Climate Communication Resources

Thank you for attending the November 7 workshop at the University of Florida introducing the Climate Matters in the Newsroom program for journalists. The Climate Matters Media Library is your go-to source for local climate reporting resources. Sign up to receive weekly emails with data localized to your market. Below are additional resources. They are organized in the following categories, all under a general heading of Climate Change: Expert Sources, Science and Impacts, Florida and Southeast Resources, Health Impacts, Analyses of Media Coverage of Climate Change , Public Opinion, Language Issues, Myth Debunking, Exemplary Reporting, Scientific Consensus, Journalists’ Opinion, and Other Useful Links.

Expert Sources

• SciLine – This service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science provides journalists with connections to expert sources for reporting. Sciline’s media briefing page includes briefings on the role of climate change in heat, fire and floods as well as understanding sea level rise
• Climate Science Rapid Response Team – Online service that provides journalists with connections to expert sources on climate science
• Climate Feedback – This website houses climate scientists’ reviews of published journalism, assessing its scientific credibility

Science and Impacts

• Climate Change Impacts in the United States, 2014, the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment, the most recent complete assessment
• Climate Science Special Report, 2017, Volume 1 of the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment. (Volume 2 of the fourth assessment will be published in late 2018)
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018 Special Report on the impacts of global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius, Summary for Policymakers (or view the full report)
• What We Know published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Climate.gov produced by NOAA, provides science and information for a climate smart nation
• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information – world’s largest repository of climate data
• NASA Climate Website includes well presented data, visualizations, and other resources
• Surging Seas is a sea level rise analysis by Climate Matters in the Newsroom partner Climate Central
• “The science behind New York City’s rising seas”, from The Verge, featuring video interview with Dr. Andrea Dutton, Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Florida

Florida and South East Resources

• Florida Climate Institute is a multi-disciplinary network of national and international research and public organizations, scientists, and individuals concerned with achieving a better understanding of climate variability and change. Their book Florida’s Climate: Changes, Variations, & Impacts is available to read free at their site.
• Florida State Climatologist, David Zierden at the Florida Climate Center
• Florida Department of Health Climate and Health page
• Florida Department of Environmental Protection Coastal Office
• Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) funded by NOAA
• Southeast Climate Science Center funded by the Department of Interior

Health Impacts

• The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment, 2016 published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program
• MEDICAL ALERT! Climate Change Is Harming Our Health published by the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health

Analyses of Media Coverage of Climate Change

• Washington Post, Why isn’t the media covering climate change all day, every day?
• Media Matters for America monitors and analyzes media coverage and corrects misinformation. Their recent analyses of reporting on climate change include:
  – Major media outlets dropped the ball last year on connecting climate change to hurricanes. Will they do better this year?
  – National TV news is still failing to properly incorporate climate change into hurricane coverage
  – ABC, CBS, and NBC largely failed to connect climate change to extreme wildfires this summer
• The Star (Toronto), Putting hurricanes and climate change into the same frame
• Public Citizen, Climate Scientists Are Linking Florence to Climate Change, but Major Media Are Not

Public Opinion

• Climate Change in the American Mind: March 2018, National survey data from researchers at Yale and George Mason University
• Yale Climate Opinion Maps, U.S. 2018, Americans’ views on climate related questions, down-scaled to the county level

Language Issues

The Resources section of www.climatecommunication.org includes several relevant articles on this topic including:

• (Un)Natural Disasters: Communicating Linkages Between Extreme Events and Climate Change
• Communicating the Science of Climate Change
• Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change

Myth Debunking

When debunking common climate myths, it is important to understand the psychology of doing this effectively to avoid reinforcing the myths. The website Skeptical Science explains and debunks common climate myths. They also offer a handbook on effective myth debunking. They even have smartphone apps.

Exemplary Reporting

• Craig Pittman of the Tampa Bay Times, Florida’s summertime slime fueled by climate change as well as pollution
• Tony Bartleme of the Charleston Post and Courier‘s series Every Other Breath: Hidden Stories of Climate Change
• Meera Subramanian’s series call Finding Middle Ground: Conversations across America
• Climate Matters videos: examples of video clips based on Climate Matters materials on the topics of hummingbirds, hurricanes, wildfires, solar energy, and pollen
• Robinson Meyer’s article in The Atlantic “The American South Will Bear the Worst of Climate Change’s Costs“

Fellowships and Funding

• Fund for Environmental Journalism, Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ)
• Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, offers several grants
• Mongabay Special Reporting Initiatives
• The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, offers several grant and fellowship opportunities
• International Reporting Project
• Fulbright offers fellowships and awards in several categories for larger projects
• Alicia Patterson Foundation offers a fellowship for larger projects by print journalists
• Howard Foundation at Brown University, offers a limited number of fellowships to support larger projects of early and mid-career artists, scholars, and writers
• Climate Matters in the Newsroom Fellowship includes a one-year membership to SEJ and an expense paid trip to Flint, Michigan for their annual conference (October 3-7) and an all-day workshop on climate reporting on October 3, 2018
• The Poynter Institute published “Where can you find funding for that local journalism project? Here’s a quick guide.” Resources for funding specific projects and addressing larger issues in journalism are provided.

Scientific Consensus

When applied to basic facts about climate change (that it is real and human caused), the journalistic norm of “balance” results in a biased representation of the facts. Original research was published in 2004 on this topic, Balance as Bias by Boykoff & Boykoff. Additional research showed that this improved somewhat from 2003 to 2006. An update on this question since 2006 is in progress. Recent surveys of journalists by our team at George Mason University show that false balance is still a problem, see the Journalists’ Opinion section below.

This is a problem because there is a clear scientific consensus: based on the evidence, 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human caused global warming is happening. All major scientific societies agree that climate change is real and human caused. This can be seen, for example, in statements from the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

A resource for understanding and communicating this consensus is The Consensus Handbook.

John Oliver showed how humor can be used to make this point on his HBO show “This Week Tonight”.

Journalists’ Opinion

See the Climate Matters in the Newsroom reports on surveys of:

• National Association of Black Journalists
• National Association of Hispanic Journalists
• Society of Environmental Journalists
• Radio Television Digital News Association

Other Useful Links

• The Resources section of climatecommunication.org website has links to other useful websites on climate science and solutions
• Doom and Gloom: The Role of the Media in Public Disengagement on Climate Change is an article that shows the importance of including solutions in climate reporting
• Climate Visuals has a large collection of photographs that illustrate climate change’s causes, impacts, and solutions.