Walk Against Warming participants rally in Melbourne, Australia, calling for stronger policies on climate change, December 12, 2009. While the media cannot answer climate change questions, it significantly shapes how the issue is presented to the general public. CIME asked Kersty Hobson, a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, about the problems of reporting on climate change issues. She believes the danger lies in uncertainty.

“Simplistic pictures are drawn of complex issues, without little recourse to the way that science and knowledge generation works,” Hobson said. “For example, there is often a conflation of correlation with causation, which is rarely explained. And that fact that uncertainty, debate and dissent is the very essence of knowledge generation.”

“In some research that I was part of into public responses to climate change, a small but vocal group of our participants took the uncertainties inherent in climate modelling as a sign that it was not to be trusted,” Hobson continued. “They said that they would only believe in climate change ‘when the models get it right’: which is of course not how modelling works. It was very hard to explain succinctly the benefits of modelling.”

Poppy Bullock, a Brussels-based journalist who specialises in climate change and energy regulation, is of a similar opinion.

“It’s difficult to say concretely to your readers that something is really due to climate change or that such and such will happen if we don't fight climate change without losing some of your readers,” Bullock said. “And besides, can I actually tell my readers that I have 100 percent evidence of something being linked to climate change? No.”

Dr Max Boykoff of Colorado-Boulder University, an authority on media and the environment, has pointed out that the principle of balance in news reporting has led to the simplification of complex issues. Hobson agrees.

“Deniers and skeptics have been pretty good at making out that those talking about climate change as an issue are imbued with vested interests, which are framed as ideological, or just trying to make a name for oneself,” Hobson said. “Moving the discourse away from this would be useful, but hard to see in the media that thrives on polarised opinion and public spats.”

Bullock thinks that this media slant has an impact on policy making.

“Some areas of media have pushed an image of climate skepticism and less people are enthusiastic to help, especially when it means paying for changes during an economic recession,” Bullock said. “Without public opinion, it's very difficult for EU governments and MEPs to have the gall to come out with stringent climate policy.”

Negative coverage poses difficulties for scientists too, according to Hobson.

“Climate scientists are in a bit of a bind as when they speak out they are told that they are acting beyond their remit and get targeted: When they don’t they are told they should step up,” Hobson said.

In recent years the view that human activity contributes to climate change has become more accepted. Whilst helpful for legislators, this has different implications for journalists: The conflict element of the issue has been diminished, and consequently climate change stories have become less prominent in the public eye. So if current reporting has moved away from the conflict angle, is it now focusing on accuracy?

The very nature of environmental science means that reportage is difficult to evaluate.

“So much of the subject is intangible, unquantifiable and subjective,” Bullock said. “When people discuss the effects of climate change, they talk about natural disasters which have occurred, but really there is no concrete way of connecting the dots from, say, CO2 emissions levels to a typhoon in India.”

“It's difficult to report on climate change when figures change, or when scientists from different organisations come out with new evidence or facts because some of it clashes or changes so often,” Bullock added. “Usually news reports stick to the same figures given by the IPCC. That is consistent, but to say it is accurate... I'm not sure.”

Political agendas often further complicate climate change reporting, something which Bullock says she has witnessed herself.

“There were certainly a lot of inaccuracies in reporting during the UNFCCC negotiations, especially in Copenhagen in 2009,” Bullock said. “It was unbelievable how quick the Western press was to make China seem like the bad guy.”

“People still believe that China is unwavering in its polluting ways, when in fact their next five year plan has some initiatives on energy efficiency and renewables which would make the EU blush,” Bullock continued. “This impacts people on the way they view their own role in fighting climate change: Why should they do their bit and reduce their energy consumption when big bad ol' China is burning all its coal?”

“I have witnessed this attitude being taken by members of the European Parliament in climate debates. And it really does affect climate policy, I think,” Bullock expanded. “Before the talks in Copenhagen there was a real climate bandwagon. Now that momentum has gone.”

Photo by Takver.