Climate change coverage has been shown be in decline and at least not matching pace with the increasing risk [Here and here]. This in itself creates the impression that the problem is stable or rescinding rather than gathering.
However when Climate Change is covered, how and when is it covered?
Typically climate news is twinned with weather news, the media make little distinction. Therefore the times that climate change is discussed tend to be those times when impactful weather events occur.
This is the first tragedy of climate change coverage, it must always piggy back on a more “newsworthy” tragedy to get a mention, when in fact it is itself the greater tragedy.
However there is further tragedy in how this transpires and leads to “The Tragic Climate Question”.
News channels rarely provide lengthy topic discussion, with each event compressed to the basics, seldom more than five minute segments. Even when a news event warrants additional coverage, this is in turn often broken down into short segments, dealing briefly with different aspects, rather than one lengthy explanatory piece, which would be more informative for the viewer.
The exchange shown here, is a typical example
https://www.channel4.com/news/met-office-expert-early-signs-of-cold-snap-were-visible-in-january
Even in a programme of an hour in length, the “climate change segment” is boiled down to a single question. The tragic climate question.
The tragic climate question places the selected expert in an impossible position. The question asks whether the weather event of the day is attributed to climate change.
With compressed coverage and no room to elaborate on the answer, the expert must simultaneously say that climate change cannot be proved to be responsible while at the same time attempting to convey that climate change is still a massive issue.
In this example Professor Scaife does an admirable job in these adverse conditions.
But, overall, the lack of attribution in the answer creates the impression that climate change is not the villain therefore, extrapolating, that it may not be as serious as people are making out.
The difference between climate and weather is too often lost on the media. One might draw an analogy, where the interviewer asks Andy Murray whether his recent injury is due to too many games being played in the professional football calendar on the grounds that Tennis and Football are both sports.
Can you hurry your answer, please Andy, we have got to move on…
Note: A more extensive explainer for the phenomenon of stratospheric warming can be found below.
https://www.channel4.com/news/met-office-expert-early-signs-of-cold-snap-were-visible-in-january