Friday 25 May 2007

A Changing Media Climate?

Following on from the last post, looking at some of the other press reports (the Guardian, Bloomberg, the Times) in conjunction with the Telegraph article mentioned earlier, shows a strange trend – they all take a reasonable or even sympathetic angle on the protest. The Times is probably the most surprising, with a well-balanced and even – gasp – interesting article on how more “mainstream” NGOs are now considering non-violent direct action to be a reasonable tactic in the face of environmental destruction and climate chaos.

A big chunk of the credit for this must go to the volunteers on the Climate Camp media team who’ve spent the week talking to journalists and newsdesks to ensure that our side of the story gets across. But perhaps – just perhaps – this more sympathetic tone reflects the fact that the public mood has changed in our favour, and that activists standing up for the climate and for social justice can no longer be written off so easily?

Well, maybe. Just don’t read the Express. But then, when isn’t that good advice?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is global warming happening on other bodies of our solar system?

Anonymous said...

enviromentalism is the new religion and you are just being used by them. Nothing will change in this world until humans improve their psychic immune system. By the way the media is propaganda, they are tricky , tricked me for awhile but it's definatly propaganda and a control mechanism. Look man, are you aware how big the sun is? Do you honestly think that we could impact the temperature more than the sun? Give me a break. Not just the earth is heating up. Mars
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Pluto
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1697309.htm
http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+on+Mars++and+Jupiter+Pluto+Neptune/article6544.htm
Jupiter http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+on+Mars++and+Jupiter+Pluto+Neptune/article6544.htm
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_jr.html
Neptune http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+on+Mars++and+Jupiter+Pluto+Neptune/article6544.htm
Neptune's Moon
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
Uranus
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6657
Venus http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16934133&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=warming-to-venus-mission--name_page.html

Anonymous said...

can you please explain to me why man made global warming takes place on planets without men.

Danny said...

Hello Patrick,

There's something about your posts (possibly the words "psychic immune system") that gives me the strange feeling that I may not be able to change your mind on this one. But here goes anyway, mostly for the benefit of anyone else reading this:

Of course the sun is ultimately responsible for the warming of the Earth, and there is little we can do as a species to affect that (unless it’s possible to nuke our planet out of its orbit, which frankly I’d rather not know about). However, there's this thing called the "atmosphere" between the sun and ourselves, which has a significant effect on how much of the sun’s heat gets through to the earth’s surface, and how much of a warming effect it has when it gets here. We may not be able to have much of an effect on the sun, but we certainly have had an effect on the atmosphere – the activities of human society (particularly the burning of fossil fuels) have led to a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases prevent a certain amount of the heat from the sun from reflecting back into space, and thus warm our planet. This overall warming is leading in turn to all kinds of complex effects on the global climate, such as an increased risk of storms, floods, droughts, sea level rises, and so on.

The thing is, Patrick, I suspect you’ve heard all this before, and have chosen not to believe it. To be honest, I’d rather not believe it if I thought there was any real uncertainty to cling onto, but unfortunately the scientific evidence is overwhelming. We have to face up to the reality of looming human-induced climate catastrophe, and start taking radical action to avert it, or else we’re all in enormous trouble (the worst-case scenarios include the wiping out of most life on the planet). Even worse, it is the poor and the disenfranchised who look likely to be worst hit, even though they have done the least to create this problem.

Global warming on other planets is irrelevant. Just because human-induced climate change is happening on Earth, that doesn’t mean that ALL PLANETARY WARMING EVERYWHERE must be caused by humans. That would be a bit like saying “Mmm, this pile of burning furniture in my living room is warming my house up nicely. What’s that? Other people are warming their homes up too somehow? They must obviously all be burning their furniture too! Where’s everyone gonna sit down?”

There are a whole host of different physical and chemical changes and cycles that can cause a planet to warm and cool – as delving a little deeper into those websites you cite will quickly tell you. For example, Mars’ temperature is most likely increasing due to seasonal changes in its orbit - as explained in the first of your own links (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html). You suggest that all these planets might be heating up because of changes in the sun’s temperature, but here’s a direct quote from another of your links (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html):

“Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto."”

Yes, “the sun’s output is much too steady”. This is the overwhelming scientific consensus, I’m afraid – changes in the sun’s temperature are NOT causing global warming on this or any other planet. The fact that even the articles you’ve actively sought out actually dispute the idea of changes in sun activity being responsible (except where they’re quoting a badly-supported theory from a lone contrarian) says more than I ever could.

As for the idea of media propaganda supporting climate change theory, all I can say is: I wish. And then send you to Media Lens (for example, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/
050203_silence_is_green.php).

For more information and lots of juicy scientific links, have a look at Real Climate (http://www.realclimate.org) and Grist (http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics). For more information on the difficulties of facing up to climate change reality, check out Climate Denial (http://www.climatedenial.org).

Danny x

Anonymous said...

Well, I think you should read Michael Crichton's speech here. http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html We shouldn't just blindly follow scientists or anything for that matter. People will believe anything and they are usually wrong as history has shown us. I don't think we should follow what anyone says because they are usually manipulating us for their benefit.

Anonymous said...

Allegations that skeptics of the man-made explanation behind global warming are somehow doing the bidding of the elite are laughable in the face of the fact that Rothschild operatives and the very chairman of British Petroleum are the ones orchestrating an elitist plan to push global warming fears in order to achieve political objectives.

We have a similar situation to the Peak Oil scam, which was created by the oil industry as a profit boon to promote artificial scarcity, and yet is parroted by environmentalists who grandstand as if they are in opposition to the oil companies.

You can't seperate science from politics as realclimate.org claims it does.