Showing posts with label Cause global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cause global warming. Show all posts

Climate Change Coverage In The Media




The public's knowledge of climate change problems, which individuals acquire via everyday media consumption, is related to the efficacy of climate change mitigation. 



News is everywhere in daily life, serving as a "kind of immediate historical record of society's speed, development, challenges, and aspirations." It may also have an impact on the consequences of the events it depicts. 



The mainstream media in the United States, on the other hand, has failed to properly report on climate change. 

Despite the fact that global climate change awareness is increasing, most countries' news coverage of climate change pales in comparison to crime, politics, celebrities, the economy, or sports. 

Climate change mitigation is often portrayed in the news as a fluid and contentious subject involving politics, science, and the general public. 

Despite the fact that science has proven that human activities have a significant role in climate change, the global phenomena is increasingly being portrayed as apocalyptic, as if it must be feared and irreversible in order for the people to pay attention. 



Broad societal change may be sparked by social shocks that accelerate political demands. 


Media framing has a big impact on whether people want to act or be fatalistic. 

In the case of climate change, the cost of inaction may be high. 

Ozone depletion, melting of the polar ice caps, loss of animal habitats, catastrophic sea-level rise, severe weather patterns, floods and drought, increases in average temperatures, and other irreversible climatic changes are among the anticipated effects of inactivity. 

Because of delays in the atmospheric system, even if all greenhouse gas emissions were to stop immediately, climate change would continue. 



The public discussion and the international negotiation process may be influenced by rapidly changing views among nonprofit organizations on the subject of global climate change. 


Leadership in climate mitigation is a battle for meaning that may change quickly over time. 

Leaders must lead discussions on whether to set emission reduction objectives that are severe enough to successfully combat climate change, as well as assess strategies for achieving those targets in light of the goals. 

Climate change now presents a bigger danger than global terrorism, according to statistics. 

Al Gore, the former Vice President, has compared the necessity for collective action to the threat presented by fascism's emergence in the twentieth century. 




Climate change, according to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, may reduce the world economy by 20%, whereas addressing climate change now would cost just 1% of global GDP. 



The effects of media routines, the factors that drive news coverage, the influences of claims-makers, scientists, and other information sources, the role of scientific literacy in interpreting climate change stories, and specific messages that mobilize action or paralysis are all explored in the following articles: 





It also looks at how journalists explain complex climate science and validate sources, how audiences process competing messages about scientific uncertainty, how climate stories compete for public attention with other issues, how large-scale economic and political factors shape news production, and how the media can engage public audiences in climate change issues.





The notion that laypeople are defensive, risk-averse, uncertain-averse, and unreflexive, whereas science is considered to be the pinnacle of reflexive self-criticism, is reflected in the dominant framing of public comprehension of climate science. 



Despite increasing public knowledge of global warming, the public has resisted accepting the trade-offs that any real solution, such as an international regulatory treaty, investment in alternative fuels, or carbon dioxide emission regulation, entails. 


  • People do not need to be amateur scientists to debate policy options, therefore public involvement must go beyond scientific knowledge. 
  • People must actively consider and reconcile potential acts with their own ideas and habits in order to go beyond awareness to judgment and resolve. 


Coverage peaked in 2007, and limited attention to Climategate in 2009 was quickly followed by a return to relative obscurity. 




Unless a new narrative develops that characterizes the issue in ways that are more locally and personally relevant than long-term catastrophic environmental effects, regulatory measures, and politics, climate change coverage may not return to 2007 levels. 


  • If journalists could communicate these dangers in non-catastrophic frameworks, human health concerns, economic development from energy innovation, or energy instability might offer this story hook. 
  • Small and medium-sized newspapers, which have traditionally given primarily national wire articles that lacked information regarding regional climate change effects and regional policy efforts, may benefit from local perspectives. 
  • The efficacy of news media content in motivating viewers to take action and support preventive policies will most likely determine the future of climate change mitigation. 
  • The flow of complicated and politicized information regarding climate change research and policy may be mitigated by media routines such as framing, balance, and source. 



Scientists and politicians should develop particular frameworks that may assist journalists in making climate change issues more personally relevant, important, and comprehensible to the general public.



~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want read more about Global Climate Change here.






Public Communication And Engagement On Climate Change





According to polls, public awareness of climate change is low, and public action is much lower. 



The issue's future depends on maintaining public attention in global climate change via news coverage. 

Not only has the climate change problem been presented in terms of erroneous conclusions, but it has also been regarded as impersonal and nonpersonal. 

Most individuals in the United States don't know the difference between weather and climate, and certain news coverage, commentary, and media-sponsored surveys have lead people to think they can predict climate change just by gazing out their windows. 


Climate science has a lot to say about rainfall and floods, including its frequency, distribution, and hazards. 

The link between reporting on high-profile flooding disasters and scientific knowledge of climate change, on the other hand, is often shaky. 




Responsible climate coverage clarifies scientific facts to encourage informed discussion and emphasizes that climate change is a long-term danger with consequences that may not be visible or discernible right away. 


To start climate change mitigation on any scale, public involvement with climate change problems may be needed. 

Collins and Evans offer a public engagement model that includes three phases of public involvement with scientific issues throughout time: knowledge gaps, democratization of science and practice, and approved expertise. 

Poor decisions and actions are blamed on a lack of information, dependence on "sound" research, and the desire to remove ambiguity before acting in the first wave. 




In the second wave, democratic public participation reduces the shared "bads" and "goods" in a risk society. 


Some organizations and institutions are allowed to talk about climate change in the third wave, while others are not. 

Even though climate change news coverage does not reach everyone evenly, people in poor economies exhibit the most worry, commitment, and optimism, whereas those in more developed countries show the most apathy, hesitation, and fatalism. 

When the IPCC report was published in 2007, prominent television stations in China, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa did not cover it during prime-time nightly news. 

Meanwhile, the world's poorest and most vulnerable people, who contribute the least to the issue and have the least access to climate knowledge, will bear the brunt of the consequences. 




Climate change is a media-driven problem in the sense that news reporting may quickly make the subject prominent in the public's mind. 


However, despite massive amounts of knowledge and data produced over the past 30 years, the public is usually misled about climate change because it is an intangible problem that is difficult to explain to the ordinary citizen and is presented as a dispute. 

Although the global energy problem has become too big and complicated for the media to tackle alone, public indifference regarding the future energy economy is not entirely the responsibility of the media. 

Personal accountability is often diffused when news goes from the public to the private realm of individual involvement. 

Despite the fact that all people contribute to greenhouse gas emissions via their everyday activities, certain vulnerable human groups are subjected to disproportionately severe consequences. 




The public opinion environment is complicated when dealing with scientific problems, and developing consensus policies may be difficult. 


In a scientific discussion such as the climate change issue, a spiral of silence may emerge when apparent opposition declines, even as public opinion seems to be hegemonic, since people's fear of social isolation prevents them from voicing minority views. 

When skeptical citizens are willing to speak among those who believe themselves to be more knowledgeable about science or among those who use moral reasoning in addition to consequentialist and utilitarian arguments, a spiral of silence in public opinion about controversial science is more likely to develop. 

In a scientific debate, Canadians are more inclined than Americans to be ethical populists, believing that ordinary people should make personal choices about science problems based on ethical concerns. 

The most prevalent group in each nation is utilitarian, who think that risks, costs, and benefits should be considered when creating policy, and that professionals should do so. 

In both nations, two additional cluster groups, moral authoritarians and democratic pragmatists, exist in almost equal numbers. 




The majority of media coverage of climate politics focuses on expert and elite discourse while ignoring people' interests, viewpoints, and voices. 


The erroneous belief that ‘‘the environment" does not include human activity and society is one reason people are excluded from the debate. 

Many practical efforts in public awareness of climate change have been guided by the premise that more information leads to more favorable views. 

The media play an essential role in shaping the social environment in which people evaluate contentious scientific topics like climate change. 

When people learn about climate change through newspapers and television, they get a better grasp of the links between fossil fuel usage and climate change. 

As a result, people's claimed intentions to act rise as their knowledge grows. 

Climate change concerns, on the other hand, often lack the day-to-day relevance required to inspire people to take action. 

Their compartmentalization of cognition grows in tandem with their specialized expertise and concern. 

Climate change information may therefore be consigned to a realm where taking ‘‘appropriate" action is seen too difficult. 




Value predispositions, schema, and media usage, rather than scientific understanding, influence public views of science. 


Citizens' assessments of difficult scientific problems are often influenced by value predispositions linked to social ideology, as well as concerns about science. 

Ideology may have a significant impact on public knowledge of climate science, and ideology can combine with other variables that influence information comprehension, such as college education. 

Worry for global warming diminishes when people' worldview changes from liberal to conservative, and college education does not enhance global warming concern among conservative ideologues. 

Citizens with a college degree and more general scientific knowledge, on the other hand, are less concerned about global warming. 



It's difficult for media viewers to tell the difference between true climate research findings and scientific-sounding spin or disinformation. 


Finding truth and common ground is difficult when parties have drastically different information. 

Chris Mooney, a scientific journalist, believes that journalism should be held to the same standards of proof, rigor, and reproducibility as contemporary science. 

Citizen assessments of science may be influenced by newspaper coverage and particular entertainment television genres. 




The impression of research advantages is influenced by trust in university scientists, exposure to national television news, and familiarity. 


Individuals who read scientific or environmental news have higher risk perceptions and support for climate policies, while those who read political news have lower risk perceptions and less support for climate policies. 

Individual attitudes toward science have a low internal consistency, and there are few connections between attitudes toward science in general and attitudes toward particular fields of scientific study. 

Science comprehension is linked to more favorable views in general, but it is also linked to more coherent and discriminating opinions. 

People with greater knowledge have a more favorable attitude toward science in general, but are less supportive of ethically problematic areas of study like climate change than citizens with less knowledge. 

In the end, educated public opinion may limit climate change research. 




Poor scientific literacy may be related to a lack of public support for climate change mitigation. 


Although civic scientific literacy has historically remained around 20% in the United States, there was a strong and ongoing public conviction in the importance of scientific research for economic success and quality of life prior to 1999. 

Some worries about the speed of change produced by science and technology, as well as the connection between science and religion, existed prior to that period, but the public regularly harmonized these opposing viewpoints in favor of science. 

The "deficit model" of citizen attitudes toward science claims that scientific knowledge predicts and explains citizen attitudes toward science. 




Knowledge has a big influence on how people feel about science. 


Although public involvement is critical to the success of environmental policymaking, the scientific nature of environmental problems makes such participation difficult when the public lacks scientific knowledge. 

The majority of lay views are dismissed as unscientific, and teaching people about environmental science does not ensure that they will be able to engage productively in government. 

The prevalent view is that scientific literacy is both the issue and the solution to social disputes in climate change debate. 

Science communication efforts, on the other hand, may promote public dialogues that acknowledge, accept, and integrate diversity in knowledge, beliefs, views, and objectives. 

Without a thorough assessment of engagement procedures, the advantages of public engagement efforts on risk-related policy problems are impossible to demonstrate. 

Even though they are promoted as a remedy for a lack of lay knowledge and other policy-making issues, these efforts are often not assessed. 



Climate change campaigns may be evaluated via participatory action research. 


Via a process of double-loop learning, a grassroots organization may be changed through personal and communal political power. 

Activist organizations may influence legislative results on climate change from the start, via broad grassroots support and political knowledge of a proposed law. 

Because of increasing media coverage, public worry about the effects of climate change and the federal government's lack of reaction became more apparent. 

When people debate where to draw the line in a scientific debate, they often address regulation and which circumstances should be researched. 




Rather than suffocating further democratization of scientific policy, ambiguities and conflicts in ordinary narratives may help it. 


Laypeople may possess technical, methodological, institutional, and cultural knowledge in addition to the deficit model of scientific ignorance. 

When people do deploy a store of information, their social environment and beliefs of relevance play a role. 

Identifying ordinary people as experts in the ways science may influence their lives, rather than unaware of it, is a critical first step toward increased public involvement in policy debates. 

When it comes to assigning blame for collective action, the media often avoids addressing scientific uncertainty for fear of undermining the desire for collective action. 

Reporters are usually sensitive to the political environment in which they work, and they tend to connect local, national, and international dangers. 



Many government publications in the United Kingdom have pushed for more public discussion and participation in scientific problems. 


Moving beyond slogans about science and democracy necessitates the creation of strategic messages. 

Opinion-leader initiatives have the potential to stimulate broader political involvement on climate change and environmentally friendly consumer choices and behaviors. 

In contrast to face-to-face efforts, combining the recruitment of digital opinion leaders with conventional media tactics results in substantial trade-offs. 

Digital opinion leaders, on the other hand, are only successful in increasing online interactions and real-world relationships under certain circumstances. 




Through emotional and cognitive involvement with climate change, communication may engage the public in low-carbon lifestyles by enabling top-down public acceptance of legislation and inspiring bottom-up, grassroots action. 


These top-down and bottom-up methods may be reconciled by using communication to generate demand for regulation. 

To encourage attitudinal change, climate communication initiatives often need substantial resources, but research indicates that promoting attitude change alone is unlikely to be successful. 

Social norms and other factors moderate the connection between individual attitudes and future action. 

Introducing regulations that compel green behavior may encourage mitigation, but the government is concerned about losing political capital. 

Individual, voluntary action-oriented communication methods, on the other hand, disregard the social and institutional barriers to behavior change. 



The danger that global climate change presents to human and nonhuman species' health and well-being has gotten comparatively little attention in the media. 


At the same time, worldwide surveys show that climate change is not a top priority in terms of health. 

Only a small percentage of individuals consciously link climate change to human health concerns. 

The majority of individuals in the United States, Canada, and Malta think climate change presents serious health concerns, and around a third say people are already suffering as a result of it. 


More over a third of Americans and Canadians believe that climate change will cause moderate or severe damage to themselves, their families, and others in their society. 


Many Canadians think that the elderly and children are more vulnerable to danger, while Americans believe that individuals in underdeveloped nations are more vulnerable. 

Climate change, according to the majority of Canadians and Maltese, may cause respiratory difficulties, heat-related disorders, cancer, and infectious illnesses. 

Sunburn and injury were also mentioned as effects of severe weather occurrences by Canadians. 

Community ability to undertake mitigation and adaptation measures may be increased by substantial press attention to health risks connected with climate change, but most of the present news coverage is not substantive. 

Extreme heat, illness, and respiratory difficulties are seldom addressed, and most tales that do include health concerns merely respond to heat waves, storms, and other naturally occurring occurrences. 

Only a small percentage of articles contain enterprise or explanatory reporting. 




Localized subjects such as regional climate studies, regional public health meetings, and other localized topics may benefit from news agenda-building methods. 


Individual behavior change may be aided by the media, which would increase public awareness of climate change problems and contribute to health-related climate change mitigation objectives. 

An emerging research paradigm known as public health communication is based on intersections between health communication and public health scholarship. 



Transdisciplinary philosophy and technique are required for effective climate change public health communication. 


  • Communication interventions offer a lot of promise for changing people's behavior in ways that are compatible with climate change prevention and adaptation goals. 
  • Communication interventions may help individuals alter their behavior for the better, either by directly addressing people who are already worried about climate change and the others who influence them, or by indirectly affecting people's living and working surroundings. 




Planners should explore possibilities to utilize media to target both people and locations in ways that complement and expand current programs to maximize the impact of a climate change communication intervention. 


Although most Americans are only vaguely aware of the health consequences of climate change, offering a human health frame of reference in news coverage may help to increase public involvement with the issue. 

Proposed climate policy changes such as cap and trade, carbon taxes, and international climate treaties may rely on broad public support and mobilization to overcome political stalemate and opponents' communication efforts. 


Public participation is required for policy action, but it depends on the media's ability to reframe the importance of climate change in ways that reach a wider audience. 


High-quality news coverage frequently reaches just a small group of people who are already well-informed and engaged, while the rest of the public either ignores it or misinterprets competing assertions based on partisanship or self-interest. 

Fear-inducing depictions of climate change are common in news articles, and they successfully draw attention to the issue. 


The famous film "The Day After Tomorrow" made people more concerned about climate change and inspired them to act. 


It also made them less worried about severe climate change events, such as the potential closure of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation, commonly known as the Gulf Stream. 

Fear isn't usually an effective motivator for real personal involvement. 

In the context of climate change problems, nonthreatening visual images and symbols that connect to people's daily emotions and worries are more engaging. 



Fear, hope, shame, compassion, and nostalgia are often associated with verbal and visual representations as a result of anchoring and objectification in social representations. 

As a result, emotive representations of climate change may increase public awareness of the problem while simultaneously drawing attention away from climate change as a long-term, abstract phenomena.



~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want read more about Global Climate Change here.




Climate Change Media Conflicts And Equilibrium.




Journalists are required to achieve ‘‘balance" by paying equal attention to all sides of a story, and this standard approach may aid reporters who lack the necessary technical expertise or are working under a tight deadline. 




In a narrative concerning risk, journalists generally consider a piece balanced if it gives equal weight to scientific opinion and the opposing viewpoint. 


Many news companies have been accused of cherry-picking false material to provide the impression of fake balance and neglecting to apply critical thinking to evidence weighing. 

Despite an emerging agreement on human causes to climate change, the US news media has persistently portrayed climate change as a battle. 

Journalists often use a conflict framing in a story by putting authorities against one another or by looking for sources who can counter prevailing viewpoints. 

Dramatization, personalization, and the appearance of balance are all necessary to enhance the story's credibility and impartiality, thus this sense of conflict is created. 




When it comes to contentious scientific problems in the United Kingdom, the government is often seen as undemocratic and subject to strong political and commercial interests. 


Coverage is increasingly emphasizing the need of deliberative and inclusive forms of science policy decision-making as science becomes a contentious topic. 

Non-Western news coverage of climate change, on the other hand, often stresses international interactions while downplaying disputes and issues. 

The ecology/science and repercussions frames have gotten the greatest attention in the Mexican daily Reforma, while scientific conflict and US conflict frameworks have received the least. 




The most often mentioned remedy to global warming was international relations, and tale frequency increased around international conferences. 


In televised news coverage of the continuing increase in greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2005, scientists were the most common source of contradictory views, although these reports more frequently cited political or governmental sources. 

The majority of articles in top US newspapers give equal weight to the idea that people contribute to global warming and the idea that the Earth's temperature rise is due only to natural oscillations. 


  • Between 1990 and 2002, press coverage substantially differed from scientific consensus. 
  • Prior to 2005, most climate coverage attempted to balance the idea that people are to blame for global warming with the opposing perspective. 


The mitigation policy discussion has been portrayed as a battle between doubters and proponents. 

Artificial balance, which is most common in American news coverage, is frequently the result of a journalist's desire to seem objective and present both sides of a subject. 

According to critics, media have ‘‘balanced" the vast scientific agreement with doubt since conflict sells more than unanimity. 

This has caused public confusion and misinformation, as well as a delay in mitigation. 

Because of inequitable resources, motivations, power behind the scenes, and significant economic and political interests attempting to influence public information and mislead the public, some opponents have described the discussion as a dishonest pseudo-controversy. 




The fast growth of the public relations business in recent years, as well as claims-makers who employ more sophisticated media tactics, has exacerbated political division in the climate change debate. 


The American news media has transitioned from a period of false balance to one of over-dramatization, which doubters often use to reject climate change as a concern. 

Audiences, in turn, interpret such criticisms via their chosen political prism and preconceived notions about liberal media bias. 

Although conflicting information on climate change may be confusing, it can also increase the perceived significance of the problem. 




Conflict and immediacy in news stories may give climate change problems a feeling of ephemerality, which might hinder public comprehension. 


By 2005, most British journalists had ceased covering climate change because they were balancing expert against skeptic voices and undermining the human-caused climate change case by prominently covering an alternate explanation. 

These shifts in media coverage of climate change, which occurred in the UK but not the US, helped set the foundation for a significant shift in the breadth and frequency of coverage, as well as the quality of public discussion on the subject. 

After a decade of divided coverage, British journalists found the center of gravity of educated opinion on climate change, despite the fact that the science's fundamentals had altered little since the mid-1990s. 

This delay may have been caused in part by a well-intentioned desire for skepticism, but it is possible that the earlier reporting routine hampered public discussion about the next political and economic measures to take. 




Investigative reporting has shown entrenched financial interests among corporations and governments seeking to discredit science and damage media. 


Financial conflicts of interest have also been revealed among prominent news organizations. 

For example, between 2007 and 2009, Newsweek sold advertising packages to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's biggest trade organization, in exchange for co-hosting energy-related conferences. 

The Washington Post Company, Newsweek's parent company, planned but ultimately canceled a series of closed-door "salons" in 2009 where lobbyists and interest groups would have paid for access to public leaders and journalists. 

Corporate money was also taken by Atlantic Media, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune for conferences and other events, many of which focused on energy problems. 

These events have acted as significant income generators for news organizations at a period of rapidly decreasing revenues, but they also offer potential conflicts of interest that may undermine media credibility. 




Underreported climate problems include the urgency of adaptation, the costs of acting and failing to act, the poor's perspectives, entrenched interests opposed to change, and the possibility for climate change action to provide significant benefits. 


The financial pressure on climate reporting to match the advertising that supports it may be one cause for inattention to important problems. 

Car and gasoline corporations in the United States have threatened to stop advertising on radio stations that discuss climate change. 




Investigating American climate policy has proved more challenging for many journalists than communicating climate science to the general public. 


Reporters found it difficult to unravel the Bush administration's approach to climate change policy, and some persisted for years before uncovering crucial paper trails. 

Following a long line of national publications that featured special sections on climate change, Rolling Stone released a 16-page article on ‘‘The Climate Crisis" in 2007. 


"Six Years of Deceit," an investigative article exposing the Bush administration's effort to deny global warming, throw doubt on climate science, and enable polluters to influence climate policy, was featured in the study. 


Similarly, The New York Times investigated the impact of the oil and coal industries on Bush's climate policy, uncovering evidence that the Bush administration interfered with scientific studies on climate change soon after the president's first inauguration. 


Philip Cooney, a senior deputy of the federal Council on Environmental Quality, was similarly revealed by the Times in 2005 for extensively altering official climate papers to play up scientific uncertainty regarding climate change.



~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want read more about Global Climate Change here.



Scientists As Climate Change Media Sources



Scientific evidence does not seem to have a significant impact on public perceptions about global warming. 




The news media, on the other hand, is becoming an increasingly significant source of scientific knowledge on climate change. 


When scientists are mentioned in the news, they may have an impact on public opinion on a broad variety of topics, particularly when scientific views are at the center of policy discussions. 

Scientific opinion on climate change and its effects is influenced by media coverage. 

The overwhelming majority of climate experts from many disciplines agree that human-induced global warming is happening and that it represents a serious future danger to the world. 



Younger scientists, those who work in colleges and universities, and those who think that researchers understand the process of climate change reasonably well are those who anticipate the most catastrophic future global effects. 


Within a society that is essentially impatient and pragmatic, science has autonomy from other social institutions in its pursuit of long-term issues that gradually develop knowledge. 

While scientists in the United States are generally respected, their views are often ignored in the realm of public policy, and they fail to directly engage the public. 

Scientists share a worldview that assumes rationality and orderliness, and they think that by asking the appropriate questions and addressing them methodically, solutions to most empirical issues can be found. 



The majority of Americans feel uneasy about risk probabilities or long-term issues. 


Scientists' contributions to climate policy have been a source of contention. 


  • When acting as technical advisers to politicians, scientists often fail to define policy alternatives, give weight to them, make their contribution less scientific, or address political concerns. 
  • When scientists disagree with governmental choices, they must choose between advocating or remaining silent, putting their expertise and reputation at stake. 
  • When news articles do outline policy choices, they often fail to give pertinent science the weight it deserves. 




Media reports often refer to theory as unproven, give equal weight to scientific consensus and contrarians, and struggle to put risk and other uncertainties into a simple frame of reference. 



Political pressures push resources toward popular or expedient solutions, not necessarily those with the best chance of long-term success . 


Science operates in a decades-long framework, whereas political pressures push resources toward popular or expedient solutions, not necessarily those with the best chance of long-term success. 

Scientific knowledge has played a significant role in media coverage of the climate change and ozone layer protection policy process. 

Scientific agreement is not required to accomplish political objectives, contrary to the IPCC's assumptions. 



In order to achieve change, an atmosphere of expectation, as well as pressure from leading nations, may be more essential than unanimity. 


While aggressive political restrictions were established in the ozone issue despite more scientific uncertainty, climate change talks were considerably more modest but based on a strong scientific agreement. 

When people believe elites to be split, public opinion tends to shift in the direction of elite agreement. 

Public participation or individual action have not been motivated by perceived scientific agreement. 


In media representations of scientific agreement, there are differences in the level of scientific evidence and the prevalence of political signals in climate change coverage. 

Political signals in newspaper stories on climate change, in particular, activated ideological views and made them a greater predictor of worry, regardless of whether scientific elites were shown as agreeing or disagreeing. 

Concern, on the other hand, was unrelated to scientific consensus or evidence strength. 

Reconstructions of scientific assertions in the British media are often intertwined with ideological views. 

Journalists utilize these concepts and values to decide what is scientific news, what the important "facts" are, who is allowed to operate as "agents of definition" of scientific issues, and whose program of action has the most legitimacy . 




Even when journalists do interview scientists, they often get involved in a debate sparked by doubters. 



In the past, a scientific agreement has prevailed until a diametrically opposed consensus emerges. 

In the 1970s, for example, a scientific consensus and widespread media coverage projected that the planet would experience possibly catastrophic cooling. 

The New York Times stated in 1975 that a significant cooling of the climate was generally expected since the Northern Hemisphere's temperature has been decreasing since approximately 1950. 

Some news reports framed the event as a cooling panic, while others offered more reasons to worry about climate change. 

The scientific literature at the period, between 1965 and 1979, stressed greenhouse warming. 

Mooney also argued that drawing a parallel between global cooling concerns expressed in the 1970s, when climate research was still in its infancy, and climate change concerns today, when hundreds of scientists from around the world have repeatedly ratified the conclusion that human activities are to blame for global warming , is misleading. 



Even when the data is overwhelming and experts concur, individuals are often unconcerned about climate change. 


They often disregard scientific data, implying that experts have little impact in influencing public opinion. 

People who are already concerned about the environment are more inclined to consider evidence, particularly when experts agree. 


Furthermore, political signals in news coverage seem to trigger extra message processing in these people, perhaps by increasing their anxiety and attention to evidence strength. 


The creation, global mobilization, and consumption of climate change information have all been significantly impacted by international media coverage of the IPCC's activities. 

Most major news sources in the United States continue to portray the IPCC's consensus projections as overblown or excessively gloomy. 


The Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge, on the other hand, claims that such evaluations undervalue climatic disturbances. 



Science has a tendency to self-correct over time. 



When the papers were overstating challenges to the then-prevailing scientific consensus, and in 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption and before opinion polls showed the US public to be growing more skeptical of climate science again, US climate change coverage generally appeared during two major periods: when the papers were overstating challenges to the then-prevailing scientific consensus, and before opinion polls showed the US public to be growing more skeptical of climate science again. 

New study results were at least 20 times more likely to support the ASC viewpoint than normal climate change coverage in American media throughout both time periods. 



Some media critics believe that challenges to scientific consensus should be scrutinized more closely. 


They also argue that journalistic balance should take into consideration the possibility that climate disruption is worse than prior scientific consensus estimates indicate. 

When talking about climate change, scientists employ a lot of language. 

When journalists interview experts for climate stories, they often qualify their conclusions by pointing out any study flaws. 

Because uncertainties are difficult to put into the plain language required for policy choices, journalists often avoid discussing them or convert hypotheses into certainties. 

Although scientific knowledge evolves over time, the media can only capture glimpses of it, resulting in restricted interpretations. 



When a writer attempts to convert research into public knowledge, the finer elements of a climate story may be lost. 


Even a little reporting error may tarnish both scientists and the news outlet that covers their work, and the misinformation's effects are difficult to reverse. 

Reporters misunderstood a scientist's argument on disappearing Arctic ice in 2006. 

When the Associated Press wire service and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that sea ice was melting in both the winter and summer, it was a false alarm. 

The majority of prior AP and Chronicle articles correctly described the dangers of melting sea ice, including global warming feedback consequences and polar bear threats. 


However, an early NASA press release misrepresented a scientist's results, leading to false claims in early news reports. 

In addition, the scientist claimed he was misquoted. 

Some publications did give accurate coverage. 

‘‘The amount of ice formed in the Arctic winter has declined sharply in the past two years, a finding that NASA climate researchers say significantly increases their confidence that greenhouse gases created by autos and industry are warming the Arctic and the globe," according to the Washington Post lead. 



Reporters can inadvertently exaggerate scientific results. 


The current coverage of ice sheet breakdowns is an example of recent news that sensationalized science. 

Both a collapse of the Thermohaline Circulation (THC) and a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) were considered equally improbable by the IPCC. 

The THC problem, on the other hand, got more than three times the amount of attention as the WAIS issue. 

The depiction of the THC as the "Gulf Stream" drew criticism from some experts. 

More than 80% of press stories about the THC problem either didn't mention the possibility of collapse or included conflicting possibilities. 

The quantity of attention given to the THC problem, the lack of supporting probabilistic assertions, and the use of sensationalist headlines all influenced public views of the climate future. 



Scientists often struggle to communicate the uncertainty inherent in their findings in everyday terms. 


When scientific uncertainty is brought up in public discourse, it may lead to inactivity. 

When elite newspaper coverage of climate change in the United States stresses uncertainty, it creates a barrier between the general people and scientists. 

This focus has resulted in citizens' respectful acceptance of the necessity for further study. 



The media's coverage of climate skeptics heightened the uncertainty, but it failed to explain why the counterclaims were dismissed by the climate scientific community. 


Greater context in climate tales may assist to reduce the amount of controversy generated by uncertainty . 

Climate experts sometimes weigh in on the technical merits of policy proposals. 

Regardless of whether the narrative depicts scientific elites as agreeing or disagreeing, political signals in a news item may activate ideological views and make such beliefs a greater predictor of climate change worry. 

Even when the evidence is solid and experts concur, people are less worried about global warming because they tend to disregard scientific data when forming their opinions on scientific subjects. 

When scientists agree and political signals are present, individuals who are concerned about the environment integrate facts into their views .




~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want read more about Global Climate Change here.





Climate Change Coverage Routines In The Media.

 



Through the routines, conventions, and pressures that govern everyday journalistic decision-making, media representations shape and impact international climate science policy and the translation of scientific uncertainty. 



The majority of climate coverage is shaped by news demands, values, and expectations. 


Both macro- and micro-level variables influence how climate research is covered in the media. 

Micro-level variables include journalistic routines, professional ideals, and organizational conventions, whereas macro-level ones include media ownership and cultural values. 



Climate science news is reported in the context of the increasing concentration and globalization of news media ownership. 


When scientific predictions call for revolutionary mitigation measures, media outlets in a capitalist society must balance reporting on this with pleasing advertisers who pay their salaries and other costs. 

Automobiles, real estate, airlines, fast food, and home furnishings get the most promotion, and their use may raise climate change emissions and prevent effective mitigation. 

Science articles in Canadian newspapers are generally event-driven, nonlocal wire reports with a positive tone, although they are not significant in terms of frequency or placement. 

Medical articles are more common in these publications than environmental ones, while environmental stories are more likely to focus on negative effects. 

Science procedures are seldom mentioned in science fiction. 



Because of organizational limitations on media workers and the perceived marketability of science as a news product, Canadian journalists often cover environmental problems as hard news, and less frequently and adversely than other subjects. 


Despite the fact that the proportion of US scientific articles has consistently risen over the past three decades, neither the variety of subjects covered nor the comprehensiveness of reports has changed. 

Methodological and contextual information are still often omitted from science tales. 

Many climate stories lack simple, event-driven news pegs, moments that may be used to hang a front-page or top-of-the-news article. 



These stories require a substantial investment of time, effort, and money on the part of the media, with little apparent return on investment. 


Journalists must concentrate on events and have difficulties covering "creeping" stories about persistent issues and their settings, particularly tales that do not end in apparent events. 

Journalists' capacity to understand and convey complicated climate science ideas is hampered by tight constraints. 

The bottom line may also restrict the scope of climate coverage. 



Editors in many nations claim a lack of financial resources as a major factor for not covering climate change adaptation topics such as urbanization, renewable energy, recycling, irrigation, seed saving, fuel substitution, and tree planting. 


Although drama may bring social issues to life and help them develop, exaggerated or alarming news can obscure thorough examination of long-term issues. 

Sensationalism in climate journalism may also trivialize material, filter out information that aren't immediately exciting or controversial, or prevent a constructive message from being delivered. 

In their daily search of fresh perspectives on deadline, reporters often miss underlying causes and long-term repercussions. 

Despite the fact that the public's primary source of climate change information is television news, few environment and/or science reporters cover the subject for broadcast stations. 



The weathercasters' views and beliefs regarding climate change have an impact on their awareness of the scientific consensus and cognitive comprehension of the subject. 


Reporters that mainly rely on scientists as sources and cover the environment full-time have the most up-to-date climate change information. 

Scientists often give general climate coverage a lower score than their own article accuracy ratings. 

Overstating the rate of climate change and conflating ozone depletion with the greenhouse effect are two examples of accuracy issues. 



Experts know more about the present condition of the climate, the causes of climate change, and the implications of climate change than environmental journalists, politicians, and laypeople. 


Most individuals are more knowledgeable about the causes of climate change than they are about the present condition or future implications, and they are also more knowledgeable about weather and sea/glacier effects than they are about health repercussions. 

Journalists, unlike specialists, politicians, or even laypeople, often show less confidence in their own understanding of climate change. 

When faced with real information, they are also more prone than experts to alter their trust in their own expertise. 



Journalists often lack the room or time to cover intricate nuances. 


They must simplify for a broad audience and replace technical terminology with more familiar and emotional phrases. 

Some topics are avoided by journalists because they are too complicated or lack attention-getting visuals. 



Reader interest and comprehension of climate change may be boosted by media accounts that offer more explanatory information. 


When compared to conventional inverted pyramid news articles, explanatory news language may substantially increase reader interest and comprehension of the material, especially among non-science readers. 

To enhance readability, most journalists try to write at a sixth-grade level, yet this may lead to oversimplification of climate news and neglect of the complexity and implications of energy decisions. 

Peak oil, the theory that oil production has reached or will soon reach its apex before entering a terminal decline, is a complex story that gained prominence after 2005 but remained underreported and lacked clear, nuanced explanation. 

Newsrooms often avoid covering peak oil because it is not an events-based story and involves the gradual accumulation of data that does not provide easy answers. 

They believe the story lacks strong graphics and isn't profitable enough to warrant the journalistic resources needed to effectively report on it.


~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


You may also want read more about Global Climate Change here.