Media Reporting on Global Warming Threatens America’s Future

Sixteen years to the day after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Hurricane Ida made landfall, further underscoring the severe dangers of rapid climate change, as noted by some in the mainstream media. But, as Random Lengths reported in 2006, the role of climate change was perfectly obvious when Katrina hit–and a majority of the American people were ready to take dramatic action even then. To put this week’s historic storm into context, we’re re-running two stories from our 2005 coverage of Katrina (Sept. 30 edition of RLn)–one about its relationship to climate change, and one about the media’s failure to cover climate change accurately. and the threat that failure posed to our future… a future we’re now living in.

Even after Katrina, the national political establishment remains AWOL on the issue of global warming, which poses a significant threat to America’s future–both in terms of economics and national security. But the American people have begun to awaken to the need for action. They do so, however, in spite of a corporate media that severely misrepresents the state of the science involved, based on a false notion of balance.

These are the conclusions resulting from a trio of studies conducted over the past three years, showing ( 1) an unbroken scientific consensus that human-caused global warming exists, (2) media reporting biased to produce a false picture of divided opinion, and (3) a public that wants action, but is still held back by misinformation about scientific understanding.

In late 2004, Naomi Oreskes released a study showing that, of 928 papers published between 1993 and 2003, none disagreed with the consensus view of human-caused global warming. (See “Hurricanes Highlight Growing Threat of Global warming,” p. 9) In a 2002 study, “Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press~ Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff retrieved 3,543 news stories from the NewYork Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal, published between 1988 and 2002.

They analyzed a random sample of 636 articles and reported that, “Our results showed that the majority of these stories were, in fact, structured on the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, giving the impression that the scientific community was embroiled in a rip-roaring debate on whether or not humans were contributing to global warming.

Of the sample, 53 percent gave “roughly equal attention” to the consensus view, and opposing views that climate change is exclusively the result of natural · fluctuations; 35 percent emphasized the consensus view “while presenting both sides,” six percent emphasized “doubts” about the consensus view, and just six percent reflected the scientific consensus, which Oreskes later showed was uncontested in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The Boykoffs concluded that, “through adherence to the norm of balance, the U.S. press systematically proliferated an informational bias.”

A poll released in July by the Project on International Policy Alternatives (PIPA), showed strong public support for taking action to protect against global warming, but misinformation continued to hinder that support. A whopping 94 percent said the US should limit its greenhouse gases at least as much as the average of other developed countries, and 44 percent said we should do more, while 73 percent said the US should, “participate in the Kyoto agreement to reduce global warming.” But just 43 percent were aware that Bush opposed US participation in the Kyoto Treaty.

A bare majority of 52 percent said there was a scientific consensus about global warming, while 39 percent said that scientists were divided. Democrats mostly perceived a consensus (62 percent) while Republicans did not (41 percent, up from 30 percent one year earlier). Among those who correctly perceive a scientific consensus, 51 percent favored high-cost responses-which, of course, could pay huge long-term dividends. Among those who mistakenly believe in scientific divisions, only 17 percent favored high-cost responses.

Furthermore, when asked for their views if a survey of scientists found that an overwhelming majority have concluded that global warming is occurring and poses a significant threat, the percentage of everyone favoring high cost steps increased dramatically from 34 to 56 percent.