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New Tool Allows Scientists To Annotate Media Coverage of Climate Change
Layzej writes: Have you ever been skeptical of a climate change story presented by a major media outlet? A new tool holds journalists to account for the veracity of their stories. "Using the Climate Feedback tool, scientists have started to diligently add detailed annotations to online content and have those notes appear alongside the story as it originally appeared. If you're the writer, then it's a bit like getting your homework handed back to you with the margins littered with corrections and red pen. Or smiley faces and gold stars if you've been good." The project has already prompted The Telegraph to publish major corrections to their story that suggested the Earth is headed for a "'mini ice age' within 15 years." The article has been modified in such a way that there is no more statement supporting the original message of an "imminent mini ice age."
They "might" not believe it but they will throw it in your face as "proof" that there is no climate change. I think this is a fantastic idea, it should become mandatory on all media articles about anything not just climate change. I'd like to see it used on claims made in religious articles.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"there is no climate change" - I wonder how many deniers or skeptics argue that?- only a tiny %age at a guess. I'd say the evidence for climate change since the last Ice Age indicates that non-anthropogenic GW one of the stronger puzzles that needs to be worked on, even if Mann and Smith are trying to downplay the variability seen.
Climate change is not a death sentence. There aren't any reputable scientists saying it is. I think you may have been listening to some sensationalist media stories, and possibly embellishing what they state. If you like, you can read some of the published effects of climate change, and "all life dying" is not one of them.
But if no reputable scientists are saying that climate change is a death sentence, why do articles like the one below keep appearing? It's about Christiana Figueres, leader of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Figueres was trained as an anthropologist, but doesn't do anthropology professionally; she's a Costa Rican diplomat. (Being the daughter of the President of Costa Rica probably gave her a leg up here). I'm willing to add a stipulation that anthropologists who have never actually worked as scientists shouldn't be considered as "reputable scientists" on climate models.
It's titled, "The Woman Who Could Save Humanity". http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
Well, if you actually read the article, it doesn't anywhere quote her as saying that climate change will be "a death sentence". In fact, it's primarily an article about how hard it is to get diplomats to agree. The closest it gets to any such statement is the title of the article (and article titles aren't written by the reporter), and a sentence in the article saying that on the well of her office is a picture of the Statue of Liberty waist-deep in water. I'm not sure if we should judge people by the satirical pictures on their walls.
Sounds like what we really need is a tool to annotate extremists on both sides. Why does this tool do that?
I absolutely agree. Accuracy is desired in both directions. We're in luck, though, the tool discussed here does annotate both sides! Here-- from the link in TFA-- is their tool applied to the Rolling Stone article "“The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here”:
http://climatefeedback.org/eva...
--along with the reply by the author, the very first point of which was "I didn't get to write the headline; the headlines are written by the editor."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com