From the Department of Obvious Science and from the University of Exeter comes this report that makes me wonder: why was time and money spent on it?
A difficult climate: New study examines the media’s response to the IPCC
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) periodically releases Assessment Reports in order to inform policymakers and the public about the latest scientific evidence on climate change. The publication of each report is a key event in the debate about climate change, but their reception and coverage in the media has varied widely.
A study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, has for the first time analysed how Twitter, TV and newspapers reported the IPCC’s climate evidence. Understanding how media coverage varies is important because people’s knowledge and opinions on climate change are influenced by how the media reports on the issue.
The study found that there were markedly different ways in which the media portrayed the IPCC’s latest findings. The researchers investigated this through studying the frames (ways of depicting an issue) the different media sources used to emphasise some aspects of climate change, whilst downplaying others. They also found large differences in how much coverage each Working Group received (the IPCC has three, which focus on the physical science, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation respectively).
The researchers found ten different frames used to communicate climate change: Settled Science, Political or Ideological Struggle, Role of Science, Uncertain Science, Disaster, Security, Morality and Ethics, Opportunity, Economics and Health. The first five frames were used to communicate the IPCC reports much more frequently – whereas the latter frames were not used much at all.
Dr Saffron O’Neill, lead author of the study from the University of Exeter said: “We know that some of these frames are more engaging for audiences than others: for example, the Opportunity or Health frames are both effective at linking the distant issue of climate change to peoples’ everyday life. But these kinds of frames are little used in newspaper coverage, on TV, or on Twitter.”
The study suggests that the availability of visual content and accessible storylines played a big part in how IPCC science was reported by the media. The authors argue that these findings need to inform how future IPCC Assessment Reports are communicated, in order that policymakers and the public are better informed.
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The study is part of a Focus Issue in Nature Climate Change titled ‘IPCC and Media Coverage of Climate Reports’, coordinated by Dr O’Neill. The Issue includes a commentary on social media and the IPCC by the journalist Leo Hickman; a study examining how risk language might help communicate climate change by media expert Dr James Painter; and a proposal for radically reworking the Summaries for Policymakers to increase understanding, by climate and energy commentator Richard Black.
‘Dominant frames in legacy and social media coverage of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report’ by Saffron O’Neill, Hywel T.P Williams, Tim Kurz, Bouke Wiersma and Maxwell Boykoff is published today in Nature Climate Change.
The study was funded through an ESRC Future Research Leader Award to Dr O’Neill, and through the University of Exeter Humanities and Social Sciences Strategic Fund.
We pay taxes around the world to fund this ‘research’?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How about we redirect research into improving the lives of people without clean water, or enough food, or no electricity.
Correction, we have taxes *taken*, AT SOURCE, from our incomes to pay for this dribble. Certainly true for the UK, Australia and New Zealand. I wish the Gov’nt would leave my bank account (It’s been some time since regular emplyment was paid in cash. I recall those little brown envelopes (In the UK that is)) alone!
This paper is distinctly a case of Saffron Journalism presented as science. I’ll admit I’ve never heard of Dr. Saffron, but I am familiar with the fifth co-author, Maxwell Boykoff. He is the founding father of the “Balance is Bias” meme that attempts to justify and encourage censorship and suppression of “dissenting” opinions. You can read more about this guy’s approach in some favorable articles
http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/52771/CU-Boulder_prof_speaks_on_mass_media_role_in_climate_change_skepticism.html and
http://www.fair.org/staging/index.php?page=7&issue_area_id=12 (if you’re OK giving those creeps your e-mail)
along with some critical articles at
http://educate-yourself.org/glw/goremediastudynotscientific02mar07.shtml and
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/balance-bias-when-reporting-global-warming-study-claims
His bio http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/ says he’s not a climate scientist™ but has a degree in Psychology and is interested in “environmental governance”. Boykoff’s magnum opus, written with his brother Jules, “Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating controversy where science finds consensus.” claims “that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming, superficial balance—telling “both” sides of the story—can actually be a form of informational bias.” He blames the misinformation on “conservative Think Tanks” (as opposed to the UN Stink Tank, I presume). The title of his panel talk (with Naomi Oreskes), “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change” with the D-word applied to “outlier” views is an attempt to marginalize those who disagree with him using tactics (toned down for an academic audience) right out of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #12: Destroy the Individual…. Pick the target, freeze, personalize, polarize, and isolate it.
Balance is Bias.– Boykoff Brothers, 2004
War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery.– Big Brother, 1984
Sooner or later you would hope that some of the more independent thinking students will rebel against the climate change orthodoxy and start asking questions of the academics that are currently milking it for all it is worth. I attended a forum at Melbourne University where the “climate eco chaps” performed like Oxford dons except they now have stubble and the odd tattoo to indicate their cultural relevance. It was hail Caesar stuff and afterwards drinks with the student toadies shuffling up to the benighted for recognition and a titbit of information that they could take back to augment their status amongst their fellows. There was a great deal of talking about grants and the latest research. Gross is all I can say, and not a whit amongst them.
I understand the IPCC quite clearly-
IPCC-
“Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use”
they haven’t a clue either.
Leo Hickman; the promoter of the 10:10 splatter feast video and ex Guardian all things green promoter who had CIF moderates on speed dial , currently doing the same job for WWF
Richard Black ex-BBC and Greenpeace insider who at times makes Bob ‘fast fingers’ Ward look honest, now pimping his green credentials and BBC contacts list to any who will pay .
I wonder did the study even consider that the failure of message may have have something to do with the ‘quality’ of the people who spread it ? Because it really would not take much ‘research’ to show why lying poor BS artists can more often make poor salesmen than good.
Well, there’s your problem.
Yep, more in the pipeline … your tax contributions reinvested courtesy of ESRC misanthropy.
http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/funding
So what happened to cash allotted for the ‘Deadline passed’ items I wonder? Reads like a beading program for more useless eco-muppets.
Err, breeding program. Though beading probably not far off! 🙂
“The authors argue that these findings need to inform how future IPCC Assessment Reports are communicated, in order that policymakers and the public are better informed.”
Surely to better communicate how a future IPCC Assessment Report is to be communicated, one surely must know what its conculsions are already? Or am I missing something?
“We know that some of these frames are more engaging for audiences than others: for example, the Opportunity or Health frames …”
There’s plenty of nonsense here but on a shallow note, what is with using “frame” to mean reference frame? Is there an ink shortage at Exeter? Making a noun out of a transitive verb just sounds so pretentious. The content is bad enough but do they have to dress it up like so much academic baffle gab nonsense?
I’m not sure what annoys me more, academics who can’t think or academics who can’t write!
See, if they can find just the right brand and right shade of lipstick and slap it on the CAGW pig, it will become kittens and puppies, and all will be well in Climate Liar Land.
Since IPCC Assessment reports are not news, the natural reaction of the NEWS media would be to ignore them.
Did I just read something ? All I remember about it is blah, blah, blah, blah…
Amazing study of the IPCC and media concludes: “…reception and coverage in the media has varied widely.”
Comment by Jim Hutchison, Oz 27.03.15
I am beginning to feel sorry for the newly minted Dr Saffron. She is a geographer and makes no claim to be a climate scientist. She has learned to publish short articles in the correct journals and keeps careful track of the numbers of citations she generates. Thus she will make a rapid climb to the academic heights. The results of her work are really only a by-product of this climb – almost an unintended consequence. The relevance of her research to the real world ought to be, and apparently is, a secondary consideration.
Part of her PhD work, now published, was to solve the problem of assessing the future population of the Polar Bear – Ursus maritimus – when the current population data are incomplete and inadequate. The paper is:
Using expert knowledge to assess uncertainties in future polar bear populations under climate change
SJ O’Neill, TJ Osborn, M Hulme, I Lorenzoni… – Journal of Applied Ecology, 2008.
The methodology is neat. She found several Polar Bear experts and asked each one to separately estimate the future population of Polar Bears. This Delphi technique suggested to her that the population of the animal will decline in the future. Each of the experts was a member of the Species Survival Commission Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG). Now we know from previous posts at WUWT that this group was some years ago given the task of determining the current population of Polar Bears. We also know that this task has not been completed. Thus, ironically, the problem Ms Saffron had to solve arose partly from the failure of ‘her’ experts to carry out tasks which they had earlier been given.
Her conclusion is that the population of this iconic animal will decline in the future.
No doubt she deserved to be awarded her PhD. She would have satisfied her supervisor and examiners. Her writing style would have been correct One of these days she may become a useful researcher.
Of course her results are nonsense. Soundly based science suggests that it is unlikely that Ursus maritimus will be threatened in the foreseeable future by hunting as was the case in the past, or by climate change which is taking place at present.
Two documents throw light on the subject:
First, is the December 2012 issue of the Canadian Geographic Magazine for which the URL is:
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec12/polar_bears3.asp
Secondly, is a paper written by Susan Crockford who is the foremost
International expert on the Polar Bear. The URL for this paper is:
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/08/
healthy-polarbears.pdf
Her maps show the 19 subpopulation areas inhabited by the animal.
Of note, is the fact that no accurate (or any) population study, has
been undertaken over about half of the area of the subpopulations.
Conducting such population study work was one of the principal reasons
for the establishment of the PBSG.
Crockford discusses the controversial issue of the supposed detrimental
effect on Polar Bears of earlier melt dates of sea ice. This quote is taken
from page 9 of her paper:
“ … a journalist or a polar bear biologist might glibly say, as they
often do, that ‘polar bears need sea ice and the ice is melting’. But
when you know that only late summer ice has declined dramatically
and that spring and early summer ice is what polar bears really need
for survival – a point that is backed up by peer-reviewed research
and sea ice maps that you can download and examine yourself
– you won’t be fooled by such half-truths.”
This commenter’s opinion is that there are probably at least 35,000
polar bears wandering about in the Arctic. That number is increasing
because hunting is tightly controlled; also there is no evidence of an
adverse effect on Polar Bears arising from earlier melting dates of sea
ice.
The Polar Bear is in safe international hands. The likelihood that it
will go extinct from hunting or climate change is miniscule.
Churchill, Manitoba will remain a popular Polar Bear tourist destination
for many years to come.