Jumat, 17 April 2015
adn blunder
The Anchorage Daily News today ran a story by Peter Porco about a recent USPIRG report tallying temperature data from across the country.
The article is superficial and irresponsible and borders on being inaccurate.
Here are my criticisms.
-Porco sources USPIRG for data that he could have easily checked himself, but throws out there that the cause of increasing temperatures "remains in dispute" without sourcing anyone. The conflict between the journalistic principle of balance (showing both sides of an issue) and the reality of scientific consensus on this issue has been documented. See this study by the Boykoff brothers, who found that press coverage of climate change has contributed to a divergence between scientific understanding of the issue and public perception of it.
-Porco writes that an AkPIRG woman "admitted" Alaska was not the problem. Bad word. It implies others have come to an agreement that Alaska is not the problem. And, another study just found (with some caveats) that Alaskans emit three times as many greenhouse gases per person as average Americans.
-Porco writes that Alaskans may not mind if it gets warmer. His source? A few bumper stickers. Also, the sentence suggests a lack of understanding of the difference between global warming (that the Earth as a whole is getting warmer) and climate change (the whole host of effects a warming planet will have on weather, precipitation, storms, etc.). That is, climate change is not just about things getting warmer.
-And permafrost is not melting, not any more than a steak melts when you take it out of the freezer. Its thawing.
Im not sure who Porco is. Hes not on the ADNs online masthead. I appreciate his effort to make the story interesting and maybe to play down the gloom and doom with some jokes, but not at the expense of an accurately portraying whats happening.
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