What If They Gave An ELE And It Simply Couldn't Be Reported? - Grist

[hatrack]

Maybe the best one line description of our current situation I have read is:

"It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."

That's the final sentence in Elizabeth Kolbert's fine global warming book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and as I'll show in this post, it is entirely accurate.

How can the traditional media cover a story that is almost "impossible to imagine"? I don't think they can. I'll be using a bunch of quotes, mostly from the NYT's Revkin, not because he is a bad reporter -- to the contrary, he is one of the best climate reporters -- but because now that he has a blog, he writes far more than any other journalist on this subject and shares his thinking. A new Revkin post, "The Never-Ending Story," underscores the media's central problem with this story:

"I stayed up late examining the latest maneuver in the never-ending tussle between opponents of limits on greenhouse gases who are using holes in climate science as ammunition and those trying to raise public concern about a human influence on climate that an enormous body of research indicates, in the worst case, could greatly disrupt human affairs and ecosystems."

This sentence is not factually accurate (the boldface is mine). It would be much closer to accurate if the word "worst case" were replaced by "best case" or, as we'll see, "best case if the opponents of limits on GHGs fail and fail quickly." The worst case is beyond imagination. The word "holes" is misleading. And this isn't a "tussle" -- it is much closer to being a "struggle for the future of life as we know it." And all of us -- including Andy -- better pray that it ain't "never-ending. " Before elaborating, let me quote some more :

"One of the unavoidable realities attending global warming -- a reality that makes it the perfect problem -- is that there is plenty of remaining uncertainty, even as the basics have grown ever firmer (my litany: more CO2 = warmer world = less ice = rising seas and lots of climate shifts)."

Some skeptics have long tried to use the uncertainty as an excuse for maintaining the status quo. Campaigners for carbon dioxide curbs seem reluctant to acknowledge the gaps for fear that society will tune out. So the story migrates back to the edges: catastrophe, hoax. No doubt.

This last paragraph sums up the problem for the media. As an aside, I don't know what "gaps" or "holes" Revkin is talking about, but as I will try to make clear, they don't really exist in the sense that any typical reader would expect from the context.

The "story migrates back to the edges," not because that is inherent to the story, but because that is inherent to all modern media coverage of every big issue. Let me quote Newsweek editor Jon Meacham from last month:

"I absolutely believe that the media is not ideologically driven, but conflict driven. If we have a bias it's not that people are socially liberal, fiscally conservative or vice versa. It is that we are engaged in the storytelling business. And if you tell the same story again and again and again - it's kind of boring."

EDIT

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/6/0372/45509

[crikkett]

1. I'm sorry, what's an ELE?

[tanstaafl]

2. Extinction Level Event I believe

From one of those Asteroid movies I think

[Delphinus]

3. Yes.

Funny, it took me a while to start thinking of ELE - not ELF!

[kristopher]

4. I agree with pretty much everything in the article - sorta...

The real problem as I see it is the nature of uncertainty and how people (including scientists) deal with and evaluate risk. This is tremendously complicated by the sheer size of the problem. Consider well the complexity of the various threads of each individual discipline reporting results, often conflicting, that have to be weighted and judged for validity.

Now here is the important part to me - the different ways of dealing with risk shouldn't be judged in a moralistic fashion. Reread Romm's piece and note how his frustration is directly tied to his assessment that seemingly all the motives for not agreeing with his risk assessment are somehow an indication of inferior morality. His personal certitude allows him to gloss over vast areas of uncertainty within the press, the public, the scientific community, the business community, and so on. He fails to recognize that even though there is little doubt about the significance of the problem as judged by the scope of the possible negatives, there is still so much uncertainty that it has a profound effect even on people who accept that there is a real problem we need to address. Let me emphasize that by its nature this uncertainty simply cannot be demonstrated to be the morally inferior stance on any given problem.

I personally think it is just an example of variety in human nature. Some people respond to something like this by an assessment of the probabilities and the potential for loss and move to take immediate action. Others simply wont believe it even as they are gasping the dying breath of a victim. Most fall somewhere in between. They don't take swift, decisive action, but they don't resist against all good reason either. There are life lessons such as 'look before you leap' that are operative in the face of the uncertainties involved. They (the life lessons) guide our response to this real inability to predict more accurately the route between where we are now and the point where we say "Oh shit!". Look at the view of Romm; look at his certainty regarding the need for action. Does that speak only to this issue or is it a reflection also of the type of individual he is on a broad range of matters?

It makes sense that if there exists this range of response to crisis, a fact that is undeniable, then there is logically an evolutionary component to it. And if there is an evolutionary component to it; then it means that all strategies have worked at one time or another, and all have failed at one time or another.

I don't fault Romm for his perspective, nor for his drive to address the problem of climate change, he is as he should be. But neither do I fault (as individuals) those who fail to perceive risk in the same way. IMO we are basically witnessing evolution in progress. And by the very nature of evolution the range of responses are what is supposed to happen. I don't advocate anyone taking this as reason to subsume their personal views on what should be done to some sort of nihilistic fugue, that would be short circuiting the process itself.

I do advocate that we realize we are all in this raft together; and even if those we vehemently consider wrong are in fact wrong, their actions, from an evolutionary perspective may be the best thing that ever happened to __________.

The fact is that we as a species are going to do what we are going to do. Each of us individually has about as much control of the whole as a... well, no pithy metaphor leaps to mind but really, we are extremely limited. I guess the point is this; don't ever give up the fight for tomorrow, but just because there is a fight for tomorrow, don't lose the gift of today.