Posted: Feb 23, 2012 2:50 am
ginckgo wrote:Garm wrote:FACT-MAN-2 wrote:
Climate change needs a popular leader, or leaders, a role that Al Gore has played and Bill McKibbon has stepped up to on the XL pipeline issue, but we need a lot more of this. We need well known personalities to lead the charge. Gore has worn out his welcome and aside from McKibbon, I don't see many others accepting this challenge, and it is a huge challenge because the media is against you all the way. We do see the odd interview situation in which a climate scientist is pitted against some well known denier, but they are infrequent and are often made inconclusive by mealy mouthed interviewers.
One of the problems of media coverage of climate change is the tendency to present a 'balanced view' of the issue by giving denialists equal opportunity to express their opinions. This leads to people thinking there is a controversy where there actually is none. Media should stick to the facts more instead of providing a platform for idiots and corporate sockpuppets.
The media's obsession with the "View From Nowhere" is partly to blame.
Garm's point is well taken, it's a notion that's been common around the movement for some time now and it has been written about. And it's at least generally true. It happens mainly because media thrives on conflict, it's the only way they know how to frame an issue, so they end up wth a denier facing off with a climate scientist or a science reporter and the impression is left that there is a real live actual debate going on ... when in fact there isn't. The decline in science reporters in recent years also contributes to this.
The climate science community has to devise a better framework for discussing the issue and push that on the media, and push it hard. The topic should be framed around the threat and the veracity of the science that warns us of it, and the many ways we can act to curb rising planetary temperatures, all without having to "go back and live in caves." And the fact that we're out of time.
It should not be framed around the idea of "we have a problem/no, we don't" because everyone who counts in this already knows we do have a problem, a very big problem as a matter of fact.
I expect the climate science community will have to do something to prepare the public for the BOMBSHELL that IPCC's upcoming publication of AR5, its 5th Assessment Report, due in early 2013. Because I'm thinking that report is indeed going to contain some shockingly bad news that will blow the debate to smithereens and cause lots of knee jerk reactions that won't do anyone any good nor help clarify the nature of the problem.
This is where leaders and spokespersons and writers come in, they can convey the "bad news" in more reasonable and easier to understand terms, in effect, they can humanize it, which is what leaders and spokespersons do with an issue. Not make it palatable but more clearly understood.
What I've called the "BOMBSHELL" news has to come sooner or later in any case, and whether it's AR5 or AR6 five years later, we know damned well it's coming.
I've not heard the term "View from Nowhere" that you mention, and although I could probably make some guesses about what it involves, could you elaborate?