if i only knew...

Climate change, society and the media

An interesting article in The New York Times summarizing the books coming out this summer about climate change, it's social causes, and the like: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Especially interesting is this paragraph from one of the quoted books:
"Why have Americans refused to face up to the evidence of global warming? The answers are both political and economic. But Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, makes the case that the news media are also guilty. In Boiling Point (Basic Books, $22, to be published in August), he argues that on matters of scientific fact, journalists employ an essentially unfair idea of 'balance' -- treating global warming as though it were still a matter of open conjecture, with equal weight on both sides. As a result, the story of global warming as reported in the American press largely reflects the political manipulation of the story, not the science. Accurate coverage, Gelbspan writes, 'would have reflected the position of mainstream scientists in 95 percent of the story -- with the skeptics getting a paragraph at the end.' "