Media

Where is the News in 200 Scientists
Saying 'No Time to Lose' on Climate?

Maybe it's a really big story. But then again, maybe it isn't.

Many in the media seemed genuinely cool to 200-plus well regarded climate scientists seemingly going critical and shedding all remnants of a bright wall between climate science and climate policy.

When 215 leading climate scientists in early December took off their gloves and signed a "no time to lose" petition, many in the news media looked elsewhere for the day's environmental news. Journalism blogs and listserves quickly oozed with navel-gazing on what does, and does not, constitute news in this day of all-climate 24/7 headlines.

Veteran A.P. science writer Seth Borenstein wasn't among those news-deniers though. His syndicated article began, "For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because 'there is no time to lose.'"

Borenstein saw the move by the scientists as the start of a new direction. "In the past," he wrote, "many of these scientists have avoided calls for action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups .... But no more."

He quoted Scripps scientist Jeff Severinghaus, a petition signer, as saying "It's a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast .... I think the stakes are way too high to be playing around."

Borenstein quoted a number of scientists who he characterized as "losing patience" with inaction.

NASA scientist and petition signer Gavin Schmidt was quoted as saying "the time for half-measures and the time for arguing about 1 percent here and 1 percent there - those things are no longer relevant." And he quoted Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientist Richard Seeger as saying, "A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical."

From the skeptics' perspective, Borenstein's A.P. piece had the libertarian Cato Institute's senior fellow Jerry Taylor saying "scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change."

The A.P. wire story concluded with Carnegie Mellon University engineering and public policy professor Granger Morgan suggesting "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action."

But Morgan said he is "not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything."

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