Climate Change - Impacts, Part II

[keroliver]

Hi

Since the thread is about impacts of climate change… I googled ‘impact of climate change on media’

Very interesting results.

Let me share the first one… from wikipedia…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cov … ate_change

Introduction:
Media coverage of climate change has had effects on public opinion on climate change,[1] as it mediates the scientific opinion on climate change that the global instrumental temperature record shows increase in recent decades and that the trend is caused mainly by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. Almost all scientific bodies of national or international standing agree with this view,[2][3] although a few organisations hold non-committal positions.
The way the media report on climate change in the English-speaking media, especially in the United States, has been widely studied, while studies of reporting in other countries have been fewer.[4] A number of studies have shown that particularly in the United States and in the UK tabloid press, the media significantly understated the strength of scientific consensus on climate change established in IPCC Assessment Reports in 1995 and in 2001.
A peak in media coverage occurred in early 2007, driven by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth.[5] A subsequent peak in late 2009, which was 50% higher,[6] may have been driven by a combination of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit email controversy and December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference.[5][7]
Some researchers and journalists believe that media coverage of political issues is adequate and fair, while a few feel that it is biased (see, for example, Bozel & Baker, 1990; Lichter & Rothman, 1984).[8][9] However, most studies on media coverage of the topic are neither recent nor concerned with coverage of environmental issues. Moreover, they are only rarely concerned specifically with the question of bias (cf., Bell, 1994; Trumbo, 1996; Wilkins, 1993).[10][11]

And this one is … a 54 pages pdf files…
hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files … immons.pdf

Human Development Report 2007/2008 Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world Human Development Report Office OCCASIONAL PAPER
What role do the media play in influencing personal, national, and international action to address
climate change? How much has the media covered climate change, and what is driving changes in
that coverage? How do climate change stories come to be reported, and who gets cited as legitimate
sources in those stories? What influence do the media play in forming public opinion? Very recent
reports have acknowledged the need for foreign aid to help poor nations adapt to climate change: what
role is the media playing in mobilizing that aid or making it less likely to materialize?
Through time, mass media coverage has proven to be a key contributor – among a number of
factors – that have shaped and affected science and policy discourse as well as public understanding
and action. Mass media representational practices have broadly affected translations between science
and policy and have shaped perceptions of various issues of environment, technology and risk
(Weingart et al. 2000). Within the issue of climate change, two more terms need quick review and
clarification: climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation of emissions is the reduction of
greenhouse gasses released to the atmosphere. For decades, the only aid to developing countries for
climate change was linked to mitigation activities…
To be continued.

[keroliver]

I did not finish to read the previous link
but found some more
such as…
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/pub … tions.html
and this sentence popped out…
‘Juliet Eilperin, who covers environment for the Washington Post, and Eric Pooley, deputy editor of Bloomberg’s Business Week, expressed concern that newspapers’ financial challenges are undermining climate change coverage.’
just for information

[Vay]

Interesting. This was no surprise:

A number of studies have shown that particularly in the United States and in the UK tabloid press, the media significantly understated the strength of scientific consensus on climate change established in IPCC Assessment Reports in 1995 and in 2001.

What’s really sad, the fact that, as 2015 was a red-letter year for climate change impacts, media coverage actually went down…

The total amount of coverage on the nightly news and the Sunday talk shows dropped five percent in 2015, says Andrew Seifter, climate and energy program director for Media Matters and a co-author of the study. This is surprising, Seifter says, given that “by any measure, we could say that 2015 was the most newsworthy year for climate change in history.”

…except for Fox, which went up, but…

that wasn’t necessarily a good thing for people concerned about climate change, he notes. “The vast majority of that coverage included attacks on climate policies, or climate science denial,” he explains. “So, people who watch Fox for their climate coverage got more of it, but they didn’t necessarily learn more from watching it.”

Network news coverage of climate change dropped, on average, in 2015

The actual study is here:

How Broadcast Networks Covered Climate Change In 2015

[fred_smith]

Yawn… I am hot, no I am cold, no I wish I was hot but I am only warm except when that cool draft causes me to cool and then while I am not exactly warm I am not cold either but I wish I was warmer but not hot just warmer than I am now. What can I do?

[Vay]

Wow. The following is an incredible video (as usual, I can’t make the YouTube codes work):

Chinese Floods Kill 186: Earth’s Costliest and 2nd Deadliest Weather Disaster of 2016

Torrential monsoon rains along a stalled frontal boundary near the Yangtze River in China have killed 186 people, left 45 people missing, and caused at least $7.6 billion in damage. In the Hubei Province, 1.5 million people have been evacuated or are in need of aid, almost 9,000 houses have collapsed or are seriously damaged and more than 710,000 hectares of crops have been affected, the provincial civil affairs department said. According to the May 2016 Catastrophe Report from insurance broker Aon Benfield, the $7.6 billion in damage from these floods would make them the world’s most expensive and second deadliest weather-related disaster so far in 2016. The only deadlier weather disaster in 2016 was an April heat wave in India that claimed 300 lives.

wunderground.com/blog/JeffM … ign=buffer

My one consolation for the fact that we are rather stupidly conducting this one-off chemistry experiment on the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, is that we are all gonna get more-or-less front-row seats to one hell of a show.

[taiwandon]

I’ve been hearing all this crap from both sides of the climate change matter. i’m old enough to remember some of the snow we got back in the 60’s and now almost none. It’s Mother Earth’s revenge finally catching up with the human race for it’s misuse of the planet.

[Vay]

@taiwandon

I’ve been hearing all this crap from both sides of the climate change matter. I’m old enough to remember some of the snow we got back in the 60’s and now almost none. It’s Mother Earth’s revenge finally catching up with the human race for it’s misuse of the planet.

This implies there is some kind of balance or equivalence between the deniers and the “believers”. Not even close. Just to scratch the surface, here is a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences to Congress. Note the signatories:

[quote]Dear Members of Congress,

We, as leaders of major scientific organizations, write to remind you of the consensus scientific view of climate change.

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

There is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources, and human health. For the United States, climate change impacts include greater threats of extreme weather events, sea level rise, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems. The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.1

To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced. In addition, adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others.

We, in the scientific community, are prepared to work with you on the scientific issues important to your deliberations as you seek to address the challenges of our changing climate.

American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Meteorological Society
American Public Health Association
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists American Society of Naturalists
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium
Botanical Society of America
Consortium for Ocean Leadership
Crop Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Entomological Society of America
Geological Society of America
National Association of Marine Laboratories
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Mathematical Biology
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
Society of Nematologists
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research[/quote]

And when I say “scratching the surface”, I mean that quite literally. The science academies of essentially every country on Earth have endorsed the IPCC’s findings.

[taiwandon]

Vay, I may not have got what i meant across correctly, for that i apologize I for one am in the camp that thinks we are ruining our planet. But blame falls to all people because we are a throw away society, i for one try to recycle everything i can.

[Vay]

No apology necessary. On this, I agree with you fully.

[fred_smith]

i for one try to recycle everything i can.

ROFLMAO! Yes, if only we would all just recycle, this issue of climate change could be resolved… We all need to “care enough” to “take action” to “do something!”

[finley]

@fred smith

ROFLMAO! Yes, if only we would all just recycle, this issue of climate change could be resolved

To a large extent, yes it would. If you wanted to boil down the entirety of humanity’s problems to a single word, it would be “waste”. Waste of energy, waste of resources, waste of human potential, waste of land, waste of pretty much everything we touch. We take a little nibble of the apple and chuck the rest into the sea. Closing the loop on various inputs and outputs - especially agriculture and domestic consumption - would make a massive difference economically, and purely by coincidence, would have a large impact on greenhouse-gas emissions.

[fred_smith]

Happy to hear more about how recycling is going to stop the CO2 emissions that are supposedly driving our planet to its doom.

[finley]

Happy to hear you’re getting a grip on reality, fred.

[Vay]

Well the new British PM just killed off the climate department. In the wake of more willful stupidity on the part of those who are supposed to be leading the English-speaking peoples, here is an apt commentary:

Nature’s Calling Our Bluff

[quote]We’re small creatures on a dangerous continent in increasingly dangerous times. Yet we act like we have totally got this. Like we can build in incendiary bush, unguarded flood plains and active beach-zones and everything’ll be just fine, like yesterday and the day before. We think nature’s a toy and we’re the big kids in the sandpit now, making the rules.

I mean come on. Join a few dots here. Last month atmospheric CO₂ passed the 400ppm point-of-no-return. It was autumn, but we were still in the longest, hottest summer on record. Tasmania’s world heritage forests burned for the first time in history and UNESCO reported the Great Barrier Reef is 93 per cent bleached, 50 per cent dead.

Then, right at summer’s belated end, one of the strangest and most damaging coastal storms ever. Houses collapse, people die.

Yet our government heads into an election on a platform of cutting climate science by 30 per cent, blocking renewables investment and supporting one of the dirtiest roads in history. Que?

“We take it seriously,” said Environment Minister Greg Hunt of the dying reef, even while his department secretly coerced UNESCO to redact the reef – and Australia – from its report. Black texta. Gone. Weeks earlier he’d approved, for a company that has trailed illegal pollution across India and Africa, a coalmine twice the size of Manhattan, yielding 120 million tonnes of dirty brown coal a year – a quarter of Australia’s total output and 0.5 per cent of the world’s carbon. Turnbull warns of more intense and frequent catastrophes but remains, famously, the PM without a climate plan.

It’s as though they think not seeing the truth can save us from it. While the rest of the world demolishes motorways and vies for 100 per cent renewables, Barnaby Joyce chooses denial, Angus Taylor opposes the renewables target and a clique of Abbott-esque denialists has decimated renewables investment and blocked climate action at every opportunity.

This is nuts. Survival is not a left-wing issue. The Queen, the Pope and John Hewson all warn of climate change as economic catastrophe if not properly considered. And they don’t mean embroidering better blindfolds.[/quote]

[fred_smith]

Ah… dear Vay but the end of the world is nigh millennarianism has been around a long time. You should examine why you feel such angst. What is it about your life that is so out of control that you need to project dire consequence for the whole planet?

[Vay]

Fred if that is supposed to be a response to the article I posted above, please try again - with criticisms of specific points. Reading you beating on a caricature of my opinions is something I’m sure we’ve all already done enough of.

[Vay]

Ugh what a disaster this has been:

Great Barrier Reef Undergoing a ‘Complete Ecosystem Collapse,’ Scientists Say

[quote]Depleting fish populations and corals that are still bleaching in the winter paint a bleak picture for parts of the Great Barrier Reef, which is undergoing a “complete ecosystem collapse,” scientists say.

For a week, Coral Watch chief investigator Justin Marshall surveyed the reefs around Lizard Island in Queensland, according to the Guardian. He said many of the fish species commonly spotted around the coral had completely disappeared.

“The lack of fish was the most shocking thing,” Marshall told the Guardian. “In broad terms, I was seeing a lot less than 50 percent of what was there [before the bleaching]. Some species I wasn’t seeing at all.”

…

A declining population of fish was a major indication that the ecosystem had collapsed. When corals die, they become covered with algae, which cuts fish off from the sources of shelter and food that they need, according to Coral Watch. Without these resources, the fish either die out or move elsewhere.

Another blow to the livelihood of the Great Barrier Reef: Marshall told The Guardian some of the corals continued to bleach, even as cooler water from the Southern Hemisphere’s winter moved in.

“There are still corals bleaching,” said the scientist. “Especially noticeable on Lizard Island were the soft corals. Some of them have remained bleached. And some of the hard corals are still white.”

It was revealed that 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef has undergone bleaching, with more than 80 percent showing signs of severe bleaching.[/quote]

weather.com/science/environment … -ecosystem

[Chris]

Excellent new video by potholer54 on atmospheric CO2, which actually looks at the scientific literature.

“Are humans contributing only 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmCBetoR18

[finley]

Apropos of nothing, I just came across this deadpan line on Wikipedia:

Shell joined the Global Climate Coalition of businesses opposed to greenhouse gas emission regulation. In 1989, Shell redesigned a $3-billion North Sea natural gas platform in the North Sea, raising its height one to two meters, to accommodate an anticipated sea level rise due to global warming.

The delicious irony of climate deniers preparing for climate change.

[tempogain]

Chocolate May Be Extinct Within Your Lifetime