Climate Week 1: Post 1

            With the UNFCC beginning today in Paris, France and the terrorist attacks that took place there a couple weeks ago, the country was put into a state of emergency. The government also put a ban on large gatherings of people in public, such as protests or marches, which were set to happen due to the upcoming climate conference. Leading up to the conference I was interested particularly in how this would play out. Would any happen? Would this cause unrest? Fortunately an article from Grist.org was able to help answer my questions.

            So what did climate activists do in spite of the ban on large demonstrations? Two things. A human chain made up of around 10,000 stretched for two miles along a central route in Paris. Members of the chain held up signs that were largely anti-capitalistic, called for environmental justice, and much more. Even much of the graffiti art along the path was modified to convey peaceful, yet effective climate messages. The second act of demonstration was a particularly clever one. 20,000 pairs of shoes were laid along Place de la République to represent the people who would have participated in the marches that were scheduled prior to the attacks.

            It was refreshing to hear of all of this because it means that the climate fight is one that won’t back down and it’s one that doesn’t even have to be violent to earn attention. Climate protesters played by the rules and received worldwide attention for their efforts. Unfortunately violence did rise later Sunday, due to a non-affiliated group antagonizing the police, forcing them to throw tear gas into the streets. I still find it to be a great start to what will hopefully be a revolutionary conference and can’t wait to see if the peace continues to unfold.

November 20, 2015 Post 12

             Last Thursday’s lecture with Matt Lindstrom took me back to my first semester of college, where I took Intro to Environmental Studies. My flashbacks included an oddly strong memory of participating in a group “fishing” activity. Bewildered as to what the hell was going on, my fellow Climate Studies friend Elle and I proceeded to do as we were told, “take the next minute to grab candy or ‘fish’ out of this jar and then pass it to the next person.” Having no idea what was going on, Elle and I took the entirety of the “fish” along with the rest of our four-person group in the first round of fishing. The next round was where we figured out the point of the exercise; we overfished the lake to the point that there was nothing left. Well, it turns out that the lake was the commons, and the exercise was to teach us the ideas of Garret Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons.

            Very quickly we learned that the in the case of having common land available to all for grazing or fishing, has a fatal flaw; it can easily be over-exploited. If the over-exploitation is not by you, Hardin believes that someone else will snatch it, so people of good will are susceptible to being taken advantage of. The solution to this overuse is through “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.” This statement is in reference to the idea that members of the community that uses the commons must agree upon some form of regulation.

            Lindstrom taught us of the three forms of having mutual coercion to use the commons wisely. The first was regulation, whether it is top-down, bottom-up, or federalism. The second, privatization of the commons and the third, would be a hybrid of the two. The use of these can be beneficial to saving the commons but in some circumstances such as climate change and CO₂ emissions, there is no definitive idea of which tactic will work best.

November 12, 2015 Post 11

What is one thing I didn’t really know anything about before today’s class? Geoengineering. What is one thing I attempted to learn about and only sort of understand? Geoengineering.

            Jokes aside, I had never really encountered the term geoengineering before in my studies here at CSB/SJU. Sort of odd I imagine for someone who spends much of his academic time studying the climate, but it was nonetheless true unfortunately. Luckily, Troy Knight was able to shed some light on the subject for me amidst a large rambling of numbers behind climate science. Though a side tangent, as “[he] had no idea [he] was even going to cover this before [he] started to!” it was beneficial to teach us about the amount of carbon dioxide and the amount of energy coming to Earth from the sun because we knew how much of that radiation we have to offset in the future with geoengineering.

            So now that I’ve gone on my own side tangent let me get to our learned definition of geoengineering. Geoengineering, as defined by professor Knight, is any method used to counteract the effects of global warming. One important thing he noted about geoengineering is that it is akin to medicine as it “is like fighting the symptoms of an illness, but not searching for a cure.” That being said, it could still be an important step in solving the climate change problem because although it doesn’t solve the larger problems, it can slow the process, giving us more time for mitigation of emissions and eventual stoppage of the problem.

            Troy pointed out two main approaches of geoengineering: CO₂ removal and solar radiation management. CO₂ removal includes land sink methods (increase in forests, bio-char, and bio-energy and storage), ocean sink methods (solubility pump, ocean alkalinity, and biological pump), and air capture of CO₂ and storage. Solar radiation management includes the ideas of putting reflectors in space, using stratospheric aerosols, increasing cloud albedo, and increasing surface albedo. Now all of these have their apparent problems (I mean really, can you imagine flying giant mirrors into orbit?! That would be pretty cool but not really feasible, especially when you come to realization this process can’t be undone) but it is important to consider with the growing climate problem. One day the effects of climate change could be worse than the possible side effects of these geoengineering tactics, and who knows, the idea of sending giant space mirrors out there might not seem so crazy after all.

White Paper Annotated Bibliography

Administration issues dire global warming report, amid regulatory push. (2014, May

06). Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/06/administration-issues-dire-climate-change-warnings-amid-regulatory-push/

This Fox News article is a great example of how portrayal and word choice can validate climate contrarian readers’ preexisting thoughts. Negative connotations are given to democrats and environmentalists and quotations are used whenever they state facts about climate change. However, this is not the case when Republican, contrarian views are voiced and are portrayed as far more credible. This can be used to provide a real life example that backs up my studies’ findings. 

Bailey, A., Giangola, L., & Boykoff, M. T. (2014). How Grammatical Choice Shapes

Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty. Environmental Communication, 8(2), 197-215. doi:10.1080/17524032.2014.906481

Boykoff and Giangola look at how word choice in media can influence perceptions of climate change. The study paired newspapers from both the United State and Spain and compared the words used in the content of each of them. The results indicated that the United States especially is guilty of using words that imply doubt and carry negative connotations when writing about climate change. This will be important when explaining how people perceive climate change, especially since most knowledge the public receives about the topic comes from the media.

Boykoff, M. T., & Rajan, S. R. (2007, March 8). Signals and noise. Mass-media

coverage of climate change in the USA and the UK. Retrieved November 12, 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808044/

Boykoff and Rajan give an overview of the relationship between journalists and scientists over the last couple hundred years. They are critical of both sides and this analysis could offer insight on how the two could work together in the future. They reiterate the journalistic norms present and scientists’ difficulty in communicating their information. Evaluation of past behaviors could direct how this information exchange could be done in a more effective way. Policy could help guide this process.

Dunlap, R. E. (2013). Climate change skepticism and denial: An introduction.

American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 691-698. doi:10.1177/00027642

13477097

Dunlap analyzes denial and skepticism in relation to climate change. The article discusses how many factors, the largest being mass media, contribute to a prolonged state of denial still present in today’s society. It is pointed out that mass media can be used as a vessel for industrial interests to prolong the debate over climate science. Perhaps another element explored in communication action plans could include a larger investigation of potential front groups to eliminate these fossil-fuel companies from having such a widespread influence.

Ereaut, G., & Segnit, N. (2006, August). Warm words: How are we telling the climate

story and can we tell it better? Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.ippr.org/files/images/media/files/publication/2011/05/warm_words_1529.pdf?noredirect=1

Warm Words will be beneficial when it comes to drafting a plan for action in my white paper. It goes over various rhetorical styles that the author believes would be most beneficial when disclosing climate change information through mediated means. The author argues that climate change must be treated as a brand; that is, create something that appeals to certain group’s sets of values and market for change through those means. Thoughts like this, although flawed, provide great opportunity for change and could be something to consider in the creation of an action plan.

Estévez, M. D., de Frutos García, R. A., & Moya, J. P. (2014). Communication of the

scientific consensus on climate change to the citizenship: Knowledge and perception of young university students from five countries regarding the media treatment of global warming. Interactions: Studies In Communication & Culture, 5(1), 51-70. doi:10.1386/iscc.5.1.51_1

Estévez, García, and Moya’s article does a good job at reinforcing the idea that media outlets give citizens, especially youth, a distorted image of climate change. Many statistics are provided to show the distortion and in what ways the people in the study were affected. It also hints at why there are some issues when talking about climate change in the media, and provides a basis for what needs to change. This article will be effective in arguing that media representation of the topic can negatively affect perception on the reality of climate change. It also may help me come up with an action plan for COP 21.

Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A first look at communication theory

(9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

This book is beneficial because it contains a chapter on cognitive dissonance theory. The theory talks about the distressed mental state that can be caused by contradiction between one’s beliefs and one’s actions. Strategies for coping with this are mentioned and apply directly to the climategate article I also plan to use. In order to affirm their actions that are generally harmful aren’t so bad, some people may try to offset this dissonance by say, exclusively viewing a news channels such as Fox News that reaffirm their false beliefs with selective coverage. This will be useful in my argument that some preventative measure must be put in place to keep false climate information from being broadcast due to its harmful, prolonging effects.

Leiserowitz, A. A., Maibach, E. W., Roser-Renouf, C., Smith, N., & Dawson, E. (2013).

Climategate, public opinion, and the loss of trust. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 818-837.

I liked this article because it brought up a few key things that are prominent when dealing with climate change discourse in the media. The first is that media enjoys conflict or disaster because that is what sells. Climate change only becomes a salient topic when large natural disasters occur or debate to its validity is sparked, and the article focuses on the latter issue with “Climategate.” The leak of emails that when taken out of context, indicated that there were inconsistencies in climate science data. The media latched hold of this scandal and blew it out of proportion, eternalizing the climate change “debate.” Because there are sources out there that argue this makes all climate science invalid, climate contrarians are given something to latch onto to confirm their incorrect believes. This article provides an excellent example of the problems with today’s climate coverage, which will be useful in explaining the problem in my paper. It also alludes to cognitive dissonance and how the situation of climategate involves one of the strategies people often use to prevent the dissonance.

Nosty, B. D. (2014). Media and climate change: From content analysis to analysis

content. The interdisciplinary construction of a new paradigm. Interactions: Studies In Communication & Culture, 5(1), 7-23. doi:10.1386/iscc.5.1.7_1

This article focuses largely on the difficulties present when attempting to transfer climate science research to the public through media outlets. It acknowledges a knowledge gap between the media and science and brings up key ideas as to why this is the case. Journalistic practices are centered on presenting both sides of information (even when there really is only one side), and providing entertainment. Journalism as a whole also lacks specialization to a degree. Very few specialize in climate change or the environment as many think it of as a boring, niche topic. These along with other challenges, lead the author to the question of, is integration possible? Ideas are thrown out as to how integration may be possible between the two fields. The article will be beneficial in showing what’s currently wrong with the transfer of information to media, and in providing possibility for improvement in helping draft a plan.

Nuccitelli, D. (2013, October 11). Conservative media outlets found guilty of biased

global warming coverage. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/oct/11/climate-change-political-media-ipcc-coverage

This article gives a good collection of data presented in charts on climate change perception and representation of the topic in news media. It puts numbers to the large knowledge gap and points at both Fox News and even BBC for skewing information presented in their broadcasts. Although from a generally liberal source (The Guardian), the article provides information from other organizations studies that give the gap a clear visualization and also names multiple news sources as culprits of the problem. This may be useful in my examination of the content of media representations of climate change.

Pidgeon, N. (2012). Climate change risk perception and communication: Addressing

a critical moment?. Risk Analysis, 32(6), 951-956. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01856.x

This article also points out a couple of issues when communicating information about climate change to the public through media outlets. The first is that climate change is being covered less and less in the news, and the second is that it is always too temporally or spatially distant, just as was describe in Climate Cultures earlier this semester. The article also nods to other factors for ineffective communication such as political failure. These can potentially provide insight in terms of obstacles that could inhibit future action plans.

Van Der Linden, S. (2014). On the relationship between personal experience, affect

and risk perception:The case of climate change. European Journal Of Social Psychology, 44(5), 430-440. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2008

Van Der Linden goes deeply into the science of how humans perceive risk in relation to danger. He notes two types of responses to danger, affective and cognitive. Affective refers to the reaction one is subject to, and cognitive refers to the thoughts one has about the reaction, in this case, the cause of the danger. After this had all been evaluated, the studies determined that those more susceptible to the dangers of climate change perceive climate change as more of a threat than those who are not affected by it. This will help when devising the action plan because it will be a good argument for more restrictions in developed nations, such as the United States, who do not feel climate changes effects.

November 6, 2015 Post 10

             Frances Moore, Justin Mankin, and Austin Becker discuss the challenges of integrating climate science and social science when studying climate change and how the separate sciences view the subject in their article in Climate Cultures. My conclusion from the reading did not necessarily revolve around the challenges presented with integrating the two scientific approaches, but instead I couldn’t help but notice the importance of this integration.

Three large differences between the scientific approaches exist in regards to climate change: scale, the ability to focus on direct impacts of clime change vs. the indirect, and attitude toward prediction. Typically, climate science utilizes very large timescales when thinking about climate change. Many of climate change’s most devastating physical effects are not predicted to happen until far into the future. This is a problem for social scientists who prefer to look at things very close to the present. Tying into the attitude towards prediction, social scientists undoubtedly prefer to make assumptions based off of observations rather than long-term models used by climate scientists. Climate scientists also differ from social scientists as they use a larger spatial scale. Climate scientists tend to look at the world as a whole whereas a social scientist would focus in on one particular part of the globe.                                                                                                

Perhaps the largest difference however, is in their ability to “[abstract] climate-related change from other changes.” Climate scientists hone in on studying direct climate changes (temperature change) and their primary impacts (agricultural yield change). Social scientists look at climate change as a larger issue and focus on the indirect impacts (livelihood loss) and the second indirect impacts (migration). This area is especially why I walked away from the article with the belief that it is important that these two viewpoints work together. They do not seem to be in conflict, rather they offer different insights into the very large problem known as climate change.