media

In my ECCF post in May, I discussed my concern about the politicization of scientists and the perception of that amongst conservatives and the general public. Recent papers add to my concern that the perception of scientists has become politicized, and will continue to be so, particularly when viewed through the lense of news media and social media. The concern over politicization brought the following question to mind.

World renowned climate scientist, Michael E. Mann, recently co-authored a Washington Post article titled, ‘Harvey and Irma should kill any doubt that climate change is real.’ This is a sentiment likely shared amongst those most familiar with the influence of rising sea and air temperatures on extreme weather, or those who are generally just concerned about climate change.

Earlier this year, I wrote an ECCF blog about a fall semester undergraduate class at the University of Oklahoma (OU) that taught students about climate science, the impacts of climate change, and that gave them a look behind the scenes of the climate negotiations at the Paris COP21 meeting last December. Well, I’m happy to report that this fall this class is back — and it’s gotten even better.

The twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) has convened in Paris this week to agree on global solutions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The goal is to achieve a legally binding international agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The last such treaty signed 18 years ago, the Kyoto Protocol, failed to meet many of its objectives since it was not ratified by the US and other developed nations did not fulfill their commitments.

This post originally appeared on May 30, 2013 and is part of our throw-back series.

Communication theory was one of the most thought provoking classes in my graduate education. As we uncovered a new theory each week, it was like someone was pulling back the layers of everyday life and human interactions, and I could begin to understand some of the processes driving each one. As in any field, there are some theories that are much easier to see and apply than others. One that I have been thinking about a lot lately is Marshall McLuhan’s theory of Media Ecology.

I wrote this post after attending the National Adaptation Forum in Denver, where over 500 academics, advocates and practitioners came together to talk about the state of climate adaptation in the US. One night the screened James Balog’s ‘Chasing Ice’ an inspiring piece of extreme adventure science porn. The film is presents a classic David and Golaiath narrative of a nature photographer with a masters in geomorphology on a quest to photographically document retreating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere.

A few days ago, I got notice about a special issue in Environmental Communication on “Media Research on Climate Change: Where have we been and where are we heading?”  One article in particular caught my attention: “How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty” by Bailey et al.  The article offers a comparison of U.S.