Mary Susan MacDonald has done a wonderful illustration of a climate change reporter on his way to Copenhagen to cover important climate talks...
Who is this reporter? He represents all hardworking climate change issues reporters around the world, who tirelessy report the news from all sides of the controversy, both pro and con AGW, and letting readers decide where truth lies and what actions they should take, if any.
(c) 2009 - 2010 Mary Susan MacDonald, Toronto, Canada, Planet Earth
9 comments:
Andrew C. Revkin, Reporter, NYTimes
"and letting readers decide where truth lies"
The problem with that is that most people don't have the proper background knowledge to make a rational decision on where what to accept. A layperson could easily be mislead by convincing sounding BS.
good point ScruffyDan in Canada. What would you suggest, then? To be fair, MSM reporters need to write for the general public. Bloggers can become activists and focus on one side of the aisle or the other, but a MSM reporter has ethics to follow, no? And that means telling readers both sides of the story, if there are TWO SIDES or more. I believe climate chaos is coming for sure in 500 years, and I read all climate reporters with gusto, but I have already made up my mind. YOU?
The main thing I suggest (which is much easier said than done) is that the MSM stop trying to give us false balance.
The he-said-she-said approach to reporting may work ok for policy issues (though some recent examples from the US show that even then it doesn't work so well), but it falls apart in science reporting when both sides are not equal.
The press should write only stuff that is supported by the scientific literature. Unfortunately with science reporting budgets being cut all over the place, science reporting is being done by people who don;t understand that science, hence they get mislead by convincing sounding BS.
In short the MSM needs to function as a BS filter. They need to know what they are talking about in order to determine who is peddling BS in order to filter it out.
"I believe climate chaos is coming for sure in 500 years"
Not sure where you get that number from. 500 years is a long way away and I am not sure we can predict what will happen that far into the future with much confidence.
But the climate chaos as you put it is likely much closer than that. Some business as usual estimates show huge problems in as little as 50 years time, and even worse scenarios in 2100 (which is about as far as most models go).
As for if my mind is made up, se this:
http://mind.ofdan.ca/?p=2095
5 hundred years to climate chaos?
OR
50 years to some other sort of colossal ecological wreckage?
How about 5 years before an environmental "tipping point" is reached that will produce clear and present dangers to human civilization and life as we know it?
Copenhagen is two months away. Something new, something different, something that raises consciousness needs to be happening, starting now, I suppose.
How about telling your kids not to have children becuase the ecological future is so grim. When 9 billion people reduce to 1 billion by 2100- that's going to be messy!
yes, greg, it IS going to get messy, but not until around 2500, we still have time to prepare future generations for what they will face. 9 billion will get down to 200,000 actually, and those souls will serve as breeding pairs living in polar cities for 1000 years until it is safe to come out again. NOT a pretty picture, you are right. have kids, do not have kids, either way, it's okay. We need to prepare future people for their future grim life. We can start now be facing reality.
"How about 5 years before an environmental "tipping point" is reached that will produce clear and present dangers to human civilization and life as we know it?"
That estimate of when we will hit a tipping point is much sooner than anything I have read. Where does it come from?
"but not until around 2500"
Again I am left wondering where this comes from.
More reporting on all sides . . . fully and frankly addressing the tough issues . . . helping us to get closer to yes on solutions . . . thank you to our climate change reporters and others who comment here.
For more environmental cartoons and the caricature of "Our Intrepid Climate Change Reporter" go to
http://www.marytoons.com
Post a Comment