by Tan Copsey
Is it me or has there been a recent resurgence of media coverage of climate ‘skeptics’? The UK Channel 4 documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ which I derided last week, caused a surprising number of conversations in and around the office, and some rumblings in the media. Since then the New York Times has published another piece along similar lines.
Of course both documentaries and article were strongly rebutted. Channel 4 again have egg on their faces after one of the scientists concerned, Carl Wunsch, wrote this rather damning letter, bluntly telling all concerned that he had been completely misrepresented and edited in the finest ‘Hard Copy’ style.
This raises old questions about the usefulness of media in shaping the response to the ‘great public policy issue of our century’. Sam Geall drew a rather interesting, if inadvertent, comparison to the media treatment of potential large asteroid strikes. Coverage of this very real global threat peaked some time in the late 90’s. Two Hollywood movies, both deeply awful, were even made. The issue then faded out of public consciousness. The comparison is useful insofar as it illustrates a tendency for particular scientific subjects to have a certain lifecycle within the press. The re-introduction of climate sceptics seems more a result of this lifecycling process than the introduction of any credible evidence refuting climate change, or humankind’s role in provoking it.
As such one questions whether this moment of manufactured media optimism may in fact already be passing - leaving us without the mass momentum necessary to sequester political rhetoric in the grand edifices of state, capital, and society.
