Climate Change: The Sciences, the Media, and Politics Essay

Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.

In his essay titled “Climate of Denial”, Al Gore, a well known environmental advocate and former vice president, verifies the reality of climate change and global warming. The piece is an attack on corrupt companies and news outlets that attempt to persuade the public that global warming is not a critical issue. Gore also earnestly conveys our environment’s current state and offers possible solutions that would increase awareness about global warming and begin to revert the planet back to a healthier, more sustainable state. The overarching purpose of Gore’s work is to call attention to the widespread climate change that is occurring. However, he also focuses on the corruption and bias within the media, and their attempts to conceal the truth about global warming. Writing to those who are conflicted about who to believe, he makes a valid argument that defends the beliefs of he and his fellow activists and encourages others to become more active in the climate change issue.

Global warming and climate change in general is one of those subjects that I hold very close to my heart; not because I go around in my spare time hugging trees and gathering vegans in Toyota Priuses to form a peaceful protest against big oil, but because climate change is a subject that everyone and their mom likes to chime in on without really knowing that much about. If you even mention that term “global warming” in a group of people, even the person who you wouldn’t believe can even form a sentence has an opinion. People must feel like it makes them better than others because they can regurgitate whatever CNN and Fox tells them. I’ve done about two or three papers on climate change and global warming in my highschool career, and even

The globe is being rocked by extreme weather and the hottest temperatures on record. As the average global temperature soars, there are floods, droughts, unusually cold winters, forest fires, and huge storms. Are all of these horrors being caused by human-induced global warming?

As a kid who has cared about nature his entire life, and an avid modern environmentalist for four years and counting, this issue has been at the center of my psyche for quite some time. I have seen public perspective on this issue change before my eyes. From the original rejection of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth movie on “global warming” to personally marching alongside 300,000 people in our nation's capital to raise awareness on climate change. However, despite all of these avenues the issue is still spoken about as this distant idea that eventually will be a disaster. Many politicians and news networks speak of the need for slow implementation of policies and programs to right our environmental wrongs. The best way to paraphrase the common narrative of this issue would be to say, climate change is going to happen down the road, it will probably be bad and trying to fix it in the near future would be a good idea. That weak call to action shoves climate change onto the long to-do list of the leaders of our world. Not only does it not create the urgency needed to actually curb the effects of our environmental ignorance, but it does not accurately describe the threat of a changing climate. Treating this like a political issue will not allow for the rigorous changes needed to address such a problem in the timely manner that is required.

The problem that the pro- global warming theorists have created is that of social standing and little else. While there may be scientific backing to support some of the theory, the media presents the problem with great sensationalism. Global warming and energy conservation has thus become a trend and losses some of its validity through this. The scare tactics used by the media to “promote awareness” are just that, a linguistic ploy to gain favor. “Awareness of this global threat reinforced public concern and environmental problems and thereby provided environmental activists, scientists, and policy makers with new momentum in their efforts to promote environmental protection.” (McCright, 2000) This statement draws line to the potential benefits that would be received if the pro-global warming theorists were to draw enough attention to the issue. Driven by social empowerment and conviction to environmental protection, these activists misrepresent the actual threat and paint it as being much more

Climate change has been a subject of discussion in the media for many years, supported with the use of arguments against oil polluting the environment and extreme scare tactics of Polar ice caps flooding civilians backyards. The issue has been ignored by the majority of lay people as seeming too complicated, and with all the conflicting information in the media in the past, who can blame them? However, scientifically, climate change and what perpetrates it is fairly simple to understand and society as a whole is beginning to come to a clear consensus on climate change. Thanks in part to more readily available forms of media and information, people have become cognizant of the fact that climate change is a legitimate problem which requires immediate amelioration. While this may seem melodramatic, society is realizing that climate change is an issue which can no longer be denied if the human race wishes to continue.

Through his research, McCright proves that that there is sizable political divide between liberals/Democrats and conservatives/Republicans on the issue of global warming, which consequently has caused the divide between the public. The constant flow of political messages and media coverage of political debates, especially those concerning climate change, highly contribute to the growing divide between the public. Americans’ political orientations, moderate educational attainment and self-reported understanding are completely consistent with the predictions of the politicians’ hypothesis and information-processing theory. Given the bifurcated flow of conflicting information on climate change from the politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, ideological and partisan camps in the general public receive completely different information on climate change, which reinforces their existing political differences. This provides strong evidence of both ideological and political polarization on climate change beliefs and concern over the past decade. It demonstrates that since political ideologies so heavily influence people’s opinions and

These last two election cycles have demonstrated the importance of climate change in relation to politics and the american people. What is unfortunate is that what seems to be a very crucial and real problem in our human survival, according to scientists, is being debated by people who do not have the scientific credentials to even discuss the science behind the reality of climate change. Those behind the skeptics, have funded a successful campaign against the reality of the facts and have introduce doubt into the sciences.

97% of climate scientists agree that such increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are man-made (Global Climate Change: Consensus). Why then is it that the news media treats such widely held views by experts as debate rather than consensus? The answer may lie in the media’s current and skewed standards of what constitutes “objectivity” and “balance”.

Climate change is a huge overarching issue that directly relates to almost every environmental issue we are facing today on the planet. In essence, climate change is the main incapacitating factor for the 4 factors of sustainability. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released a report based on the findings of a nationally represented survey. This report expands upon the connection between scientific findings behind climate change and how the public perceives this

For years, global warming and climate change has been a topic of debate. It is a subject so controversial, that it has divided our nation despite factual, scientific evidence that global warming is real. In his essay, Hollywood and Climate Change, Stephen Rust details the history of climate change and media’s role in the climate change debate.

There is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the theory of 'global warming' and the proper political response to it. At the very center of the scientific debate on the variability of global climate is to what extent human activities influence climate change. Another unforeseeable is whether the potential impacts of climate change will be harmful or beneficial for humans, managed agriculture, and natural ecosystems. Some question the authority with which current scientific data has been given in international negotiations on the regulation of greenhouse gases. Others are convinced that immediate actions must be taken to limit the potential effects of excess greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere

The problem is that there isn’t any public engagement on the issue of climate change because how I see it is that these days’ people are more worried about how many people have a job rather than how varying weather patterns and chemicals that they are burning in the air can ruin the climate. To me, I see that there is different perceptions on how people view the climate may change in the future. There are different issues that the administration has been framing such as improving the job situation in the United States because jobs from the Year 2008-2009 had a 21+ increase rather than reducing influence from fellow lobbyists which saw a decline of -3. As we see it now, people use frames as a way of putting a specific thought that they may have into motion. On a daily basis, people may resort to framing as a way to discuss varying topics

Public opinion on the topic of climate change remains divided despite over two decades worth of research and a strong consensus in the scientific community (Deryugina and Shurchkov, 2016). In an experimental survey, the authors tested whether providing the public with information based on scientific agreement on the occurrence and causes of climate change would affect the respondent’s beliefs. They found that not only did the public significantly underestimate the extent of the scientific consensus, the survey also indicated that those who were given concrete information about scientist’s views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already happening and that it was caused by humans. Moreover, the results concluded