ABC News has broadcast several recent reports that suggest they get it on climate change.
What they, and anyone educating about climate, have to understand – is that climate deniers do not welcome the truth, in fact, Deniers have an adversarial relationship with reality, and will do whatever they can to confuse, obfuscate, and fog the facts. Reporters and educators have to present with that always in mind. The report above is factual and laudable, but leaves the door open for denialist paranoia and mischief.
The cold and snow in America’s populous east and the UK, among other places, are only part of the story, and reporting only on those leaves the door open for the ever popular “Ah looked out mah winder, an’ it was cold, so there cain’t be clahmut change” meme, which sells so well to the Fox New and Right wing talk crowd.
Great White North becomes the Mild Kingdom
UCAR points out:
Some fascinating weather has unfolded across the Northern Hemisphere over the last month, but you may have only heard about part of it. The media dutifully reported on the heavy snow that battered the mid-Atlantic and New England states in late December. It was also the United Kingdom’s coldest December in at least the last century. Meanwhile, the sparsely populated Canadian Arctic basked in near-unprecedented mildness.
…What really jumps out,.. is a blob of green, yellow, orange, and red covering a major swath of northern and eastern Canada. The largest anomalies here exceed 21°C (37.8°F) above average, which are very large values to be sustained for an entire month.
By leaving out this part of the story, that cold air is pouring out of the arctic, like an open refrigerator, and in turn, warm air is moving up into the arctic, ABC leaves a gap for deniers to exploit. Taking advantage of Glenn Beck fueled Tea Party paranoia, the denialist meme is that “the establishment thinks you are fools, you can see with your own eyes that things are cold”, “That’s why they changed the name from global warming to climate change”, and “no matter what the weather is, they always blame it on global warming”.
Something as simple as reprinting the graph above, with a quick explanation, would complete the logical circuit for the average viewer, and slam the door on chat room and water-cooler disinformers.
A simple rule of thumb is, at each stage of a presentation about climate, consider what the next question raised will be, and make sure it is answered. Any breaks in a complete and self consistent narrative will be exploited, and opportunities to educate can be diluted or lost.
One thought on “ABC News Gets it: Now to Communicate it Clearly”