by Andrew Miller
11. June 2010 04:29
It's funny how sometimes in life you have those bizarre 2 + 2 = 4 moments, where two things seemingly piece themselves so effortlessly together in front of your eyes. Makes you wonder how many important things we miss in life through little coincidences not quite lining up at the right moment, or perhaps simply through our not paying attention when they do.
Today I was reading through the latest posts on the Earthscan Blog looking for something to include in a forthcoming e-alert, and stopped to read Florian Käfer's article '
Still Uncertain About Climate Change?' in which he focuses on psychologist Lorraine Whitmarsh's presentation on climate change denial. Paraphrasing her arguments, he writes,
"Uncertainty arises from conflicting (thus unreliable) data and media communication, which is often exaggerated and misleading. Media is too alarmist about climate change, leading to the fact that scepticism about media claims and alarmism is high."
A few moments later I was skimming the latest climate change news headlines, and came across a number of articles on a recent poll by Cardiff University. The poll itself, about the public's evolving attitudes towards climate change, was nothing particularly earth shattering... but the list of media articles in my aggregator covering the poll kind of stunned me:
BBC News - 11 June 2010
The Guardian - 11 June 2010
The two most visited and trusted news sites on the web... with completely conflicting messages about the findings of the poll. Doing a search on Google News revealed that the same division was represented across the whole of the media's coverage of the poll's findings, and I couldn't help but immediately think back to what I'd just read in Florian's post.
If ever such an instant, vivid real life confirmation of a theory was needed...
