journalistic whiplash

Andrew Revkin of the NYT's dot earth blog, wrote an article about "journalistic whiplash" from climate change coverage.

Gavin Schmidt on the blog Real Climate in response asked this question:

Ironically, just as climate change has made it on to the front page because the weight of evidence supporting a human role in recent warming, increased coverage may actually be leading people to think that scientists are more divided on the basic questions. Is this inevitable? Or can scientists, press officers and journal editors and journalists actually do anything about it?

I went through the ~100 or so comments, most of which were civil, which was a pleasant surprise. There seemed to be a few camps:

• Nope, can't do anything about it, because the media is looking for stories that sell, that have drama, and they are controlled by the big companies who buy their advertising space.
• Scientists need to present their findings to the media in layman's language, present things in context (i.e., Though there is widespread agreement on man's role in global warming, the role that clouds play in moderating the climate system is not well understood).
• Media outlets have to hire more journalists with scientific backgrounds and/or give the journalists more time to do more thorough background work.
• The public needs to be scientifically literate. Education, education, education.
  
• Scientists must be precise, careful and clear about the information they give to journalists, so that if it is used misleadingly, your scientific credibility isn't damaged.
  

After going through all that (so much nicer than my last adventure) here are my thoughts:

I think that improving scientific knowledge in the general public is the best way to improve media coverage of science topics, not just climate change. But as important as improving education is, it is a process that takes time, which is a luxury I don't think we have anymore.

I like the idea of AGW as the null hypothesis, as then the skeptics may be asked, "can you show that all this extra Co2 *isn't* having an effect on global climate?"

I often wonder why the media, when covering these kinds of "controversial" topics, doesn't ask what would be so horrible about moving away from fossil fuel as an energy source? Even if global warming wasn't a problem, we will have to move to cleaner and more renewable forms of energy eventually, as coal and oil are in limited supply, and the world keeps growing.

So why not start now? The argument that fossil fuels are cheaper than wind or solar power has holes: there are many externalities not included in the price at the pump, and new technologies are always expensive until they are refined and used on a larger scale. And if it will take time for these technologies to get refined, why wait?