Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
nature' existing at one remove with its own logics ('intrinsic nature') that
humanity may (or may not) be altering.
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This is why the news media, scientists as sources of information about
climate change, and environmental organisations as alarm bells about the
need for action now are all so critically important. Global climate change
is an
idea
rather than simply a set of 'real biophysical processes' occurring
future
based on current data about GHGs, historic records and deductions
derived from scientifically accepted 'laws of nature'. More than most, news-
makers give shape and content to that idea in their words and images. They
make (or fail to make) anthropogenic climate change 'real' and meaningful
to publics by doing what the phenomenon so named cannot do on its own,
namely represent itself to us here-and-now so that we can see and feel it with
our own senses. While organisations like the IPCC and Greenpeace are cru-
cial spokespersons for climate change, they must not only have their voices
heard by the news media on a continuous basis, but also have their voices
reported in ways that don't dilute or distort their claims. This is why I focus
on newsmakers here, rather than their sources - even as I acknowledge how
important it is to examine what sources say and which sources are excluded
covered a story about nature as grand in scale or profound in its implica-
tions as anthropogenic climate change. Its role as both gatekeeper and relay
of others' claims stands to be hugely consequential.
Needless to say, the fine details of climate change reporting have varied
between newspapers (and other news outlets). There are now dozens of pub-
lished studies of how 'claims makers' about climate change (like American
scientist-activist James Hansen) have been reported in the news, which
images have been selected to accompany stories about climate change, how
often and how much climate change becomes 'news' and so on. Rather than
attempt to summarise these studies, let me recount one to show just one
way in which newspaper representations have been made sense of, drawing
on the research of the Boykoffs into broadsheet reporting in America.
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Until relatively recently (and maybe even still today), many ordinary peo-
ple have entertained serious doubts about the existence of anthropogenic
largest GHG emitter per capita by some margin. Through the 1990s and
much of the past decade, there's been a perceived 'climate change con-
troversy'. This controversy arose because the 'consensus view' expressed
by the IPCC was challenged by a minority of scientists. This minority -
'climate change sceptics' (or contrarians) as they became known - raised
questions about (1) how reliable past earth surface temperature records are;
(2) how strong the recent warming 'signal' in atmospheric temperature is;
(3) whether any detected warming is part of 'natural cycles' of change; and
(4) how robust future computer model-based predictions about warming
and consequent environmental change are. Questions about (1)-(3) came to
