A look through The Daily Climate's archives offers a peak at the
trends likely to influence climate coverage and politics in the year ahead.
By Peter Dykstra, The
Daily Climate
Last year was one for
trend-setters and trend-buckers in climate news. Tracking the year through the
Daily Climate archives, it's easy to spot 2013's winners and losers – climate
change's version of nerds and prom kings, arena acts and wedding singers. These
are the people and issues who will – and will not – be driving the news in
2014. This is not peer-reviewed.
Hot: Government anti-science
Did you hear the one
about the Polish government hosting a pro-coal conference and a climate change
summit at the same
time? At the United Nations' Warsaw meeting, Japan announced that it
would jettison its
carbon reduction goals, blaming the post-Fukushima loss of nuclear power.
Australia's new Prime
Minister Tony Abbott, who once called climate change "absolute crap,"
is working at top speed to dismantle climate change and clean energy programs
as his nation set new temperature records and his top business advisor went medieval
on climate science.
His Canadian
counterpart, Stephen Harper, continued his purge of Canadian government science
and his pursuit of Alberta's oil sands, casting an image of Canada as OPEC's
future perennial hockey champions.
In the United States
Texas Republican Lamar Smith took the reins of the House Science Committee,
where 17 of its 22 Republican members do not believe in man-made climate
change.
Not: Trolls
In 2013, several
organizations put Internet trolls in time-out for childish and non-fact-based
behavior in comment strings and published content.
The Los
Angeles Times letters editor imposed a
journalistically reasonable policy of making sure that published letters are factual. He
singled out climate change as an issue where this often doesn't happen. The
Sydney Morning Herald soon followed suit. The venerable Popular Science did away with
web comments almost entirely. And one of the content moderators for reddit.com's
science forum said the site will crack
down on uncivil
behavior and unsupported climate claims.
Referring to both climate
skeptics and advocates for climate action, reddit moderator Nathan Allen said
it all: "No topic consistently evokes such rude, uninformed, and outspoken
opinions as climate change."
Hot: Trains
A booming oil
industry, bottled up by safety concerns and opposition to new pipelines, took
to the rails to ship its product. But they didn't always stay on the rails, as
fiery wrecks plagued rail lines in Alabama, North Dakota and, in deadly
fashion, at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.
Rail lines also hope
to help a struggling coal industry. As domestic coal use wanes, Big Coal sees
opportunity in exports to China and other coal-hungry nations. Proposals to
sharply increase coal-train traffic and build massive export terminals in the
Pacific Northwest have spawned significant opposition, but the industry has
huge support on Wall Street, where U.S. andCanadian rail
stocks are cleaning up.
Not: Nuclear
Wall Street is holding
its nose on nuclear power. A mix of safety concerns and cheap gas prices
prompted earlier-than-expected closures of reactors across the United States,
while problems and cost overruns accrued at the few newly-planned units in the
Southeast.
Florida's Crystal
River nuke plant is among the casualties. The plant was built for $400 million
and functioned for 36 years. Its shutdown and cleanup will cost $1.18 billion
and take 60 years.
Hot: Labels
The Daily Climate
archives tallied 105 mentions of "deniers" in news stories or opinion
pieces in 2011. It jumped to 181 in 2013, a 76 percent rise. On the other side
of the spectrum, we found 44 pieces using the "alarmist" label in
2011; it jumped to 56 last year, a 27 percent jump.
Not: The Three Horsemen of
There-Won't-Be-a-Climate-Apocalypse
Oklahoma Sen. James
Inhofe, gone from his perch as a leader of the Senate Environment Committee,
stands his ground in describing climate change as a "hoax," but
without a platform, he's fading. From a high of 60 news mentions in 2011, the Senator showed up 19 times
this past year, a 68 percent drop.
Bjorn Lomborg, the
Danish economist who acknowledges man-made climate change but revels in finding
reasons not to worry about it, rallied a bit in 2013 news mentions, but fell 41 percent short of his peak year
in 2010.
Lord Monckton, the
theatrical British peer and emphatic denier, also hibernated in 2013, sinking
to six mentions. Of added concern to His Lordship is that another peer, Lady
Gaga, was only two mentions
behind in 2013.
Hot: Non-profit climate journalism
In addition to the
Pulitzer won by Inside Climate News, not-for-profit climate journalism
flourished in places like Climate Desk, the collaboration of Mother Jones, the
Guardian and six other publishers.
Likewise in the
biggest, oldest news nonprofit, the Associated Press. AP has seen opportunity
in the demise of beat reporting at so many of its newspaper members. Case
in point is Beth Daley, the Boston Globe veteran who jumped to the
nonprofit New England
Center for Investigative Reporting.
And on a purely
self-serving note, visits to The Daily Climate were up 81 percent last year.
Not: Climate journalism on TV
A study by the liberal
watchdog group Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting displayed a disconnect between TV's fascination with
extreme weather and their temerity about asking whether climate change is a
factor. Six percent of extreme weather stories dared mention the climate amidst
a wealth of weather disasters.
By this point it goes
without saying that Fox News remains a hotbed of climate denial, despite past
statements by owner Rupert Murdoch and no-spin icon Bill O'Reilly that climate
change is both real and worrisome. Meanwhile, CNN's Piers Morgan continues to
cast the existence of climate change as utterly debatable, bringing on
uber-denier Marc Morano at least four times since December 2012.
By way of full
disclosure, I should mention that I used to work for CNN. But if this keeps up,
I'll have to start denying that I ever did.
Peter Dykstra is
publisher of the Daily Climate and its sister publication, EHN.org. You can
contact or follow him on Twitter at @pdykstra.
Photos, from top:
Protesters at the World Coal Summit in Warsaw, courtesy Greenpeace
International.
BNSF coal train heading out of Saginaw, Texas, courtesy Roy Luck/flickr. Lady Gaga courtesy Lady Gaga.
The Daily Climate is
an independent, foundation-funded news service that covers climate change. Find
us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer
[at] DailyClimate.org.
