Year 2, Month 1, Day 7: As Falls Wichita…

There’s been a new report released on climate change’s projected effects on Iowa, and the WCF Courier is all over it. Naturally, the comments on the article are a fount of stupid.

Earlier I had read this piece at Daily Kos, which points out that our media have (surprise!) done an absolutely wretched job of covering what is, y’know, actually a major threat to our country and our world. Now watch this drive!

So I put the two together, and sent this off to the WCF Courier:

The university scientists who’ve just released a report on climate change’s impact on Iowa in the years to come are hopeful that their work will “inform future discussions” — a hope that is, alas, sadly naive. While the effects of global warming are by now well understood, and the role of human beings and their greenhouse emissions established beyond doubt, there’s something else taking place across America that bodes ill for our nation’s future. While the planet has been steadily heating up, our news media have been steadily less inclined to cover any issues related to climate change (unless it’s to run stories that tout an anomalous snowfall as somehow “disproving global warming”). In 2010, newspaper coverage of climate change in Europe was double that in the USA, according to researchers at the University of Colorado. Robert Brule, a researcher at Drexel University, points out that television news networks’ December coverage of the crucial Cancun conference added up to exactly ten seconds — a single clip. The result of this drop in coverage has been exactly what you’d expect: an increase in ignorance. The authors of “Climate Change Impacts on Iowa” will have their work cut out for them.

Warren Senders