Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum media and climate change

Perhaps some of you may be interested in this from NZ radio this morning. Click on the most recent "media watch" link. After a short intro the first item is on how news media in NZ treat climate change. Probably holds throughout the western world. Later it goes on about Fiji but you'll probably want to switch off before then:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch

I found the comments about presenting both sides of the argument interesting. The program doesn't mention extending the idea to debates between creationism and evolution.

The entire concept of giving equal time to both sides, when it comes to science, is an obscenity. What masquerades for "the other side" is almost always people who would need an enema to get the sand out of their brains.

That was sort of the point I thought. But journalists have to sell a story. Tonight I had an email from a Christian aquaintance claiming a local paper had an article saying H. erectus died out a million years ago and H. sapiens suddenly appeared 150,000 years ago. Big gap. His argument was God created them. Haven't seen the article but I'm sure my aquaintance has misinterpreted something. Or perhaps the NZ herald just wants to sell more newspapers.

I sometimes wonder whether equal time for both sides means that the flat-earth folks should be given equal footing with those who think the earth is round.

It is an incredible tragedy that these people spend so much time and effort hanging onto fairy tales that just are not true. I expect they are the same people who, when they were young, got to the top of the slide and then refused to let go.

The way the media presents "both sides" of a science story today, in the US, is terrible. They'll often imply that the consensus only amounts to around 50%.

If "both sides" are represented in a news story, I think they should explain how the scientific community leans, and explain the history of the scientific community's leanings, over the years as facts develop. If there are any interesting bits of information correlating scientists' views of an issue with their sources of funding, that should be presented, too.

Until the fairly recent Dover decision, TV news in the US did have people "debating" the relative merits of creationism and evolution. Those debates disappeared into the darkest realms of talk radio, after the decision. [If you're not familiar with US talk radio, it is overwhelmingly dominated by the far right/religious right.]

Great Sinclair Lewis quote. I am sorry to say it is all too true.

In November 2008 we will know if, at least for awhile, we have dodged a bullet.

Soilguy wrote:

'If "both sides" are represented in a news story, I think they should explain how the scientific community leans, and explain the history of the scientific community's leanings, over the years as facts develop.'

The program suggestd that the idea of "both sides" should be weighted in favour of what the bulk of scientific opinion supports. I'll bet that numbers on each side in TV debates in the US didn't reflect the relative weight of scientific opinion.

Regarding your signature from S. Lewis. I'm finally reading Dawkins' "God Delusion". Much better than I thought it would be. He's nicked the expression "American Taliban" off the internet for the religious right. I like it. By the way what's the Dover decision?

Thanks Dan. You wrote:

"I sometimes wonder whether equal time for both sides means that the flat-earth folks should be given equal footing".

You mean it's not flat? When I look out my window it looks flat. I'm going to demand equal time for our new theory.

Regarding Soilguy's comment, "The way the media presents "both sides" of a science story today, in the US, is terrible." Not only US. There was a debate over religion on TV here at easter. One humanist, an Anglican priest, a Jewish Rabbi, A Muslim, A happy clappy and a Buddhist priest. How representative is that?

Not to change the subject but it is hardly worthy of a new thread. Has anyone else noticed that the global warming refuseniks all showed up together and all left together.

Talk about a contrivance.

I've been away for a while. Do you think the global warming deniers are the sock puppets of a single poster? That is a common tactic on another forum I use.

The phrase 'pathetic wretch' comes to mind.

Exactly what I think. One and the same person creating different profiles, and likely using different ISPs. I use 4 different ISPs myself so it isn't hard to do.

(one at the university, one at the user group, one at home, and one when on the road). With a little lack of integrity I could pretend to be 4 different people.

You had my verdict long ago, DA. Some people have problems. Maybe sympathy is in order.

Sorry to dissappoint you Morgan - but I'm still here. I'm largely browsing the threads, and did take part in a discussion on population&dna. I really did enjoy that, and surprise surprise, climate change wasn't brought up. D

Frankly, I'm not going to bother posting in the climate change forum, simply because of the intolerance shown.

Not even sure how long I will be browsing this board. From what I can tell, there's under 10 people that regularly post here. I was wondering why, then I saw you drive 1 long term member, and 2 newbies away. Apparently others aren’t as enamored with your personality as you are. I'm surprised that other members, and the owners of the site can't see you're the reason for the anemic membership.

Those who enjoy Tim Flannery's work may be interested to know that as Australian of the Year he is currently invoved in a row with our Prime Minister , who , somewhat sulkily said the he would not reduce our CO2 emissions because it would cost jobs. But oddly enough he got a much less favourable response than the usual knee-jerk one. Then Tim expressed fairly forceful disgust at the way things have been going. Unfortunately for us Aussies, things indeed aren't good. One of our largest rivers is drying up and there will be no water drawn from it for irrigation only drinking, Adelaide has only some weeks of water left and everywhere is bone dry and the football gounds are too hard to play on safely (this is the most important to most of us) . It may not be Global Warming---but it's hard to sustain scepticism here. Maybe disasters such as we have must happen before people notice something is very very wrong. Oh yes-- the PM also told us to pray for rain--a suggestion met with much hilarity!

SO- GO TIM!

Ellis. Great. Tim Flannery. Australian of the year. I loved his books "The Future Eaters" and "The Eternal Frontier". Anyone here not read them, shame on you.

Re the drought. My brother and nephew are dairy farming in northern Vic, the Murray/Darling basin. My bro is over here on hol at the moment. Says if it doesn't rain really heavily in the next two months everything will go belly up. Mind you Oz has had spectacular droughts for thousands of years.