London: The uncertainties of climate change science have become a major focus of media coverage on the subject, a new study shows.
About eight in 10 stories on climate change and related scientific research contain some discussion of uncertainties and risk, according to a report from Oxford University. Roughly eight in 10 also refer in some way to the disasters that are likely to result from unchecked global warming and greenhouse gas emission rises.
The remaining uncertainties such as the sensitivity of the climate to increases in carbon dioxide concentrations, and the roles played by major parts of the Earth’s systems such as the absorption of carbon and heat by the oceans will come under the spotlight next week, when leading climate scientists gather in Stockholm to hammer out the final details of the long-awaited fifth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This will be the most comprehensive report on climate science ever published, following the previous report in 2007. It is expected to show that scientists are 95 per cent certain that the climate is changing under human influence, but may suggest that the climate is marginally less sensitive to carbon than thought, as long as concentrations are held to a fairly low level.
The Oxford study, from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, is an analysis of 350 articles about climate change published between 2007 and 2012 by three different newspaper titles in six countries (the UK, France, Australia, India, Norway and the US) including the Guardian and the New York Times.
But the study found only one-quarter of the articles included a discussion of the explicit risks of the policy options available to combat climate change, and a similar number discussed the positive opportunities presented by climate change.
The articles covered the first two reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of 2007; the interim IPCC report on weather extremes published in 2012, and pieces that described the melting of Arctic sea ice.
Articles predominantly about “uncertainty” were judged to be those that included the voices of climate sceptics; that cited a range of projections for future effects on the climate, or used the words “may”, “possible” or “uncertain”.
The researchers found that journalists often followed the prompts given by scientists and their reports. Around 70 per cent of the articles covering reports by the IPCC, and nearly 60 per cent of all the articles in the sample, included quotes from scientists or scientific reports that the researchers coded as “disaster narratives”. Nearly half the articles included a quote indicating some aspect of uncertainty. More than 60 per cent of pieces quoted scientists or scientific reports.
James Painter, lead author, said: “There is plenty of evidence showing that in many countries, the general public finds scientific uncertainty difficult to understand and confuse it with ignorance. We also know that disaster messages can be a turnoff, so for some people risk may be a more helpful language to use in this debate. For policymakers, this should shift the debate away from what would count as conclusive proof towards a more helpful analysis of the comparative costs and risks of following different policy options.”
