Media methods
Climate Change / Language ethics
From: Mike Hulme
Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Source for full statement: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6115644.stm
Partial quote:
cont....
But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.
It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.
The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.
This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".
It seems that we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics
I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.
cont....
End quote.
Mike Hulme is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Media methods | News | Poltics | Public Opinion
