David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red, has written a series of blogs on the Climate Spectator website exploring why the "climate message" - the need for strong action to stop global warming - is not cutting through. Public support for action, and indeed public acceptance that global warming is actually happening, has fallen since 2007-8, despite the science becoming more convincing and more alarming.
Spratt identifies two key problems.
First is the idea that you should avoid bad news and focus on positive messages and good news stories - a strategy known as "brightsiding". Key advocates of climate change action such as President Obama, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and big environmental NGOs have adopted this strategy. They focus on the potential of clean, renewable energy rather than the dangers of global warming. Mustn't sound "alarmist", after all.
There's a saying in journalism: everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.
If you can't distinguish fact from opinion, debate is reduced to a shouting match.
That was the problem with last night's ABC climate special, in which climate activist Anna Rose tried to convince former Liberal senator and climate sceptic Nick Minchin about climate change.
As one of the people interviewed, English science writer Ben Goldacre, said, it just lent the appearance of credibility to Minchin's "own facts" on climate, which simply are not true. Of course, there was climate activist Anna there to counterbalance his view. But the format of the program gives the impression both views are equally valid. That's wrong.
The key fact is this: more than 97 per cent of climate scientists agree humans aredangerously warming the planet through greenhouse gas emissions. That counts as a scientific consensus. The views of people like Minchin - and mining fat cat Clive Palmer, who appeared on the following Q&A panel discussion - are as flaky as those who believe vaccinations do more harm than good, or smoking doesn't cause cancer.
Unless people like Minchin and Palmer accept basic facts such as the existence of a scientific consensus on the subject then their opinions are not fact-based and should not be presented in a context that suggests they are credible. It's nothing to do with free speech. Rather, the media has a responsibility to separate fact from opinion. Programs such as this confuses the two. That's simply bad journalism.
To put this media failure into perspective, one of the Q&A panellists, pollster Rebecca Huntley, noted her research showed less than 15 per cent of Australians understand the basis science of global warming. That represents a huge failure by our media to communicate the fundamentals of the most significant issue of our (and probably any other) generation.
It's not just a failure of the media, but of politicians. A recent US study concluded that (given most people can't understand the science) the main drivers of public opinion about climate change are the media and the attitudes of politicians.
Fakegate: a loss is as good as a win for climate sceptics
In an obvious echo of the Climategate affair, leaked documents from the US Heartland Institute, a leading propagator of climate sceptism, show the organisation funded prominent climate sceptics such as Australian Bob Carter. The sums are not huge: climate sceptics will point to larger sums spent by governments and other organisations putting the climate change message across.
But to compare dollar for dollar spending is too simplistic because climate sceptics have some big advantages in this debate.
1) Climate sceptics get disproportionate media coverage. Less than 3 per cent of climate scientists dispute man-made climate change, yet sceptics often get as much press coverage as the mainstream science, for two reasons. Firstly, because white conservative men - the demographic most likely to be climate sceptics - are overrepresented in the media. And secondly, it's because journalists think - and report - in adversorial terms. If someone says yah, they'll find someone who'll say nay. It looks like balanced, impartial reporting even if one of the viewpoints has no credibility. And conflict makes sexier copy.
2) Dealing with climate change requires huge change. To go down that path, politicians need a huge groundswell of public support. Sceptics only need to create a little doubt to scare politicians off such a big challenge. Sceptics don't need to win - or even draw - the argument. They simply need to make people think there IS an argument.
Even if you're worried about fracking and water pollution, the gas lobby tells us, gas is the cheapest low-carbon energy source and therefore essential to stop global warming. But a new study presents the strongest case yet of what looks like an inconvenient truth about natural gas: when it comes to emissions, it may be little or no better than other fossil fuels.
That's double the industry's estimate of 2 per cent but in line with another independent study published last year. (And note the study excludes leakage in transmission pipes and by the end-user - both almost impossible to measure but potentially also significant.)
These figures are critical because natural gas - methane - has roughly 25 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. By some calculations, anything above 2 per cent leakage of methane makes natural gas worse than coal in terms of global warming.
When I reported on this in a previous post I said natural gas could be humanity's suicide note. Read why here.
It's well worth setting an hour aside to watch this lecture by Canadian journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer. Dyer's book, Climate Wars, explored scenarios that could arise from global warming in the coming decades, as changing climate creates food and water shortages and leads to increasing global conflict over resources. Dyer (whose has been dubbed, apparently, "Grim Die-er") doesn't paint a cheerful picture.
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) - hardly an alarmist greenie organisation - has issued a dire warning the world is heading for irreversible climate change within the next five years.
"I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever," says Birol.
The warning comes as US Department of Energy figures show 2010 saw the biggest-ever annual rise in greenhouse gas emissions - an increase of 6 per cent, or 564 million tonnes. Emissions from burning coal, the biggest single source of carbon dioxide emissions, rose 8 per cent.
Greenhouse gas levels are now higher than the supposedly "alarmist" worst-case predictions of the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change report.
A key report released yesterday by the Australian Government’s Climate Commission has served a grim warning to coastal regions of Western Australia on the effects of climate change.
It seems the Greens were right to reject Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme and CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) and hold out for a better deal. According to an assessment by climate-change think tank Climate Works, based at Melbourne's Monash University, the Gillard government's current carbon tax and Clean Energy Future Plan will generate double the emissions reductions of Rudd's package.
Two major environmental announcements from the Labor/Green alliance in Tasmania last week have seen the state set the agenda in mitigating the effects of climate change. The introduction of the projects may also be a sign that the junior Greens members of the coalition government are beginning to flex their political muscle, amidst a battle royale between left and right over a forestry agreement for the state.
A recent article in The Guardian looks at how climate - in the form of drought and food shortages - has been a critical factor driving the Arab Spring.
If you want to know what a government really thinks, look at Treasury forecasts. These show that the Gillard government expects - as a result of its carbon tax package - that Australia's emissons will increase by 50 million tonnes by 2020, and will be 545 million tonnes a year by 2050. That's only 30 million tonnes less than we produce now.
Weird weather seemed to be the norm in 2010, and persisted into the first half of 2011.
These two articles from The Guardian's environment editor John Vidal explore whether it's just a bunch of freak coincidences, or global warming to blame - or this year's climate buzzword, "global weirding".
Hold the front page. The conservative British government has just announced a "carbon budget" that will legally bind the UK to cut its greenhouse emissions to half of their 1990 level by 2027.
The US climate change organisation 350.org is coordinating another worldwide day of protest and events to call for greater action on climate change. Called Moving Planet, it takes place on 24 September.
With the nuclear industry on the back foot after the Fukushima reactor crisis in Japan, natural gas is now being positioned as the "only realistic" clean energy option. In the last few years, billions have been poured into gas exploration and development - far more than has gone into developing renewables such as solar or wind. Natural gas is is claimed, generates half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal, making it a valuable transition fuel in any strategy to reduce emissions. But is this true? It's a key question, because if the world invests for gas it will inevitably delay the development of low or zero-carbon renewables such as solar and wind. So if gas doesn't lead to a lower-emissions future, we're in big trouble.
As I've blogged before, it's been suggested that if as little as 2 per cent of gas escapes into the atmosphere - called "fugitive emissions" - the global warming impact of gas could be just as bad than coal. That includes leaks during extraction, flaring to burn off excess gas, leaks while the gas is piped to the user, and even in your home - if, say, you turn your stove on then fumble for a match. Maybe it's no accident that figures for gas leakage are almost impossible to find, but some studies suggest it is not far off the 2 per cent mark. One US Enivonmental Protection Agency study put leakage at 3.3 per cent.
The hot new frontier in the fossil fuel world is shale gas, or coal seam gas - gas trapped in layers or earth and rock, including coal seams, and extracted by a process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", which involves cracking open underground rocks to release the trapped gas. China is about to get into shale gas in a big way.
Last week, SBS screened a documentary about fracking called Gasland, which has also just been released on DVD in Australia. Coal seam gas featured in a recent Four Corners report.
Critics of fracking say it can release methane locally (as well as carcinogenic chemicals used in the extraction process) including into underground aquifers. Gasland shows methane coming out of the kitchen taps of local residents. Maybe that would be a necessary evil if it reduced emissions. But now a new study claims the fugitive emissions from shale gas might make it worse than coal in terms of emissions.
Ironically, within a decade or two solar power is likely to be competitive with coal and gas. But by then gas extraction, along with coal, may have pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to set off disastrous feedback mechanisms, such as the release of methane currenly locked into the frozen tundra in northern Siberia and Canada, that would make global warming unstoppable. Far from saving us, going for gas could turn out to be the greatest mistake in history. With stakes this high, we mustn't just take the word of the gas lobby. Greenhouse emissions from gas must be given the closest scrutiny possible.
NSW consumers are facing power bill increases of around $300. Of that, something like $100 will be the result of subsidies for solar panels and other green schemes, through mechanisms such as the solar feed in tariff. Most of the rest is due to increased infrastructure costs - building new power lines and so on.
Climate change legislation is dead in the United States. So dead that President Obama didn't even mention global warming in this year's State of the Union address.
So who will save the planet?
It looks like the Federal Government will use the Queensland flood levy to kill off a few ill-conceived funding programs, including a raft of green schemes.
Tipped for the chop are the cash-for-clunkers and green car innovation schemes, and funding for carbon storage.
I've always thought, if you had a spare few million dollars and a team of computer geeks, that creating a computer game would be a great way to get (mainly young) people to engage with the complexities of environmental issues.
And now someone has done just that.
A new British strategy computer game called Fate of the World puts you in the position of an eco-minded World Bank type organisation trying to prevent runaway climate change. Your options apparently range from the usual building wind farms and public transport to killing everyone over 30 to reduce human population.
Another game, EnerCities allows you to build your own sustainable city on Facebook.
The big question is, of course, are they any good?
Julia Gillard went to the election vowing never to introduce a carbon tax. Now she's set up a committee to look into it, although we've been here before with Labor and climate change committees. Remember Ross Garnaut? He's on the new committee too.
The Gillard Government certainly isn't inspiring confidence on climate change so far. The Citizens' Assembly on climate change and the Cash for Clunkers scheme are so laughably bad you almost wish Kevin Rudd was still PM.
I'm increasingly convinced climate change is a psychological problem. We know what the problem is, we know it's urgent and we know how to solve it (principally, by using less stuff). So what's stopping us? And why do most people carry on as if there's nothing to worry about?
Secondly, Futerra Communications, a UK green communications consultancy, has published an online guide on how to get the climate change message across.
Futerra's key point is this: people are motivated to action by positive messages, not negative ones. Bad news turns people off, and they stop listening.
A survey by British polling company Ipsos Mori has found a fall in public belief in man-made climate change. Only 31 per cent believe it is "definitely" a reality, down from 44 per cent a year ago.
Climate deniers such as Lord Monckton peddle tired old furphies that have been dismissed time and again by credible scientists. Yet they enjoy vastly inflated media coverage, thanks mainly to green-hating conservative media pundits.
Everyone seems to agree Copenhagen was a flop. It didn’t produce any advance on what governments had already offered, which the science says is not enough to prevent runaway global warming.
Hot on the heels of the failure of world leaders to reach a legally binding deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions at Copenhagen comes news that the worlds biggest coal port - in Newcastle, NSW - has been shut down for 7.5 hours by activists including a local councillor and Buddhist monk. About a dozen protesters, including an 86-year-old man, were arrested.
A new study from some of the world's leading climate scientists, The Copenhagen Diagnosis suggests global warming is happening much faster than the last IPCC report predicted. Emissions are rising faster than ever; temperature and sea level rises are ahead of predictions; and glaciers, Arctic sea ice and Antarctic and Greenland icesheet are all melting much faster than expected.
It's a conundrum. The climate science has becomes firmer and more urgent, but studies show less people believe it.
Scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals that dispute the idea of man-made global warming are rarer than hen's teeth.
Yet recent polls by the Pew Research Centre and Rasmussen Reports suggest the public is less convinced or concerned about global warming then they were two years ago.
When is ranking 39th out of 40 nations considered to be "leading the world"? Answer: when it's an Australian environment minister talking about Australia's climate change policies.
If you're interested in the ethics and sustainability of food production in Sydney, the Sydney Food Fairness Summit taking place today and tomorrow (Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October) aims to draw up proposals for a NSW state food policy " that will address affordable access to healthy food, sustainable food systems and farming, food safety and health".
Continuing the theme, on Saturday there's the Chippendale Food for the Future Fair. The fair marks the opening of the Chippendale Food Co-operative, set up to buy organic, sustainably-produced food from the Sydney Basin.
The recent dust storm that hit Sydney and the east coast could be a sign of things to come, but it's soot, not dust, that could be the real worry. Read more on my Ecoisms blog.
Expect to see lots of "action" - or maybe just lots of hot air - on climate change in the next couple of months as we approach Copenhagen.
Kevin Rudd was dampening down expectations of a deal, and there are fears the US may undermine any worthwhile agreement because of domestic opposition.
`Sentence first, verdict afterwards,' said the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, and I suspect Kevin Rudd might have said something not entirely contrary-wise to Environment Minister Peter Garrett about the massive Gorgon natural gas project off the coast of northwest Australia.
Two environmentalists from Nepal - climber Pemba Dorje Sherpa and environmental lawyer Prakash Sharma, are in Australia talking about the impact of global warming on the Himalaya.
As the associated Big Melt website explains:
"Glaciers are melting creating floods and danger for the local people. But the big melt also means a big dry as these 'water towers' of Asia lose their capacity to provide water to the giant rivers in the summer months. Eventually rivers like the Ganges in India and the Yellow River in China will lose their dry season flow and the billion people in these river basins will lose their water security."
Glaciers and snow melt from the Himalaya and Tibetian plateau are in retreat. A UN report says they could be gone by 2035. These glaciers feed the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yellow, Yangtse, Mekong, Ayeyarwady and Salween rivers. Rivers that provide the irrigation water upon which more than a third of humanity depends.
I recently read a book called Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer.
The book plays out imaginary - but potentially real - future scenarios. ne of these is about the Indus. The Indus is the lifeblood of Pakistan, and the main source of irrigation for the nation's agriculture. It rises in the Indian Himalaya.
Most of the Australian media missed it, but a survey out last week reported the world is in the midst of its “sixth great extinction event”, with Australia one of the planet’s worst extinction hotspots.
Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Neil Armstrong's first small step on to the Moon. Since then the space program no doubt taught us many valuable things about what lies beyond our world. But the most important discovery has been about our own planet.
Information overload alert: a flood of recent reports and studies say global warming will be worse than we feared, predicting a much more dramatic temperature rise by 2100.
Global warming could just be the break our farmers need. If we start paying our farmers to save us from climate change, then climate change may just save our farmers.
Former management consultant Tim Kruger wants to dump massive amounts of lime in the oceans. Why? Because oceans absorb about a third of all carbon dioxide released by human activity, sucking it out of the atmosphere. So wouldn't it be great if oceans could absorb more CO2.
There are rallies to call for stronger action on climate change taking place in all of the Australian state capital cities this Saturday, 13 June (as well as Wollongong).
I've mentioned before how the ETS will prevent ordinary people from helping reduce Australia's emissions. The problem is, if you or I save energy, it simply means your energy supplier has more unused carbon permits so someone else doesn't have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.
Are leading climate scientists giving up hope of preventing runaway global warming. In this article from The Guardian, an expert from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK considers it "improbable" CO2 levels can be restricted to even 650 parts per million (ppm) - a level that could lead to a catastrophic 4C warming.
It's worth reading this interview with James Lovelock from a couple of months back in The New Scientist. The author of the Gaia Hypothesis - known for his bleak pronouncements on climate change - predicts 90 per cent of mankind will die in the next century from even two degrees of warming.
If you want major coverage in our media's opinion pages, write a book denying climate change is happening. That's what Professor Ian Plimer's has done, and his book Heaven and Earth, a supposed debunking of climate change theory, has been receiving the usual uncritical praise from familiar climate denial commentators such as Andrew Bolt. There's a more critical assessment on Tim Lambert's Deltoid blog.
If you live in Melbourne, make a note in your diary to head to St Kilda beach on 17 May to form part of the Climate Change Human Sign. Help put climate change on the news!
Hundreds of people blocked the coal port in Newcastle on Saturday March 21 in the fourth annual blockade of the world's biggest coal port. Protestors say that Newcastle Port Corporation cancelled all ships coming into the harbour for the day although Port Waratah Coal Services says the operations were barely affected and it was business as usual.
Under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme people who install solar hot water and/or solar power will not be reducing Australia's emissions but merely allowing polluters more room to pollute. GetUp! have started a campaign to get the government to close this perverse loophole.
UK environmental activist and columnist George Monbiot has come out with provisional support for nuclear power. This is a surprise, given Monbiot's previous opposition to nuclear power. However, the piece is worth reading, as are the comments - one of the less hysterical debates about nuclear power.
While conservative parties around the world are slowly sidelining their most strident opposition to policies addressing environmental problems, conservatives' suspicion of what is still perceived as a “lefty” agenda continues to be a significant roadblock on the road to decisive action. How to overcome that suspicion? Here's one idea to help make the case for the benefit of climate-change skeptics among your family and friends: Global warming will kill million of conservatives – namely plants.
While climate scientists have stressed that no single event can be put down to climate change, the simple fact is a warming climate increases the likelihood of extreme weather events such as the tragic Victorian bushfires.
Critical time for Green New Deal I've blogged previously about the "Green New Deal" to direct financial stimulus and job creation packages towards renewable energy and energy efficiency. Everyone suddenly agrees governments must spend (or give away) money to stimulate the economy. So why not kill two birds in one stone and spend the money on measures that will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus head off climate change?
Leading climate scientist James Hansen has written a personal plea to Barack Obama, saying the next four years could be humanity's last chance to avoid runaway climate change.
Along with many environmentalists, I'm not a fan of carbon trading. In my view it's unwieldy, too open to rorting and lobbying by industry pressure groups and it's ability to actually reduce emissions remains totally unproven. More likely, it will only serve to make some traders rich with little emissions reductions.
Oops. It turns out that a gas used in the manufacturer of LCD laptop and television screens and - wait for it - thin-screen solar photovoltaic panels is a greenhouse gas a massive 17,000 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.
I was listening to a news item about a report from UN's Environment Programme (UNEP) on the brown cloud of smog that tends to hangs over a large chunk of Asia. Just another environmental bad news story, I thought. Then they said this...
Been feeling a bit down in the dumps this week, and not simply because sorting out our website upgrade is driving us all insane. Firstly, given there is no solution to global warming that doesn't involve the USA, there's the thought that in a couple of years a dangerous idiot such as Sarah Palin could be their President. Good news for those polar bears...
Unfortunately, every transport proposal in Sydney now has to prove that it can serve low-density (full of single block detached dwellings) suburban areas that are wedded to cars. But no urban rail system in the world has shown that it can successfully operate in such a context, as highlighted in Jim Steer's recent Sydney Transport Review for the State Government (which the Government subsequently chose to ignore. Only buses get close to where people live and work in low density areas but as long as they continue to share road space with cars they will always be the subservient mode.
I've posted a brief guide to climate scepticism in the EcoGuide: Green Topics section. Climate sceptics aim to create the impression that climate change is a hotly debated topic within the scientific community, and that increasing numbers of scientists disagree with the view that humans are causing global warming.
