It’s been said that in American anyway most of the public remains unmoved by global warming if it is an abstraction, or limited to such places as Greenland. Reporters should, to bring it home, write on the topic with as much emphasis as can be responsibly put on local effects. All news is local, as they say.
So now what to do? A new poll reports that American acceptance of global warming is growing, and a big reason is a perceived link between springtime hot spells, early-season tornadoes, or other weather freakiness and greenhouse gas-driven climate change. Climate scientists, many and probably most, expect weather extremes to rise as the Earth’s average temperature goes up, but pinning specific hot spells, heavy hurricane seasons, or tornado outbreaks already occurring on it is statistically dicey. Thus one is faced, as a reporter, with a switcheroo. Rather than a readership reluctant generally to believe or act on word – from reliable science – that global warming is a practical matter that will be big trouble if left unattended, there now is a rising acceptance of it but the basis is not quite backed by the most mainstream science. If it appears that the public is easing toward the right answer but for not quite the right reasons, how useful is it to get fussy and uptight while scolding them a little? Many have said that media have enabled the contrarians, giving them too much ink. That rings false to me – most news reports have followed the lead of top research organizations such as national academies of science. Rather, the survey may hint to the power of the press being not so powerful – and to a public that makes up its own mind and sometimes for the better but not always for the soundest of reasons.
The new report is from a survey that the Yale Project on Climate change Communication conducted. It found that, when quizzed on specific events, from about 60% to more than 70% think global warming was an important factor in their severity, including mild winters in the last two years, record summer temperatures last years, drought in and around Texas, Mississippi river floods, and Hurricane Irene.
Stories:
- NYTimes – Justin Gillis: In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change ; Gillis gets the public-in-front angle in the lede, reporting that “Scientists may hestiate to linke some of the weather extremes of recent yeras to global warming – but the public, it seems, is already there.”
- LiveScience – Jeanna Bryner: Most American Link Global Warming to weather Madness; Nice job, got picked up widely including by the Christian Science Monitor and Discovery News.
- Climate Central – Michael D. Lemonick: Extreme Weather and Climate Change: The Public Gets It ; Mike welcomes the change, and acknowledges that it’s not the haranguing from media etc. that shifted perception. It’s just that weather is changing and people are noticing for themselves. And, he cites some of the reports recently by respected researchers asserting that, for some kind of weather, the recent patterns really do seem demonstrably linked to longer term climate change. If people are seeing patterns however where scientists still find head-scratchers, is that a bad thing? Overall, a step forward, it says here.
- Washington Post/Capital weather Gang – Jason Samenow: Americans connect dots between global warming and extreme weather ;
- NPR/The two-way blog – Eyder Peralta: Poll: Most Americans Link Climate Change to Unusual Weather Events ;
- Popular Mechanics : Americans Connecting 2012’s Extreme Weather to Climate Change ; A Q&A with Gavin Schmid, RealClimate pundit and NASA resarcher, on the poll’s message. The PM editors asked him a good question along the lines I was driving at above. “Do you think the public’s misunderstanding of weather versus climate is a good or bad thing?” in this context. Schmidt isn’t sure, but calls it an opening for talking about the science.
A good question to put to the survey’s authors is what people think if their own weather has not changed much. California, for instance, has not seen much weather one might call freaky. Maybe wildfires are up, but that’s about it. The fog stills hit San Francisco, the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and other internal valleys roast all summer, it snows in the mountains and rains down lower from about November into May. This winter was dry for a while, but not freakishly so and the spring’s been normal and wet. But Californians have, generally, been inclined to favor policies to blunt global warming anyway, and for decades now. Is there any sign we’re not showing this recent uptick of worry that is seen elsewhere? The study has some regional breakdown (“West” included 14 states), but not by state – no surprise, as it only quizzed about 1000 people.
Grist for the Mill: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication report ;
– Charlie Petit
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