The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is an online publication and forum to foster dialogue on climate change among scientists, journalists, policymakers, and the public. The Yale Forum is an initiative of the Yale Project on Climate Change, directed by Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I am a regular contributor to The Yale Forum. Here are selected stories:

By Lisa Palmer | March 17, 2009

Media coverage of Seattle’s citywide effort to reduce the use of plastic bags became a story on the impact to low-income people.

A newspaper report of New York City’s climate adaptation plan to respond to a potential 12- to 23-inch sea level rise featured a photo of a submerged Statue of Liberty from the fictional disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow.”

And, a story in Boulder about a proposed increase in the city’s carbon tax focused on federal opposition to the Kyoto protocol.

What all three had in common was an absence of comprehensive reporting on the main pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social components. In addition to the 5 W’s, what are the 2 E’s and the S comprising sustainability?

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By Lisa Palmer | December 18, 2008

Last summer the head of Harvard University’s Science, Technology and Public Policy program, John Holdren, penned an argument on the subject of climate change sufficiently compelling that The Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune eagerly published it. On the morning of August 4, 2008, however, subscribers opened their newspapers and read in the Opinion pages a different version of Holdren’s original viewpoint, “Climate Change Skeptics are Dangerously Wrong.”

The environmental policy expert’s 700-word column, opposite the editorial pages, had been condensed for space considerations. It was packaged under a different headline, “Convincing Climate Change Skeptics.” Both the editing and the writing of a new headline are standard practice for op-ed articles.


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What Lies Ahead as Mainstream Outlets Shrivel?
By Lisa Palmer | February 3, 2009

As the watchdog press splinters from an aged business model, the prospects for original reporting of climate change and environmental topics have seldom appeared more uncertain. Indeed, mainstream coverage of global climate change dwindled last year as newspapers filed for bankruptcy protection and curtailed or ceased publication in record numbers.

But the recent launches of myriad web-based news media may counter the threat for audiences increasingly going online for their substantive news. Editors and journalists from more and more news organizations now are delivering sophisticated, in-depth reports online on topics ranging from how Bangladesh is suffering from effects of climate change to whether natural gas drilling is endangering water supply.

Among the independent, new media newsrooms is the non-profit ProPublica, which focuses on public interest investigations with “moral force.”

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By Lisa Palmer | September 15, 2009


From various media outlets’ efforts to try to clarify and make relevant the climate change story, two points stand out. One involves the challenge of adequately addressing the nuances of science, making the story both scientifically rigorous and yet accessible. The other involves how to make climate change issues tangible to a public which, studies show, often thinks the issue is remote from them in time and space.

Now, artists have begun to address both. And, increasingly, they are getting their inspiration from scientists and researchers.

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