Climate Change Narratives in the US News

Frederick Mayer has published Stories of Climate Change: Competing Narratives, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion 2001-2010. Rather than simply categorizing news accounts as pro, con, and neutral, the objective was to analyze the narrative content of the news reports in order to see what stories they told: What were their plots? Who were the villains, victims, and (potential) heroes? What was their meaning?

He found that TV news coverage from 2001 to 2010 typically exemplified one of six basic narrative lines and that there were striking on-air differences between cable coverage on Fox and CNN and broadcast news on ABC and other traditional networks. Here are the six different narratives that were tracked:

• The Climate Tragedy: A story of impending disaster, in which we (or big energy) are the villains, scientists and environmental advocates the potential heroes.
• He Said, She Said: A conflict story about the contest between scientists: some say that humans are altering the climate, some say we aren’t, inaction is the prudent path.
• Don’t Kill the Goose: A story in which climate change may be happening (most likely from natural causes) but the real threat is regulation.
• Hoax: A tragic story in which climate science is part of a conspiracy (along with liberal elites and the UN) to empower government, and the heroes are those who expose them.
• The Denialist Conspiracy: A story about those who tell the Hoax story, in which they are part of a right-wing conspiracy (funded by energy interests and wealthy ideologues).
• The Policy Game: A story about the contest over policy, similar to “horse-race” stories in elections, in which the reader/viewer is encouraged to take a rooting interest.

Stories of climate change told by Fox and CNN began to differ dramatically from those told by traditional television network news during the decade from 2001 to 2010. By 2009, the crucial year both for congressional action on climate change and for the global negotiations in Copenhagen, the divergence was almost complete.

On Fox the dominant climate change story had become some variation of a “Hoax” narrative: climate change is a fraud foisted on the public by scientists, the UN, and liberal elites and the media. If Fox were one’s only source of information, it would have been nearly impossible to even imagine that climate change was real, let alone an issue society should do anything about.

On CNN, a potpourri of narrative lines did battle: “Hoax” stories, “He Said/She Said,” and “Don’t Kill the Goose,” on one side; “Climate Tragedy” on the other; and “Policy Game” reporting on the fortunes of climate risk-management initiatives.  If CNN were one’s only source of news, it would have been hard not to be confused.

And on the traditional ABC, CBS, and NBC networks, a curious thing happened. Although each had provided extensive coverage of climate change in 2006 and 2007 — a huge majority of them with some variation of a “Climate Tragedy” story — they all but stopped covering climate change in 2009. If one of these networks were one’s only source of news, it would have been perfectly reasonable to imagine that somehow climate change was no longer an issue.

Because the patterns of coverage at NBC and CBS were nearly identical to those of ABC, the research focused on only the one traditional network. The results were striking. On ABC, “Climate Tragedy” dominated, with most stories about the impending disaster and about what we should do about it. As Figure 1 shows, the network gave considerable play to these stories in 2006, the year Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was released, and even more in 2007, the year the United Nations/World Meteorological Organization’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its strongly worded report on climate change and shared the Nobel Prize with Gore.

But in 2009, the year of “cap and trade” in the U.S. Congress and of the December Copenhagen climate summit, ABC was AWOL, airing only a fraction of the stories it had broadcast two years before. (CBS and NBC had strikingly similar patterns of coverage.) The pattern of stories on Fox, shown in Figure 2, provides a stark contrast. In the early years of the decade, Fox had barely attended to climate change. In 2007, though, its coverage increased substantially, perhaps triggered by the IPCC report and the accolades showered on Gore. But its mix of stories was predominantly of the “Hoax” narrative, a story in which climate scientists (in cahoots with the UN, liberal elites, and Gore) were cast as the villains. And in 2009, unlike ABC (and also unlike CBS and NBC), Fox continued to shout “Hoax!” culminating in a frenzy around “Climategate,” the story about hacked e-mails among climate researchers that climate “skeptics” by and large interpreted as showing those scientists “cooking the books.”

CNN, the other major national source of television news, might be characterized as going for maximum conflict. As can be seen in Figure 3, in 2006-2007, CNN told both the “Climate Tragedy” story and the “Hoax” narrative (the conservative firebrand Glenn Beck was then on CNN). Again in 2009, when it offered extensive coverage before and during the Copenhagen summit, CNN’s favorite formula involved pitting the two narratives against each other. Leading up to the December summit, for example, it ran with four consecutive nights of “Climate Change: Trick or Truth?”

What difference might the differing mix of stories have made? It seems quite likely that they contributed to the remarkable shift in public opinion (toward decreasing concern over climate change) in the latter part of the decade, particularly among those on the right of the political spectrum who were more likely to be Fox viewers.

After peaking in 2007, the year IPCC issued its most recent assessment and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, Americans’ belief in climate change headed downward. By the crucial year of 2009, with the Congress debating nationwide “cap and trade” carbon dioxide emission legislation, the percentage agreeing that “there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming” had dropped from 77 percent to only 57 percent, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Even more problematic in terms of the politics and what has become a full-fledged split between Democrats and Republicans, only 35 percent of Republicans agreed with the “solid evidence” premise, down from 62 percent. And only 18 percent of Republicans said they believed warming was substantially caused by human emissions.

Why the dramatic drop? The “Great Recession” that began in 2008 almost certainly played its part. In economic hard times, combating climate change, as with addressing most other environmental problems, becomes a lower priority, and not acting is just plain easier to justify if one rejects that there is a problem in the first place.

But the economic downturn cannot account for the growing partisan divide, a divide that had become particularly glaring in the context of the past several months’ presidential primary campaigns. Part of the shift in public opinion, and particularly the collapse of belief among Republicans, was likely driven also by the impact of an increasingly partisan media and the different stories they told.

(The above is a slightly rearranged and slightly modified version of Mayer's summary of the study.)

Climate Change vs Energy

As public discussion of climate change has become increasingly polarized, the Obama administration's rhetoric has shifted from a discussion of 'climate' to a focus on 'energy.'

This trend is documented in a recent study, Running from Climate Change: The Obama Administration’s Changing Rhetoric.

The always interesting Max Boycoff weighs in on these observations with A dangerous shift in Obama’s ‘climate change’ rhetoric.

But what do we lose when global warming and climate change get repackaged as clean energy? We wind up missing a thorough understanding of the breadth of the problem and the range of possible solutions.

To start, talking only about clean energy omits critical biological and physical factors that contribute to the warming climate. “Clean energy” doesn’t call to mind the ways we use the land and how the environment is changing. Where in the term is the notion of the climate pollution that results from clear-cutting Amazon rain forests? What about methane release in the Arctic, where global warming is exposing new areas of soil in the permafrost?

“Clean energy” also neatly bypasses any idea that we might need to curb our consumption. If the energy is clean, after all, why worry about how much we’re using — or how unequal the access to energy sources might be?
And terms such as “carbon pollution” ignore that climate change isn’t just a carbon issue. Some greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, do not contain carbon, and not all carbon-containing emissions, such as carbon monoxide, trap heat.

When the president moves away from talking about climate change and talks more generally about energy, as he did in the State of the Union, calling for “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy,” the impact is more than just political.

Calling climate change by another name creates limits of its own. The way we talk about the problem affects how we deal with it. And though some new wording may deflect political heat, it can’t alter the fact that, “climate change” or not, the climate is changing.

True enough, but this appears to be another example of Obama's 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good' philosophy. Convinced, realistically, that the current chances of getting the Congress to act on climate change are essentially zero, he's opted for a frame that could, potentially, lead to legislation. The operative question is to whether "clean energy policy" remains that, or becomes simply "energy policy." If it becomes the latter, with its unrelenting emphasis on ways to maintain the current fossil fuel fixation, then any incremental advantage to the climate issue will have been lost. And, as described in the recent Wired article Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust, keeping the clean in energy policy will not be easy.

The Nisbet Report: Climate Shift (Take II)

Here's an update on the earlier discussion of Nisbet's ClimateShift report.

Bradford Plummer over at the New Republic has a thoughtful review of the Nisbet Report, Blame Game: Has the green movement been a miserable flop? The article does a good job of both describing the niche controversies surrounding the report while at the same time maintaining focus on the larger issues that the report raises; specifically whether or not the emphasis on public education is a sensible strategy for getting the US to adopt climate change legislation. Unfortunately, in an attempt to end on an up note, the article goes seriously off track in the last paragraph.

Last month, I asked David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council whether the green movement needed to rethink its broader strategy. .... Hawkins, who has worked on air-pollution issues for four decades now, preferred to take the long view. “I’m a political optimist,” he said. “Over the last forty years, we really have seen significant environmental progress. There are always setbacks—we’ve weathered unfriendly political climates during the Reagan and Bush years, and we’ve protected the EPA’s authority. But, eventually, we'd win. The air would get cleaner, lives would be saved, and things continue to get better.” It's not the sort of conclusion that's going to grab headlines. But that doesn't mean he's wrong.

Hawkins is arguably right --- as long as you focus on environmental matters that can be addressed at the level of the nation-state or below. But climate change is of a different scale, requiring coordinated effort among all the countries of the world. This is where the navel-gazing fetish of America gets them in trouble. There are two big behemoths that have to be placated in any feasible solution to climate change: the US and China. The notion that internal political pressure will, at this point, get the US to move without some sort of tandem move by China is pure fantasy. I've addressed this issue in greater depth here and here.

Unfortunately, the track record of international cooperation on such a scale is not something that generates a lot of optimism. The only structure remotely similar to what will be needed -- that is an essentially global agreement with a legally binding enforcement mechanism -- are the trade agreements of the World Trade Organization. But ever since about 2000, when the developing world woke up to the fact that they were having the wool pulled over their eyes by the wealthy economies, further development of such agreements has ground to a halt. Stated another way, the WTO experience has seriously lessened the likelihood of getting international cooperation on a similar scale for another issue like climate change.

Yes, some will point to the Montreal Protocol and its success in taming the ozone problem and argue, as they have done for years, that it's cap-and-trade model provides a viable way to address the climate issue. While superficially attractive, this suggestion fails to account for three major differences. First, the ozone problem was, comparatively, a simple matter. Climate change is a wicked problem with many more complexities and uncertainties. Second, once they discovered an alternative for CFC's, the chemical industry was full scale in favor of the Montreal Protocol because they saw a clear path to increased profits. This is not the case with climate change where much of the fossil fuel industry remains resolutely opposed to effective climate change policy. Third, CFC's were a comparatively minor economic product and, hence, no one perceived a ban on CFC's as a fundamental attack on capitalism. In contrast, fossil fuels are a key source of the energy which drives the modern economy and which cannot easily and cheaply be replaced with another source. As such, the argument that weaning an economy off fossil fuels will necessitate a fundamental restructuring of the economy is not at all far fetched. Thus, climate change legislation is easily tied to concerns about the future of capitalism or the American way of life, a political burden that the Montreal Protocol never had to carry.

I'm all for optimism. But I prefer to take mine with a dash of realism thrown in.

P.S. A couple days after I posted this Robert Pielke Jr's posted on the ozone issue, fleshing out several of the above points with additional details.

Frontier Earth on Climate Central

Keith Kloor (from Collide-a-Scape) has a new blog, Frontier Earth over at Climate Central, that discusses topics of relevance to resilience science and sustainability. He reads widely and does an excellent job of keeping abreast of emerging discursive trends that affect the policy debate. See, for example, the entry Security Concerns get Top Billing in Climate and Energy Debates or the one dealing with momentum shifts on climate adaptation.

He also has the wisdom to list us in his Blogroll! Thanks, Keith!

Caution: Koch Brothers at Work

About a year ago, Greenpeace released a report, Koch Industries Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine. The main point of the report was to draw attention to the role of the secretive brothers in funding climate denial and, in particular, to highlight the scale of their activity relative to the much better known activities of Exxon Mobile.

Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming. Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent Exxon Mobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, Exxon Mobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate denial machine.

While the Greenpeace report focuses entirely on the Koch Brothers activities as they relate to climate change, this is only the tip of the iceberg. A couple days ago, The Center for American Progress released The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right. This report documents, in considerable detail, the role of the brothers in a wide range of national policy debates. Here are some of the highlights from the report:

The Koch brothers, whose wealth, when combined, is the fourth highest in the nation, run one of the largest private companies in the country. Koch Industries is involved in industries ranging from oil and gas, refining and chemicals, minerals, fertilizers, forestry, consumer products, polymers and fibers, and ranching. They have operations in 45 states.

The Koch brothers use their considerable wealth to bankroll the right wing, including the Tea Party. This serves the purpose of furthering not only their right-wing ideology but also their bottom line. Koch Industries has a lot to gain from gutting government oversight and electing candidates who oppose government regulation, especially in the oil-and-gas industry.

Chances are the Koch brothers are part of any recent right-wing attack as of late as they have fought health reform, Wall Street reform, collective bargaining rights, and efforts to curb climate change, to name just a few.

We have identified at least $85 million the Koch brothers have given to at least 85 right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups over the past decade and a half.



Their main advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, has chapters in 32 states and spent $45 million in the last election, predominantly to help elect Republicans.

The Kochs donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class.

The Koch brothers are active at the state level, spending $5.2 million on candidates and ballot measures in 34 states since 2003. They donated directly to 13 governors that won election last year.

The Kochs are not going away. In fact, they have already pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election and have started scheduling events for potential Republican presidential candidates.

BP and the Press

Fearing bad press, BP is fighting back in some interesting ways. First, they have bought rights to the search term 'oil spill' and other related key words from Google and other search engines in order to direct internet users to their sight.

Second, they have started to produce smarmy content of their own that they place on the web. See, for example, Tom Seslar's blog entry, an entry that describes the importance of the oil industry and the beauty of the coastal marshes without mentioning the oil spill.

But such efforts inevitably generate responses, such as the one below from the Rachael Maddow show.

BP Press Release Theatre: Flying Higher from The Rachel Maddow Show on Vimeo.

Call for Papers: Media Ecology Association

Close to home and interesting .... could be well worth checking out.

The Eleventh Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association
Media Ecology and Natural Environments

June 10–13, 2010
University of Maine
Orono, Maine

Media Ecology and Natural Environments

The subject of media ecology was formed with two biological methaphors in mind, Neil Postman wrote in “The Humanism of Media Ecology” (2000). In biology, a medium is a substance within which a culture grows. Change “substance” to “technology,” and media ecology defines a medium as a technology within which a culture grows, forming its politics, social organization, and ways of thinking. In biology, ecology is the study of what constitutes a balanced and healthy natural environment. Media ecology refers to ways that cultures maintain a healthy symbolic balance to help keep our natural world in order. Media ecology seeks to make us more aware that we live in two different environments. We live in both the natural environment of air, water, animals, and plants, and the media environment of language, images, symbols, and technologies that shape us.

The 11th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association invites papers, panels, creative projects, and other proposals exploring the connections between these two ecologies, one of culture and communication, the other of nature and the physical sciences. Convention submissions are welcome that draw on a wide variety of perspectives in environmental studies in the sciences and communication, from issues such as climate change, biodiversity, acid rain, and wildlife ecology. How do media ecology and natural ecology intersect? How do ecologists in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences create dialogue with each other? Can scholarship bring artists, communication researchers, and scientists together? What is the relationship between primary natural and virtual media realities? What is the history of environmental thought?

Electronic submissions of papers and session proposals are preferred and should be sent by January 15, 2010 to Paul Grosswiler, Chair, Department of Communication and Journalism, 420 Dunn Hall, University of Maine, Orono ME 04460, paulg at maine.edu.

All submissions will be acknowledged. The convention will be sponsored by the Vice President for Research, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine. Campus housing will be available. Tours of Maine’s natural environments will be offered.