Journalism engages climate change

As a former journalism major, and someone who wrote for newspapers from age 14-21, I appreciated this branch into how the mainstream news media views climate change, and further the impact of even one damning story on the perceptions of a nation or even the world.

The Guardian article addressed the negative implications of the release of private information emailed by some top climate change scientists. They viewed this not only as a breech of privacy, but also as evidence for a few emails being misrepresented as a coverup for the true nature of climate change. They correctly addressed the fact that other scientists had corroborated this information and it is not a big hoax.

The Telegraph article was written by someone who obviously has it out for the climate change scientists, especially since he wrote a book about his skewed view of this. He correctly points out that some of the correspondence is not flattering of the scientists and indicates that they did not want to release their data to those who might have found fault with it. They further tried to silence their critics, and even made very hateful remarks toward them, to colleagues. These emails were never supposed to reach the publics eye, so they are not censored to only reflect neutral emotions toward those who were trying to discredit them by any skewed means possible.

The Science News article does point out that the emails are evidence of unethical behavior, but nothing more. However, none of these articles could be used to disprove climate warming. They also make a good point that there are more important concerns that we are dealing with right now than whether or not someone made fun of someone else or was hateful to them.

I think that the purpose of these articles is two-fold. First, they should present a warning to people that think that private conversations will remain that way. If you speak badly of someone, you have no guarantee that it will not make it back to them. Further, there are more important issues in life than whether or not you are currently arguing with someone. It should not be a huge shock that scientists are upset with naysayers that try to turn people's attention to consumerism and away from real problems, such as global warming and world hunger, etc. Strife between people and personalities and nations exists and has existed since the dawn of man. What is more important is that we filter ourselves to brush aside the unnecessary issues in life and focus on what matters.