Climate Change: Poster Child of Complexity
By TC Brown
How times have changed.
Some of today’s premier climate change scientists debated the possibility of a coming Ice Age when they started careers in the 1970s.
That nugget surfaced from scientists gathered on the second day of the McCormick Climate Change Conference at Ohio State for a workshop to discuss with journalists the challenge of telling the story of climate change to the public.
As noted by one expert, climate change is the poster child for complexity, with a bell curve of views among scientists. The challenge for reporters is to capture the direction of the mainstream.
No one is talking about a coming Ice Age anymore.
A morning panel included Berrien Moore, executive director of Climate Central, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, head of OSU’s ice core paleoclimatology group and Laurence Smith, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Geography.
Confusion among the public reigns, with more than half thinking it is not an issue, said Moore. Not so among most scientists, who recognize climate change as a human-induced pattern.
“The body politic is completely confused and part of that is because of the tendency in the media to have both sides included and presented each time, when in point you may have 1,000 on one side and two on another, ” Moore said.
When Mosley-Thompson began her career, scientific talk was about a cooling planet, but field studies and the discovery within ice cores of a base-line, pre-human era of CO2 levels at 280 parts per million were watershed moments.
Panel members readily acknowledged that the results of climate change will leave winners and losers in its wake.
“There are a great many uncertainties; there is not a crystal ball,” Smith said. “It will be a wetter northern environment and a less predictable midland environment and in principle, we will see a lessening of severe winters in some parts of the Earth.”
Mitigating impacts of climate change will require political leadership, a difficult hurdle for lawmakers because real change is going to require sacrifice and lifestyle changes from their constituents.
“We need someone at the top to simply state that we have a major problem,” Mosley-Thompson said. “These are not messages politicians like to give. They like feel-good messages.”
Scientists are clear that merely stabilizing emissions of CO2 now will not halt emissions in a way that mitigates climate changes. Reductions of up to 80 percent would be needed and that would require fundamental changes in energy systems.
In some ways, it’s like going back to the future. In the 1930s large parts of the U.S. had no electricity, until the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned development corporation, changed all of that, said Moore.
“We need to do that again on a much larger scale, whether it’s capturing carbon in coal plants, a nuclear program, solar or hydrology,” Moore said.
An afternoon panel, which examined what governments can do about climate change, also explored the disconnect between local and national governments.
That panel included Andrew Keeler, a John Glenn School of Public Affairs economist and former member of the White House Climate Change Policy Team, Richard Morgenstern, of Resources for the Future, and Mark Shanahan, director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority The group was moderated by Cristine Russell, senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
An immediate scientific problem is finding the technology for removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. it hasn’t been invented yet, Keeler said.
Government head butting over unfunded mandates exacerbates the difficulty in agreeing on solutions, Shanahan said.
“At the state level they’ll fight legislation tooth and nail,” Shanahan said. “Politics add to the equation. The fear is the votes will not be there to protect industrial states like Ohio.”
The panel also addressed the sense of powerlessness felt by the public over the enormity of the issues. It would be more palatable to be able to find a singular enemy, an evil source of all emissions, but that’s not possible, the panel said.
Other workshops yesterday included: Greenland, Glaciers and Seal Level Rise; Water Climate and Satellites; Local Ecology and Climate Change; and Public Health and Climate Change.
For more details and Web resources from the McCormick Climate Change Conference, visit www.twitter.com/mccormickc3.
How times have changed.
Some of today’s premier climate change scientists debated the possibility of a coming Ice Age when they started careers in the 1970s.
That nugget surfaced from scientists gathered on the second day of the McCormick Climate Change Conference at Ohio State for a workshop to discuss with journalists the challenge of telling the story of climate change to the public.
As noted by one expert, climate change is the poster child for complexity, with a bell curve of views among scientists. The challenge for reporters is to capture the direction of the mainstream.
No one is talking about a coming Ice Age anymore.
A morning panel included Berrien Moore, executive director of Climate Central, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, head of OSU’s ice core paleoclimatology group and Laurence Smith, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Geography.
Confusion among the public reigns, with more than half thinking it is not an issue, said Moore. Not so among most scientists, who recognize climate change as a human-induced pattern.
“The body politic is completely confused and part of that is because of the tendency in the media to have both sides included and presented each time, when in point you may have 1,000 on one side and two on another, ” Moore said.
When Mosley-Thompson began her career, scientific talk was about a cooling planet, but field studies and the discovery within ice cores of a base-line, pre-human era of CO2 levels at 280 parts per million were watershed moments.
Panel members readily acknowledged that the results of climate change will leave winners and losers in its wake.
“There are a great many uncertainties; there is not a crystal ball,” Smith said. “It will be a wetter northern environment and a less predictable midland environment and in principle, we will see a lessening of severe winters in some parts of the Earth.”
Mitigating impacts of climate change will require political leadership, a difficult hurdle for lawmakers because real change is going to require sacrifice and lifestyle changes from their constituents.
“We need someone at the top to simply state that we have a major problem,” Mosley-Thompson said. “These are not messages politicians like to give. They like feel-good messages.”
Scientists are clear that merely stabilizing emissions of CO2 now will not halt emissions in a way that mitigates climate changes. Reductions of up to 80 percent would be needed and that would require fundamental changes in energy systems.
In some ways, it’s like going back to the future. In the 1930s large parts of the U.S. had no electricity, until the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned development corporation, changed all of that, said Moore.
“We need to do that again on a much larger scale, whether it’s capturing carbon in coal plants, a nuclear program, solar or hydrology,” Moore said.
An afternoon panel, which examined what governments can do about climate change, also explored the disconnect between local and national governments.
That panel included Andrew Keeler, a John Glenn School of Public Affairs economist and former member of the White House Climate Change Policy Team, Richard Morgenstern, of Resources for the Future, and Mark Shanahan, director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority The group was moderated by Cristine Russell, senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
An immediate scientific problem is finding the technology for removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. it hasn’t been invented yet, Keeler said.
Government head butting over unfunded mandates exacerbates the difficulty in agreeing on solutions, Shanahan said.
“At the state level they’ll fight legislation tooth and nail,” Shanahan said. “Politics add to the equation. The fear is the votes will not be there to protect industrial states like Ohio.”
The panel also addressed the sense of powerlessness felt by the public over the enormity of the issues. It would be more palatable to be able to find a singular enemy, an evil source of all emissions, but that’s not possible, the panel said.
Other workshops yesterday included: Greenland, Glaciers and Seal Level Rise; Water Climate and Satellites; Local Ecology and Climate Change; and Public Health and Climate Change.
For more details and Web resources from the McCormick Climate Change Conference, visit www.twitter.com/mccormickc3.
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Climate change stories--inspired by McC3
Cristine Russell, "Juggling Beats, Localizing Climate." Columbia Journalism Review, 10/17/08.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker, 10/14/08 and 10/17/08.
K. Kaufman, "Bank offers $10M for energy loan program,"The Desert Sun, 10/30/08.
K. Kaufman, "Energy loans may get $10M boost," The Desert Sun, 10/30/08.
K. Kaufman, "Coachella Valley's need for green powers firm," The Desert Sun, 11/3/08.
Editorial: Traditional coal plants have no future, The Roanoke Times, 11/5/08.
Anita Weier, "What will the next president do about global warming?" The Capital Times, 10/29/08.
Jennifer Cunningham. Warming will raise sea levels, recede coast. Herald News, 11/17/08
Kim Smith Dedam. Climate change Indications on ice. Press Republican, 11/15/08.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker, 10/14/08 and 10/17/08.
K. Kaufman, "Bank offers $10M for energy loan program,"The Desert Sun, 10/30/08.
K. Kaufman, "Energy loans may get $10M boost," The Desert Sun, 10/30/08.
K. Kaufman, "Coachella Valley's need for green powers firm," The Desert Sun, 11/3/08.
Editorial: Traditional coal plants have no future, The Roanoke Times, 11/5/08.
Anita Weier, "What will the next president do about global warming?" The Capital Times, 10/29/08.
Jennifer Cunningham. Warming will raise sea levels, recede coast. Herald News, 11/17/08
Kim Smith Dedam. Climate change Indications on ice. Press Republican, 11/15/08.
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