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."

Comments

Re:A mini ice age? Really?

[bunratty]

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.

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[silentcoder]

This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.

We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain". Water has a relatively high boiling point and returns to liquid form fairly easily, so water doesn't stay in the atmosphere for very long before it rains (or snows) down again. The average time a water molecule spends in the atmosphere is only about 11 days.

On the other hand CO2 has a much lower boiling point - it does not return to liquid form in the atmosphere, it doesn't rain down - and the average lifetime of a CO2 particle in the atmosphere is decades - but centuries are not at all unknown.

A small effect over a very long time will always have a bigger total impact than a large effect over a very short time.
Of course, just to throw your argument into even further debunked teritory - CO2 warming increases evaporation as well as increasing the lifetime of water in the atmosphere (hotter air means it takes longer before it rains down again) - so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.

Source:
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2...