Which do you prefer as sources of info on global warming - scientists or journalists?

Question

News magazines like Time and Newsweek were responsible for the "global cooling" myth of the 1970s. They took the theories of a very few scientists and made them sound like they were a major scientific story, even though most scientists of the time were predicting global warming.

Today they sometimes make it sound like the very few global warming deniers are an important part of the scientific community.

In both cases they've gone for the controversial story involving a tiiny minority of scientists to sell magazines, rather than an objective picture of reality.

Answer 1

Global warming is a scientific issue, so I get my information on the subject directly from scientists via peer-reviewed papers.  If I see a news article on the subject, I try to find the scientific paper the story was talking about, because you know a journalist is going to s***w up the analysis of the paper somehow.

I find it ironic that the 'skeptics' use the '70s cooling scare' as evidence that AGW is wrong, because that was based on the media, not the scientific literature.  So basically they're saying we shouldn't listen to the media.  Then they get all their information from the right-wing blogosphere and claim the scientists are all wrong!

So in the 70s the media was wrong and the scientists were right, but now the right-wing media is right and the scientists are wrong.  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Answer 2

Scientists, obviously.

The trouble is though, that scientists don't tend to talk directly to the public, instead we have to rely on the media to give an accurate report of what we're saying.  And we all know how fond journalists are of twisting people's words...

The other problem is that because those who claim global warming is a "hoax" aren't real scientists, they don't need to bother to make sure their statements are backed up by evidence.  The result is that they can often sound more convincing than real scientists, especially to journalists hungry for controversy.  It's easy to sound impressive when you don't have to worry about sticking to the facts!

Answer 3

Unfortunately scientist is now a very low bar to clear.  As long as you can write a paper that other scientist check off, you're in the club.

You no longer need to actually prove anything to be a scientist, you just need to get a majority of like minded people to agree with you to qualify.  A person with great oratory skills is now a better scientist than a real scientist.

Answer 4

I haven't subscribed to Time in a long while, but their writing and overall track record is, I believe, fairly good.  My background is in journalism, and I know good reporting is out there, it isn't the majority anymore though, is it, if it ever was.  But while you smear the profession in general, and the reporters who generated the stories  you mention, don't forget that even though they got in wrong, they were on track as far as recognizing that our planet's climate was screwed up.  I guess I'm going to have to go back and check out the article and the time period and try to put this into a better context than the name calling and finger pointing I'm seeing here.

That said, the answer to your headline question for me is the scientific journal.  It is because the information is fleshed out and provided in its original source, not translated to a journalist who then does his/her best to assimilate it and then present it in a manner the layman can understand.

I just completed the 2nd of two articles on GCC in which I was limited to 800 words each.  I had to be concise to the point where the information almost went out of focus, as it were.  It was excruciatingly painful to pull together the information I wanted to put in, and then slowly excise this word or that sentence until I got it down to the core.  No flab.  It's a great exercise, try it some time, because it makes you focus on what is important to know, what is essential to include.  To make it even harder, I had to keep it impartial.  No political overtones.  The 2nd article was so hard, in fact, that I was late turning it in just tweaking the first paragraph and playing with the text to make sure I was giving it my best shot. Still, I learned a lot, and the research gave me a chance to go back and really scrutinize some sites I'd visited but hadn't thoroughly explored.

So let's not cry over the spilled milk of decades gone by, or attempt to discredit an entire profession because a handful of journalists bet on the wrong horse.  Yes, news magazines are out to make a profit.  But that doesn't mean that the journalists involved in those stories didn't do a good job.

Answer 5

The answer to the objective observer is scientists. Unless one happens to believe scientists are actually closet communists bent on world domination...

Answer 6

SOOO scientists, they know so much more than those fake journalists, and if journalists have any correct info its because they got it from scientists.  TRUST SCIENCE

Answer 7

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."



    Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Answer 8

Neither. Journalists are normally liberal environmentalists and scientists are normally bought off.

Answer 9

Neither, isn't a scientist just someone with a degree, and isn't a journalist someone who looks good enough to be on TV? Why not just look around and see that we are polluting our planet and that the price of everything is going up, that is usually an indication that it will become harder to get. It is in your own financial best interest to conserve energy and it is in the best intrest of your health to reduce pollution.

Answer 10

Scientists of course! You can't trust a journalist to state all the facts and not twist them to seem better or worse.  

Answer 11

Bob the central core of every argument or dissertation put forth by the alarmists is the same one put forth in the bible of the National Socialist New Left that clearly states a policy that denies the existence of 99.9% of humanities physical and material resources. This book called “The Limits to Growth” published and funded by group of billionaire elitists called the club of Rome makes the false assumption that we as a race have already discovered and are consuming every possible resource that is in existence and when we finish consuming them there will be no more forever.

This report was written by and funded by people with small minds and limited knowledge of the world and the solar system. It is a group of inbred blue blooded morons that because they have inherited great riches from their grandfathers and a staff to manage them for them they are like gods in their glory directing the fate of the whole planet and all that live on it. In all truth the world and its people would be much better off if all these blue blooded parasites would just stop breeding and die off like Darwin predicted they should.

Right over our heads in near space we have access to ten times the resources we can mine on the earth. And if we go past Mars to the asteroid belt and the moos and rings of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune there we will be able to access a million times what we have on earth. In orbit around Saturn alone is up to 10 times the amount of water to be found on Earth in nice handy frozen chunks ready for transport. The asteroid that passed between the earth and moon a dew years back and scared the liberals out of their skins contained more high quality nickel iron than we have mined on earth since we discovered the use of it 3,000 years ago.

Alarmists deny the plenty that surrounds us in the new frontier and like their predecessors before Columbus deny the riches to be found out there just a step over our heads. But then it always has been the skeptics who deny the existence of limits that have explored new frontiers and opened things up so the cowardly can follow and steal it away from the productive.

The limits to growth of the head in the sand alarmists who would deny the human race its future of plenty so they can hog what’s here for themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_G...

A link about the future and the new frontier of plenty for all of humanity if they will only reach out and work for it.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesIn...

How to reach this dream vote for any party except the democrats and the greens this year for all offices. Throw the Luddite bums out and maybe the world can be saved for future generations!

Answer 12

Personally, I choose to read from different peer-reviewed jounals... but I can understand them and know where to look if I don't understand something.

Answer 13

I lean towards scientists who are not dependent on grant money or tied in with 'causes'.  In other words, James Hansen does not even figure into the equation.

And Bob..... I don't believe that you are using the correct term when you say "tiny minority"...... perhaps that is wishful thinking on your part??

American Physical Society

Forum on Physics & Society

Editor's Comments

“There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who DO NOT AGREE with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”