Arguments
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #45, 2019
Posted on 12 November 2019 by Doug Bostrom
A telegenic thumb on the scales of perception
Kristin Timm reports on presentation habits of television weather forecasters, in AMS journal Weather, Climate and Society. "Conformal comportment" might be the label on the bucket of behaviors described in Timm's paper, but styles change with time— hopefully. Abstract:
The journalistic norm of balance bas been described as the practice of giving equal weight to different sides of a story; false balance is balanced reporting when the weight of evidence strongly favors one side over others—for example, the reality of human-caused climate change. False balance is problematic because it skews public perception of expert agreement. Through formative interviews and a survey of American weathercasters about climate change reporting, we found that objectivity and balance—topics that have frequently been studied with environmental journalists—are also relevant to understanding climate change reporting among weathercasters. Questions about the practice of and reasons for presenting an opposing viewpoint when reporting on climate change were included in a 2017 census survey of weathercasters working in the United States (N=480; response rate=22%). When reporting on climate change, 35% of weathercasters present an opposing viewpoint ‘always’ or ‘most of the time.’ Their rationale for reporting opposing viewpoints included the journalistic norms of objectivity and balanced reporting (53%), their perceived uncertainty of climate science (21%), to acknowledge differences of opinion (17%), to maintain credibility (14%), and to strengthen the story (7%). These findings show that climate change reporting from weathercasters sometimes includes opposing viewpoints, and possibly a false balance, but further research is necessary. Moreover, prior research has shown that the climate reporting practices among weathercasters are evolving rapidly and so the problem of false balance reporting may already be self-correcting.
Results may vary
With last week's news that the US is withdrawing from The Paris Agreement, the article by Jenouvrier et al The Paris Agreement objectives will likely halt future declines of emperor penguins is as poignant as it is unfortunate in its publication timing. The removal of the largest economy in the world from the input assumptions of the work will surely upend the results. Given that the US has replaced defined objectives with vague assertions of unquantified ambition to be better, we can translate the US decision as a tacit retreat in the direction of "business as usual." Th situation described in the abstract as it stood prior to the USA's breaking of faith naturally leads to implications:
Here we project the dynamics of all known emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) colonies under new climate change scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement objectives using a climate?dependent?metapopulation model. Our model includes various dispersal behaviors so that penguins could modulate climate effects through movement and habitat selection. Under business?as?usual greenhouse gas emissions, we show that 80% of the colonies are projected to be quasiextinct by 2100, thus the total abundance of emperor penguins is projected to decline by at least 81% relative to its initial size, regardless of dispersal abilities. In contrast, if the Paris Agreement objectives are met, viable emperor penguin refuges will exist in Antarctica, and only 19% and 31% colonies are projected to be quasiextinct by 2100 under the Paris 1.5 and 2 climate scenarios respectively.
Were it not for the successful results of decades of deceit the article's conclusions might not have been superseded so swiftly and sadly. A better-informed US population might not have tolerated such an abdication of pride by "leadership."
85 Articles:
Physical science of anthropogenic global warming & effects
An emergent constraint on future Arctic sea-ice albedo feedback
Observation of global warming & global warming effects
Increasing water vapor in the stratosphere and mesosphere after 2002
Assessment of Atmospheric Reanalyses with Independent Observations in the Weddell Sea, the Antarctic
Areal models for spatially coherent trend detection: the case of British peak river flows
Changes of the Arctic marginal ice zone (open access)
Assessing precipitation trends in the Americas with historical data: A review
The east?west division of changing precipitation in Nepal
Modeling global warming & global warming effects
Evaluation of methods for selecting climate models to simulate future hydrological change
Size of the atmospheric blocking events: Scaling law and response to climate change
Reassessing the value of regional climate modelling using palaeoclimate simulations
Larger future intensification of rainfall in the West African Sahel in a convection?permitting model
A spurious warming trend in the NMME equatorial Pacific SST hindcasts
The impact of climate change on migration: a synthesis of recent empirical insights
Assessing coincidence probability for extreme precipitation events in the Jinsha River basin
Predicting future climate at high spatial and temporal resolution
Changes in future rainfall extremes over northeast Bangladesh: A Bayesian Model Averaging approach
Humans dealing with our global warming
Climate politics, metaphors and the fractal carbon trap
Marginal climate and air quality costs of aviation emissions (open access)
Overlooked ocean strategies to address climate change
A critically modern ecological economics for the Anthropocene
Integrate risk from climate change in China under global warming of 1.5°C and 2.0°C (open access)
Determinants of climate change policy adoption: A meta-analysis
Four scenarios of the energy transition: Drivers, consequences, and implications for geopolitics
A dynamic climate finance allocation mechanism reflecting the Paris Agreement (open access)
Spatial influence evaluation research of economic growth on greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil
The evolution of the energy and carbon intensities of developing countries
Modelling national, provincial and city-level low-carbon energy transformation pathways
The role of services and capital in footprint modelling (open access)
Biology and global warming
The impact of climate change on migration: a synthesis of recent empirical insights
Climate change threatens on endangered relict Serbian spruce
Divergent responses of spring phenology to daytime and nighttime warming
Simulated climate change decreases nutrient resorption from senescing leaves
Climate?driven shift in coral morphological structure predicts decline of juvenile reef fishes
The Paris Agreement objectives will likely halt future declines of emperor penguins
GHG sources and sinks, flux
Global mycorrhizal plant distribution linked to terrestrial carbon stocks (open access)
Intact and managed peatland soils as a source and sink of GHGs from 1850 to 2100
Other:
Response of N2O production rate to ocean acidification in the western North Pacific
Acceleration of Ocean Acidification in the Western North Pacific
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Hi, I was looking at asking some climate change questions on the web and thought it would be nice if the Skeptical Science website had a section where we could ask questions. Let me know what you think.
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Actually as a regular reader of this website, thats quite a good idea. I doubt the website people would have time to answer many but other readers may. It could be a weekly thing.