Warnings On Global Warming Coverage
"When you look ahead at the Arctic later this century, there's not a scientist around studying this stuff who doesn't see the prospect of basically a blue pole at the top of the world for the first time in human history, meaning summertime open water ocean, just like the Atlantic or the Pacific, all the ice gone," says Revkin. "But when you look at the near term, there's been a lot of melting, a lot of strange things going on with the sea ice that they can't ascribe this particular year to our influence on the climate system. They know it's contributing to change but there's enough variability in the Arctic that you can't make a slam dunk case. So that's a nightmare for the media. You know, my editors -- the one thing that makes them glaze over immediately is the word 'incremental.' That's like, at The Times, and I'm sure any other newsroom, that's a death sentence for a story. And global warming is kind of like the Social Security and national debt of the environment. It's there, we all recognize it's some kind of big bad thing, but it's always kind of a 'someday, somewhere story.'"
Revkin argues that journalists should resist the urge to tie climate change stories to natural disasters like hurricanes, since there is legitimate debate by scientists about whether such a connection exists. He says that the real "breaking news" in climate change is that "humans are transforming the way the world works." He continues:
"It's breaking news in terms of the scope of the history of human life on earth, right, which is for most people, a snooze," says Revkin. "I guess it gets down to what is journalism about. I do think there's a part of journalism that needs to explore the things that don't necessarily fit our norms. In other words, let's for the moment leave aside the things at the edges of the science that are compelling and weird and scary but that we don't really understand very well and get back to the bedrock. This is what carbon dioxide does. More of it will make the world warmer. A warmer world will have less ice. That will make seas higher. And that will lead to profound transformations that we need to pay attention to. And if it takes writing a story that way, where you literally start the lead of the story, "This isn't a story as we know it, but this is a story, let me tell you why," I think that's a - that could work."
I noted last Wednesday that James Inhofe, outgoing chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, held a hearing on "Climate Change and the Media." Inhofe has called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," and on the committee's Web site there is now a "White Paper" called "A Skeptics Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism, Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge to Journalists who Cover Global Warming." (PDF) One of Inhofe's speeches reprinted in the White Paper includes this passage: "During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy."
"60 Minutes" Correspondent Scott Pelley has been criticized by Inhofe for his reporting on the issue. We've spoken to Pelley twice about his coverage. As Revkin notes, in 1998 a document was uncovered that he says "was the game plan of the energy lobbies to fight greenhouse gas restrictions." The document "expressly laid out a budget and how to hire some scientists, to train them to speak about uncertainty and get out there in the mix," since exploiting the media's tendancy towards balance of the "he said, she said" kind was central to the effort to foster the idea that the scientific community was divided on the impact of global warming. Pelley told us that to offer that kind of balance would be a mistake. "It would be irresponsible of us to go find some scientist somewhere who is not thought of as being eminent in the field and put him on television with these other guys to cast doubt on what they're saying," said Pelley. "It would be difficult to find a scientist worth his salt in this subject who would suggest this wasn't happening. It would probably be someone whose grant has been funded by someone who finds reducing fossil fuel emissions detrimental to their own interests."