Two sides to every story

by Jenny Purt, ALN editor

It could be argued that climate change is one of the most repetitive topics in the media today. Environmentalists rant about it, scientists debate it, governments fight over it but most significantly, the media cannot get enough of it.

So much so that the average person is sick of hearing about how the world is due to melt away by a misinformed, and largely inaccurate, Al Gore. With the climate change conference in Copenhagen fast approaching,the media coverage is set to rocket, probably straight through that hole in the Ozone layer.

The media’s failure lies in their reporting of the issue. It cannot be denied that there is a change in our climate; that much is clear even in the UK, with unexpected floods affecting Cumbria while dead bodies get left on the shores of the slowly declining river Ganges.

However, why it is happening has not been debated enough. The general stance of media outlets has been to accept that greenhouse gases are to blame and to follow the more sensational angle rather than convey a balanced viewpoint. What about the opposing side? Where is the skepticism?

The discovery of emails exchanged between top climate scientists last week led to allegations that claims of climate change are being exaggerated and manipulated to place blame on humanity. With the media bombardment of imagary of droughts, melting ice caps and starving people, no wonder the public readily accept blame and vow to lower their invisible “carbon footprint.”

The world and its climate has never stood still. If it had, then dinosaurs would be heading up the latest technological discoveries, and us humans would be non-existent. It is the natural cycle for the climate to change and going in to an ice age has happened many times before and will surely happen again.Perhaps the development of gas guzzling, CO2 emitting, machines has sped up the process but surely nature would have taken over eventually anyway?

What the media vastly ignore, and what people seem oblivious to, is nature’s amazing ability to adapt. It has an IQ that us humans will never have. Of course we should strive to be eco-friendly, there are aspects of mankind activities that the environment just cannot conquer, such as the distruction of rainforests and the never-ending consumption of fossil fuels.

Although the media is doing a great job at making people aware of how their actions affect the environment, they desperately need to portray both sides of the global warming story. We cannot deny that the climate is changing and no amount of policymaking or inter-governmental conferences will change that. What people do deserve though, is balanced information, something that the media in many ways, have failed to give.

 

See also: Skeptics claim 'smoking gun'