'Paul Rogat Loeb looks at the coverage of extreme weather and issues a “Memo to the Media: Extreme Weather Is Linked to Global Warming” on AlterNet today:[B]y offering no larger context, [the media] lost the chance to get people involved in shaping precisely the kinds of individual and common actions that might help prevent similar storms in the future. We’d encountered a profound teachable moment, then that moment was quickly lost.
This failure to draw broader conclusions was no exception. Last May, New England made national news with the worst storms and floods since a 1938 hurricane. In June, a 200-year storm flooded the Mid-Atlantic region. In July, in St. Louis, thunderstorms knocked out power to three quarters of a million people (the city’s largest power loss ever), and then freezing rain returned in early December, two weeks before the Seattle storm, to leave another half million people without power for up to a week. Missouri and Illinois had record numbers of tornadoes, and western states record levels of forest fires. Meanwhile New York City saw balmy winter temperatures in the 60s.
Although you can’t absolutely prove a specific exceptional event was triggered by global warming, they all fit the larger predicted pattern. Yet mainstream commentators drew few broader links. As Mark Twain once wrote, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.” Commentators certainly talked about these events, but by failing to place them in any broader context, they made it that much less likely that ordinary citizens will do anything to change a future that risks looking seriously ugly.
America’s major media haven’t been entirely silent on global warming. You could even say 2006 brought a sea change in their public acknowledgment of its gravity. If you really read the superb Time or Parade magazine cover stories, or even the coverage in Business Week and Fortune, you couldn’t fail to be concerned.
The link between extreme weather (or indeed, any climate change) and greenhouse gases is still difficult to declare for specific instances like a single storm or drought, even the President seems to be bound by public opinion to have to address global warming after years of naysaying. Prominent evangelical Christians (traditionally anti-environmentalist) and scientists have even declared an alliegiance to fight global warming in the past week, reports the Detroit Free Press:
Some leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed to put aside their differences over the origin of life and work together to fight global warming.
Representatives met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action. Details on the talks will be disclosed today in Washington.
“Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today,” said Rich Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches.
Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, agreed, saying: “Scientists and evangelicals have discovered that we share a deeply felt common concern and sense of urgency about threats to life on Earth and that we must speak with one voice to protect it.”'
Zie: http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/01/17/global-warning-for-the-media/
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