The Yale Forum
on Climate Change & The Media

FROM THE EDITOR
Thank you for visiting The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media.
We're extremely pleased to announce a generous multi-year gift from The Grantham Foundation for Protection of the Environment to support this site and related journalism training programs The Yale Forum plans to undertake in coming months. [ More ]

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is published by Yale Project on Climate Change, Yale University.

Support for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media comes from the Yale Project on Climate Change, the Grantham Foundation for Protection of the Environment, and individual donors.

The views expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors.

Can I Hear You Say 'Manhattan Project'?

Covering Climate Change
As a National Security Issue

By John Wihbey

   War-related metaphors are now common in the rhetoric of climate change activism. We need a "Manhattan Project" for clean energy, a "Marshall Plan" for green action.
   Or maybe, we need just plain war. Think of Al Gore's first ad in his $300 million Alliance for Climate Protection TV campaign, which flashed images of the Normandy invasion. "We didn't wait for someone else" to fight, it read.
   The Pentagon, it turns out, isn't waiting this time either, and late last month it finally invaded the climate change debate. [ Full article ] POSTED JUL 15 2008

Avoiding the Reporting Traps

Arctic Sea Ice: A Single Season
Does Not a Significant Trend Make

By Bruce Lieberman

On June 27, The Independent in London ran a story that read "Exclusive: No Ice at the North Pole."
The headline was off on two counts: there was nothing exclusive about the story, and it's premature to say the North Pole is ice-free. [ Full article ] POSTED JUL 15 2008

Discovery's 'Planet Green' Weekly Show

ABC News, Discovery Launch 'Focus Earth';
Hard News ... but Only on For-Pay Cable Outlet

By Bud Ward

ABC News is putting still more of its muscle into coverage of climate change and related environmental issues with its launch of "Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff".
But viewers won't find the new weekly program on network TV. Instead, they will have to go to a for-pay "premium" cable channel - Discovery channel's new "Planet Green." [ Full article ] POSTED JUL 15 2008

Essay

Rothbury 2008: Start of Something Big for Youth?
Or Just a Great, but Fleeting, Music Experience?

By Bud Ward

   It's often difficult pinpointing just when and where a major social revolution really got under way.
   They say you know it when you see it. But often you don't. And sometimes you see it when you don't know it, when it isn't really there at all. Just a mirage.
   There's not always a Berlin Wall coming down as a clear demarcation. Sometimes there are no ospreys dying from DDT, no Exxon Valdez signaling a clear turning point. Sometimes there's a Katrina-type event marking a new course, but often there is not. For which we can be thankful.
   So the question arises just how important - if at all - the July 3-6 Rothbury Festival is or is not ... [ Full article ] POSTED JUL 15 2008

TV Weathercasters ask Climate Scientists:
How to Explain 'Unequivocal' Warming ... and Uncertainty

By Sara Espinoza and Ann Posegate

"This was not a debate or argument, but a chance to ask questions."

That's how veteran WDIV-TV, Detroit, meteorologist Paul Gross summed-up a recent American Meteorological Society four-day Denver, Co., conference bringing TV weathercasters and climate scientists together for information sharing.

Those expecting (and perhaps even hoping for) fireworks may have left disappointed, as attending meteorologists and weathercasters peppered the climate science panel with scant skepticism that climate change is occurring. Instead, most of the weathercasters during the half-day "FACTS About Our Changing Climate" Q&A workshop raised questions ... [ Full article ] POSTED JUL 15 2008

NEWS NOTES
POSTED JUL 15 2008
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Covering Ocean Acidification:
Chemistry and Considerations

By Marah J. Hardt and Carl Safina

Changing ocean chemistry threatens the survival of marine life as much as warming temperatures. Understanding the basic chemistry of ocean acidification and the relevant consequences for people and wildlife are keys to effective journalism on an issue of growing importance and interest to media audiences.
Far-reaching implications - a threatened food supply, lost coastal protection, diminished biodiversity, and disrupted carbon cycling - arise from these chemical reactions. The story involves fundamental change within the largest living space on the planet, changes that are happening fast, and right now. [ Full article ] POSTED JUN 24 2008

COMMON CLIMATE MISCONCEPTIONS

Why Reducing Sulfate Aerosol Emissions
Complicates Efforts to Moderate Climate Change

By Zeke Hausfather

With all the attention surrounding carbon dioxide these days, it is easy to forget that there are a number of other important natural and human driven factors ("forcings" in climate circles) that influence Earth's climate.
Among the most important of these are sulfate aerosols, microscopic particles smaller than a millionth of a meter suspended in the air. Sulfate aerosols are produced primarily from sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels. Along with ozone precursors, they are primary causes of acid rain and of lung irritation and ground-level haze or smog in polluted areas. [ Full article ] POSTED JUN 24 2008

Why Are So Many TV Meteorologists
and Weathercasters Climate 'Skeptics'?

By Bill Dawson

   All three staff meteorologists at KLTV, the ABC affiliate broadcasting to the Tyler-Longview-Jacksonville area of Northeast Texas, joined forces last November to deliver an on-air rebuttal of the idea that humans are changing the earth's climate.
   The IPCC had declared eight months earlier that warming of the atmosphere was "unequivocal" and that greenhouse gases from human activities were "very likely" the cause of most of the warming since the mid-20th century.
   The three KLTV weathercasters let it be known, however, that they were unconvinced ... [ Full article ] POSTED JUN 12 2008

July 15, 2008

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