Op-Ed: Pew Center Global warming poll- Media climate changing as well

This isn’t about the standard theory that ice caps melt for no reason and glaciers are just shy. A Pew Research Center poll has produced evidence of a nuanced spin and a cultural paradigm shift in media news handling of global warming.

What’s happened is that the culture has moved from rabid to positively cute. While fluttering like a chainsaw through the news, I found the Pew’s poll on global warming was pretty hard to miss. The Pew found "declining belief in solid evidence for global warming." A bit after the event, and with Copenhagen looming, bordering on irrelevant, in terms of the issue, which has been decided. Equally obvious was the fact that the rest of the world’s media were finding angles. Most scientists agree about global warming, but few media outlets can resist their own takes. Expecting fireworks and that supply of rhetoric we all need to stay focused on reality, I checked them out. FOX took it up, and interestingly didn’t take its “expected” line, which for some commentators is somewhat flawed by perceptions that FOX assumes the world is flat and votes Republican on principle. This wasn’t “Rush by other means” as an article, and the only concession to “the image” was the headline: Americans No Longer Swallowing Global Warming Dogma. FOX otherwise confined itself to reporting the basics of the Pew’s report and added some interesting, if not necessarily on topic, information. AP did a straight news article, and went to the extent of saying that other organizations haven’t detected a drop in concern about global warming. The UK Guardian described the result as a plummeting drop in belief in global warming. The Guardian having quoted a Pew spokesperson, went to the extent of reporting a quote from a well known climate change skeptic in support of the findings who contradicted the statement from the Pew. IPS News described the findings as indicating Americans’ complacency on the subject. The Pew, meanwhile, did a survey of 1500 people, and produced a party based demographic as a demographic breakdown. If they did the survey as a straight mix of Democrat, Independent and Republican voters, according to the 2009 election results the population demographic values of the three groups are about 5/2/3 out of ten respectively, as a rough estimate. All polls have an error factor of about 5% as a standard demographic adjustment. The Pew’s research and statements don’t actually need explanation. The population values, assuming 500 of each group were surveyed, means that of the Democrats the figure of 16%, who have changed their views is 80 people. That number can be weighted on a scale of voting preferences. What the Pew didn’t say, but the media did, was the evident view that climate change has been supplanted by emission caps as the main environmental issue. The Pew, however, said quite the opposite. It found that emission caps were almost a non-issue with survey participants, many of whom hadn’t even heard of it. The Pew found that only 14% of participants were aware of the issue. The media in its various editorial positions usually included caps as the main issue, and the Pew findings as support for their positions, quite regardless of the actual content of the Pew's research on the subject. So did some quoted politicians. Business as usual, in effect, but with a cultural paradigm shift. The cultural shift is interesting. This is a positively civilized response, compared to the rabid days of “there’s no such thing”. The shift to political spin cycles working on entirely different agendas has taken exactly 11 months to achieve. Even the Rent A Journalist brigade have been quite placid. Some didn’t even show up. Just for the record, ice caps don’t disappear overnight for the first time in recorded history for no reason. Equatorial species don’t show up in the North Sea for no reason. Permafrost in Siberia doesn’t melt for no reason and destroy ancient buildings. But it’s nice to know we can still concentrate on the really important things like “How much mileage can we get out of this as a press release?” instead of bothering to read source information.