Weighing ‘convinced’ and ‘unconvinced’

As polls indicate that fewer Americans say they see solid evidence for global warming, and as climate change skeptics have grown emboldened in the wake of last fall’s hacked e-mail episode at the University of East Anglia, Stanford grad student Bill Anderegg pursued a few simple questions:

What makes someone who speaks or writes about the climate a climate expert?

Is there a difference in scientific expertise between those who subscribe to the view that humans are significantly driving up the globe’s thermostat and those who are skeptical or incredulous?

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On June 5th the local newspaper in Beeville, a small town in Southern Texas, published a story about a local 4th grade student who had it said had just won the Junior Division of the National Science Fair for a project entitled “Disproving Global Warming.” The student, Julisa Castillo, had received a package containing a trophy, medal, and plaque, along with a letter purporting to be from an official at the National Science Foundation and announcing her selection as the first place winner out of 50,000 projects entered from 50 states.

In the course of two days, the story had spread around to dozens of blogs, hundreds of twitter posts, and various media outlets. It also appears to have been an elaborate hoax.

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A highly regarded national environmental radio network is among the latest casualties of journalism downsizing.

As of June 4th, “The Environment Report,” (TER) which not long ago had hopes of becoming a regular nationwide program, is being scaled back from a network heard on 123 stations to a program aired only on Michigan radio.

In pursuit of corporate underwriters to replace dwindling foundation support on which it had long depended, TER had tried to broaden its focus to be aired in major markets throughout the country.

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A Newsweek column dismissing the established body of evidence on anthropogenic climate change for some time had scientists going critical on how best and whether to respond to the naive perspective.

At the same time, the column by Newsweek European economics editor Stefan Theil had a prominent conservative climate contrarian boasting that the magazine had flipped on the climate change issue … and a prolific liberal climate blogger decrying “the error-riddled, un-fact-checked article.”

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MIAMI – When it comes to communicating climate change, meteorologists are on the front lines.

“Television weathercasters may be the most prominent science communicators in our society,” said John Morales, chief meteorologist at NBC 6 in Miami. “The one scientist that everybody can relate to is the broadcast meteorologist on television.”

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Future historians may regard recent weeks as a momentary breathing spell in the political trajectory of the climate issue.

In the courts, preliminary rulings are awaited on a spate of legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous and deserve regulation under the Clean Air Act.

In Congress, meanwhile, senators crafting a climate-energy bill different from the cap-and-trade measure passed by the House delayed its unveiling until May 12 so they could regroup after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina withdrew his support.

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Canada’s Scales of Justice … Avoid ‘falsehoods’? Or ‘chilling’?

Andrew Weaver, a prominent Canadian climatologist and IPCC contributor, raised eyebrows across the climate media world recently when he filed a libel suit against a right-leaning newspaper for its tough criticisms.

In late April, Weaver filed a complaint in the Supreme Court of British Columbia contending that the National Post was guilty of libel in a series of recent articles attacking him and his work.

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The rocks and rolls of the climate change policy debate have taken mind-warping twists and turns in recent months.

Stop there.

Note that the reference is to climate change policy and not to science. The latter, notwithstanding doubters’ continuing insistence to the contrary, remains unaffected.

Stop there too.

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A Lynchburg, Virginia, TV meteorologist for an ABC affiliate has taken the unusual task of publicly criticizing, on his blog, an elected state official, Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, for initiating a legal action against former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann, now at Penn State.

Cuccinelli, elected to his office in November 2009, in late April initiated a “Civil Investigative Demand” (CID) with the University of Virginia seeking a vast volume of e-mails and other communications from Mann’s 1999-2005 years with the University.

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The reverberations of the hacked e-mails fiasco - conveniently or otherwise characterized as “climategate” - continue to be felt deeply within the journalism and scientific communities.

In many ways, the episode that originated six months ago remains a pivotal moment for media coverage of climate change. The Yale Forum asked three people with deep involvement in, and different perspectives on,  the story to look back at how the media performed in the controversy’s initial stages, and to offer some lessons learned (see related posting).

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