It is important to continue the research around this most important area, where the base line, that the globe is warming, is established, but to now determine the causes and solutions, if needed, research must deepen.
Rick Rogriquez: Global warming -- a hot issue that won't go away
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, September 8, 2007
A group of the world's leading scholars on climate change had a message for news executives earlier this week: In reporting the global warming story, you have taken "journalistic balance" too far.
A bit of a switch since the media are usually accused of not being balanced enough.
The scientists' point cut to the core of how journalists do stories. Is it right, they asked, to give equal weight to the comparatively small number of scientists who say humans aren't contributing to climate change when the vast majority of those who have studied the issue say they are?
In other words, when is there enough science for the media to say global warming is occurring rather than framing it as an unresolved issue?
One of the scholars, Jon A. Krosnick, a professor at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University who tracks Americans' views on environmental issues, said a large majority of Americans already have come to that conclusion. Krosnick said he was surprised to find 78 percent of those surveyed in 1997 believed that global warming was occurring and 63 percent perceived it would have bad consequences.
… What is clear, as Stanford professor Stephen H. Schneider noted, is that the world's leading scientists have concluded the evidence is unequivocal that global temperatures have increased since the 19th century. That kind of strong, definitive language is rare in the science world. The planet is warmer, period.
What is now being debated is the next round of questions. Is this a natural occurrence? To what extent are humans to blame through the increase in greenhouse gases? What are the consequences of global warming? Are the number and intensity of hurricanes and other weather events a result? What can be done to reverse the impact of climate change? What are the solutions?
