleen Decker's story in the LA Times. Roberts's criticism is spot on as far as Decker writes the tale. Even the headline is a giveaway to the narrative that she will use.. "Democratic candidates buff green credentials"
Roberts also seems to fall into his own trap, writing of Clinton's "gravitas" and complaining the Edwards was "light on specifics".
To quibble just a little, that UK newspaper sample may be somewhat biased: the Guardian and Independent are both well known for their left-liberal pro-environmentalist positions (but god alone knows what the Times stands for these days). I wonder if things might look slightly different if it had sampled the Telegraph or Daily Mail.
Chris, pointing to that 2006 Royal Society letter as a shining example is a little unfair to the U.S. institutions. The same letter could have been sent in 2000, by which time Exxon's role had been pretty thoroughly exposed. Also, recall that at about the same time that letter was being sent the Royal Society's U.S. counterpart was being forced to engage in a major damage control exercise (re the "hockey stick") of a kind the RS never had to deal with. Those hearings were the culmination of years of trench warfare. In fact, I seem to recall that somebody wrote a book on that subject.
(Warning: sarcastic remarks ahead.)
So the Guardian is the standard to which American journalism is to be held?
PuhLEEEZE!
One of my colleagues, and friends, in our physics department is a subscriber. I read it for entertainment value (as I sometimes read the Weekly World News in the grocery line.) The daily drumbeat of AGW scaremongering is ludicrous.
A search of just today's online version "Guardian Unlimited", returns no less than twelve climate change related stories. Talk about an irrational focus.
I also like the way you refer to any attempt of the media to present evidence that does not support AGW as "phony media balance". I can't remember any recent AGW media story that didn't go way out of its way to undermine or denigrate any evidence or person that refuted the "consensus" with the possible exception of John Stossel's recent 20/20 segment..
CNN's "Planet In Peril" scare-o-mentary gave Pat Michaels about thirty seconds to present a skeptical rebuttal to James Hansen's alarmist views. This in a two-night four-hour eco-horrorfest of AGW nightmare scenarios.
Chris, you apparently have a very low threshold for information that threatens your world view. Perhaps your especially informed effort to purge the media of "phony balance" will be rewarded in the coming (and glorious) Hillary Clinton administration. Perhaps you will be appointed to a high position in the Ministry of Environmental Truth.
Carry on Citizen!
Mind you, from Lance's perspective the Daily Mail probably looks like a hotbed of Communists and hippies.
The Boykoff paper only covers three British papers, all of which are broadsheets (at least in the general sense..), and two of which are seen as centerist or left of centre. The Indie is particulaly loud on climate change, with denalism blog sometimes taking it to task for pushing the story further than the data (although to be fair to the Indie, the IPCC 4 projections, scary though they are, are the low ball estimates). The Times is a Murdoch paper, who nows seems to be firmly in the 'climate change is real' camp since Murdoch saw AIT.
What also needs to be said is that the newspaper market also has the Telegraph (which has featured Monckton fairly frequently, and is the biggest selling broadsheet), and the Daily Mail, which has Melanie Philips (or Mad Mel as she is known on the Bad Science forum), who firmly believes climate change is a hoax, and often writes about it. The Mail is deeply anti-science (they led the MMR scare), and is horribly popular (my parents have always read it, so I am very familiar with its toxic brand of reactionary politics, populism and anti-learning). We also have the red-top tabloids, and the Express (which is a rubbish version of the Mail), as well at the FT. Basically, though , its the broadsheets and the mid-level tabloids (the Mail/Express) which make the running in terms of climate change stories, and these are overall more prone to questioning clmate change than the picture Boykoff paints.
However, there is still a dramatic difference between coverage in the two countries, which I think is due to a number of factors. Firstly, belief in climate change is not a political issue. The Tories say they want to go further than Labour in fighting climate change, and aside from one rather odd front-bencher, there is no Conservative you can think of who denies climate change at all. The fact that Thatcher, as a trained scientist, was interested in the possibility of climate change from the start may have helped avoid a political split. We also have a different system politically from the States. Inhofe or his like would have no power base, since parlimentary committees have very little power, and certainly none over spending. Lobbiests work under the radar in the UK political system - bribing MP's with cash is simply not effective - lobbying with influence is.
Secondly, we have the BBC. It may not keep everyone honest, and there are certain programmes (such as the Today programme and Newsnight), which will talk to climate deniers as though they might actually have a valid point of view, but the coverage of climate change is of such a high quality (Roger Harabin has been outstanding) and so widespread(ranging from kids programmes through to David Attenborough himself), that the overall message is clear. And where the BBC leads, others have to follow. Durkin's TGGWS was unusual because it was shown at all - C4 might say it was trying to be iconoclastic, but I suspect they would now admit it was a terrible error.
Climate change is certainly no where near the issue it should be in the UK, and the media coverage should be be better (and the political response is still pitiful), but at least we dont have the problem of people refusing to believe it even exists, because of their politics, or that there is any real 'debate'.
Don't look to AGU to stand up to Exxon. They've long been bought off, and for a surprisingly small amount of money. The scientists themselves worry about the oil money, but they are hedged in by a permanent leadership that shares more in common with the Bush administration that the scientists they lead.
There is much convenient idiocy in evidence here, both in the comments and the source cited. Errors compounded by error does not a correct conclusion make.
The presumption that public interests are served by those proclaiming it on the environment has been tested by Public Choice economists and has not been found. Instead, their interests are more consistent with private preferences.
When real private interests clash with other private interests, then perception becomes political reality - and the facts are damned! This is certainly evident to any critical observer of the AGW debate.
For instance, when 530 climatologists from 27 nations were surveyed a few years back on issues the considerably smaller (and less disciplinarilly skillful) IPPC speaks so "authoritatively" about, they dissented: a plurality does not agree that there is a "consensus" about AGW, or that climate models are trustworthy, or that the debate on AGW is over. Only a minority of climatologists agree with the Nobel annointed Saints of the IPCC.
The UN is about politics. The most underreported political story of the past five years is its corruption. For instance, the UN AIDS program from the once unassailable World Health Organization has had to revise its HIV-AIDS numbers sharply downward last week because its epidemiological models were wrong - and authoritative but less numerous critics said so for many years. The smart money is on further downward revisions. And what have the "authoritative" pronouncements by the IPCC been through the years? Generally downward!
AGW alarmism, which almost entirely rests on unfalsifiable models, depends on similarly misplaced trust. Why should the IPCC be any different than the UN AIDS program? Why should anyone expect otherwise? Misplaced - if not True Believing - trust in good intentions, against the track record of history and vulnerable institutions.