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Re: George Will on Global Warming
Apparently there are climatologists who really want to
discuss global issues. They go after the commentary by
George Will at http://www.realclimate.org
------------------
Nature 432, 933 (23 December 2004);
Welcome climate bloggers
A group of just nine climate scientists is trying to
change the media coverage of their discipline. Thanks
to an ongoing revolution in electronic news, they
might just succeed.
For those excited about the journalistic potential of
the Internet, this September was a seminal month. Much
to its embarrassment, the US television network CBS
was forced to retract a story about President George
W. Bush's service in the armed forces. Crucially, the
documents on which CBS based the story were first
shown to be a fake not by a hot-shot Washington
reporter, but by the authors of a series of blogs —
online news diaries penned by unpaid commentators.
Blogs have been around since the late 1990s, but the
political potential of this new media format only
became truly clear during this year's US presidential
race. Bloggers led some of the freshest debates,
helped raise money for political parties and, most
importantly from a research point of view, corrected
mistakes made by other media outlets. At the same
time, one more traditional website dedicated to this
final purpose — http://www.factcheck.org — became
compulsory reading for journalists who wanted to check
the accuracy of claims made by the Bush and Kerry
campaigns.
Can researchers make use of this new kind of
communication? One group of climate scientists thinks
so. The nine researchers (six in the United States,
three in Europe) launched the RealClimate website —
http://www.realclimate.org — earlier this month. As
the News story on page 937 explains, the blog was
motivated by the activities of some think-tanks,
predominantly from the United States and often run
using industry money. Ever since global warming became
an issue of media interest, these groups have sought
to play down its dangers. RealClimate, say the blog's
founders, will provide rapid rebuttals of some of
their more egregious statements.
Few would argue with the need to tackle attempts to
distort science, but is a blog the best way to do it?
The approach certainly has its dangers. For example,
many issues in climate science, such as the course of
temperatures over previous millennia, are hotly
debated by researchers. Some would argue that a
rapid-rebuttal service, run with minimal peer review,
can never hope to combat industry propaganda and
properly represent this diversity of views.
Such criticisms are legitimate, but there is no reason
that a prompt reply need be unbalanced. The
researchers involved will, for example, have to work
to ensure that they do not oversell their own opinions
when commenting on research issues that divide
scientists. Their goal is to provide solid scientific
comment to journalists and other interested parties —
and there is no reason to doubt that this can be
achieved in this fashion.
What will happen if climate researchers do not take
this risk? Industry lobbyists, as well as
environmental organizations, will be free to distort
science to fit their aims. These groups are expert at
influencing the media, old and new. Press coverage of
climate change is known to overly emphasize the views
of the small minority of scientists who dispute the
notion of man-made climate change (see Nature 431, 4;
2004). Mainstream climate scientists need to combat
this, and RealClimate is, in principle, an excellent
way of doing so.
Similar exercises could aid researchers working on
nanotechnology and transgenic crops, and other fields
with a high media profile. Nature encourages
scientists in these disciplines to consider setting up
their own blogs, but also to monitor the progress of
RealClimate. The site needs to balance speed with
objectivity, readability and accuracy. That's no mean
feat. Fail, and the blog will be dismissed as no more
trustworthy than the myriad lobbying groups already
writing on climate. But if the site's founders pull it
off, they could change the coverage of climate change
for the better. Good luck to them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2004 Nature Publishing Group
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--- bobcherry@cox.net wrote:
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20998-2004Dec22.html
>
>
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