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In the fourth installment of our four part series on climate change: Engineering against global warming.
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Where climate science meets politics.
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In the second installment of our four part series on climate change: How well have journalists covered climate change?
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Tonight in the first installment of our four part series on climate change: One debate, two scientists--separating the real heat from hot air.
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Climate Change: Did I confuse you?
I mean I went to university and got good grades in my journalism program. And I impress when I play Trivial Pursuit. But I stopped taking science classes after Grade 10 and I just couldn't quite get my head around calculus in my last year of high school. My mother would never say this, but my brother, the computer programmer with the mathematics degree, is the really smart one.
So it's no surprise that I, like many other journalists who opted for arts and humanities over engineering and physics, find climate change one of the most challenging and complicated issues to cover.
It's not just that climate science uses a number of scientific disciplines to try and predict how our incredibly complex environment will react to rising CO2 levels. It's also that the issue of climate change touches on questions of science, questions about how that science is done, as well as questions about policies to deal with climate change and the political conflict around them.
One academic has argued that, too often, journalists are mixing science, policy and politics together when discussing climate change, leading to an informational mess that is as likely to confuse as it is to illuminate.
Max Boykoff, environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is one of the authors of the 2004 article "Balance as Bias". It helped popularize the idea that the journalistic practice of seeking balance by giving climate skeptics "equal time" in articles and interviews gave the public the false impression that scientists were split 50-50 on the issue when the vast majority of climate scientists agreed that climate change caused by humans was a reality.
While the issue of "balance as bias" is less prevalent now in journalism than it was in 2004, Boykoff argues in a 2008 article in Nature Reports that today we have a different problem: the mixing of different scientific and political issues in today's climate change reporting is leading some in the public to draw false conclusions from climate change:
In the US Republican debate in Iowa on 12 December 2007, Carolyn Washburn of the daily broadsheet The Des Moines Register asked the question, "How many of you believe global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity?" ...
Whereas the latter aspect is one of clear scientific consensus, the former is a judgment call, worth legitimate debate and discussion. But by merging these issues into a single question, Washburn allowed candidates to skirt both issues with general responses: "I believe that global climate change is serious" (Rudy Giuliani), and "I think that climate change is real" (John McCain).
By conflating different issues, Boykoff continues, journalists obscure the difference between areas of climate change where agreement is strong (i.e. the basic science) and areas where disagreement calls for more debate and discussion (i.e. whether we need a carbon tax).
Does the program I produced for tonight fall into that trap? I think at times it might, even though I was aware of Boykoff's concerns. At times during the discussion, we talk about the way journalists cover the science itself and at the same time talk about how journalists deal with the politics in and around the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international body charged with summarizing the scientific research on climate. At some points during the program, one of our guests, Walter Russell Mead, feels the need to make clear the distinction he's making between science, policy and politics to the other guests and the audience.
It is difficult, though, to completely avoid this trap. Questions about the IPCC's reputation lead to questions about the reliability of the science itself, even if they're not necessarily one and the same. And often scientists who have researched the climate have very strong views on the policies that should flow from their scientific conclusions.
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on how well -- or poorly -- tonight's program deals with the issue of climate science journalism. And please feel free to post any thoughts you have in general about how journalists cover this often contentious topic.