By Michael D. Lemonick, Scientific American

As a profile of Judith Curry in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American makes clear, the University of Georgia climate scientist has become an increasingly polarizing figure IN the past year or so. Once firmly in the mainstream, Curry says she was radicalized by the so-called Climategate affair. It crystallized her sense that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in particular, had become corrupted by what Curry calls “groupthink” - the idea that questioning some of the facts asserted by the IPCC is tantamount to treason.

Yet Curry herself is convinced that some of those facts are seriously exaggerated, and that the IPCC has failed to acknowledge the real uncertainty in the science. As a result, she’s been engaging with climate outsiders, including outright skeptics, and trying to force her colleagues to acknowledge some of what she considers serious flaws in the IPCC process. She’s been denounced, sometimes vehemently, for her efforts.

So here’s the central question: Is Curry a heroic whistle-blower, speaking the truth when others can’t or won’t? Or has she gone off the scientific deep end, hurling baseless charges at a group of scientists who are doing their best to understand the complexities of Earth’s climate? Let us know what you think.

Climate of Change?

1. Should climate scientists discuss scientific uncertainty in mainstream forums?

No, that would play into the hands of the fossil-fuel lobby.  2.8% 167

Yes, it would help engage the citizenry.  90.8% 5,341

Maybe - but only via serious venues like PBS’s the NewsHour and The New York Times.  6.4% 377

2. Judith Curry is:

A peacemaker.  69.0% 4,062

A dupe.  7.3% 427

Both.  4.1% 244

I’ve never heard of her.  19.6% 1,152

3. What is causing climate change?

Greenhouse gases from human activity 28.1% 1,656

Solar variation 32.6% 1,917

Natural processes 77.1% 4,539

There is no climate change.  6.1% 361

4. The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is:

An effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts.  16.3% 959

A corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda.  83.0% 4,887

Something to do with Internet protocols.  0.7% 39

5. What should we do about climate change?

Nothing, we are powerless to stop it.  67.8% 3,992

Use more technology (geoengineering, carbon capture and storage).  15.6% 918

Use less technology (cars, intensive agriculture).  5.4% 319

Switch to carbon-free energy sources as much as possible and adapt to changes already underway.  27.0% 1,591

6. What is “climate sensitivity”?

The degree to which global temperature responds to concentrations of greenhouse gases 31.1% 1,829

An unknown variable that climate scientists still do not understand 54.5% 3,209

The phrase on which the fate of human civilization hangs 0.6% 33

All of the above 13.8% 815

7. Which policy options do you support?

A carbon tax 13.7% 806

Cap and trade (a price on carbon via an overall limit on emissions paired with some form of market for such pollution permits) 7.7% 453

Increased government funding of energy-related technology research and development 37.0% 2,178

Cap and dividend, in which the proceeds of auctioning pollution permits are rebated to taxpayers 6.1% 357

Keeping science out of the political process 66.8% 3,933

8. How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?

A 50 percent increase in electricity bills 3.5% 206

A doubling of gasoline prices 5.1% 299

Nothing 78.7% 4,629

Whatever it takes 12.8% 751

See post here.

By Margot O’Neill

Fresh from a sabbatical studying climate change reporting at the University of Oxford, the ABC’s Margot O’Neill considers whether or not the media has done a good job.

WHATEVER HAPPENED to climate change? This time last year climate change was a hot topic regularly appearing in news bulletins and on front pages. Phrases such as “the future of humanity could be at stake” were quoted, celebrities marshalled and 4,000 journalists prepared to descend on the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. Apparently humanity’s future is now secure… or so it might seem given the paucity of journalism devoted to the issue in the mainstream media.

Where did all the climate change stories go? “The [programmers] are against it because it loses ratings,” says a senior BBC journalist. “The wave [of public interest] has gone. There is climate change fatigue. That is why I am not [reporting] it now.”

Other journalists agree. Even reporters at The Guardian, which especially targets environmental reporting, complain that it’s difficult to get a run. Another UK broadcast journalist said he was warned that putting climate change on prime time would risk losing a million viewers.

In a series of interviews with some of the UK’s top specialist environment and science correspondents, I explored the changing climate for reporters covering global warming - as part of the ABC’s Donald McDonald research fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Most of the journalists rated the media poorly on communicating what some have dubbed the epic news story of the century. “We have failed to engage the public,” said a broadcast journalist.

The key problems? The list is long but includes a cold winter in Europe, the distant impacts, the failure of the December 2009 UN climate change Copenhagen summit to produce a binding international agreement, public confusion about whether there is a reliable scientific consensus, and alarmist media coverage with Hollywood-horror headlines like “Be Scared; Be Very Scared!” that are more likely to induce the purchase of popcorn than solar panels.

‘Climategate’

The biggest hurdle mentioned by most journalists was the so-called ‘Climategate’, the controversy surrounding the publication of hundreds of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK between influential climate scientists. It was a “defining moment in all our careers,” according to an environment editor.

Given the underlying science has been exonerated in successive inquiries, what is it that the journalists believe they were guilty of? Firstly, they missed a cracking story that was instead first pursued by the blogosphere and which proved to be, unlike many other climate change stories, a hit with the public. After struggling to find stories the public wanted to read, a tabloid journalist observed “Climategate … got a strong response; it made climate change more topical.”

Many journalists say the UEA email hacking, combined with the discovery of an error regarding the melting of the Himalayan glaciers in the 2007 report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), also proved they had failed to cast a critical enough eye on climate science and that they had been far too dismissive of sceptics.

It’s the editors, stupid

Probably the most important reaction to the UEA hacking for journalists was in their own newsrooms, among their own editors who are the gatekeepers controlling if your work appears and how prominently. While some UK surveys show no dramatic loss of credibility for climate scientists with the public, here’s how some senior journalists described what it was like in their newsrooms after hacking:

“you told me the science was settled - and it isn’t!”

“Climate-gate was extremely damaging in many ways. It gave the impression that journalists had been duped. I think in the end it was mountains out of mole-hills but it looked really bad,” said a print journalist.

The science is never settled

“The science is settled” was an oft used slogan by governments, non-government organisations and scientists especially in the lead up to Copenhagen and was meant to encapsulate the certainty with which most scientists believe that man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming. But some journalists and commentators now believe it implied too sweeping a claim and most scientists will tell you that science is rarely if ever completely settled - and certainly climate science is full of vast uncertainties about the extent and pace of global warming and its impacts.

Now, a key BBC news manager has declared that climate science “isn’t quite a settled question”; and the BBC Trust is investigating the impartiality of science reporting including on climate change and including whether sceptical views are given due airing.

Not all sceptics are equal

Previously, media coverage of sceptics had focused almost exclusively on whether or not they believe in anthropogenic climate change, but that is likely to change, the journalists say, because there are many different kinds of sceptics and a range of other debates. Some say they wished they had engaged credible sceptics earlier.

Looking to the future

So what is the future for the climate change story in the mainstream media?

The forecast is grim. Around 4,000 reporters went to Copenhagen, Denmark; only 150 attended follow-up negotiations in Bonn, Germany, and some senior correspondents say they might not go to Cancun, Mexico, in December for the next UN climate change summit. Some believe climate change as a story is finished. New York Times blogger, Andy Revkin, says it is now turning into an energy and business story.

The challenge for reporters is immense. Climate change is a multi-disciplinary story that requires at least some knowledge ranging from science and energy policy to potential military deployments, from coastal development to diplomacy and to mass biodiversity loss, to name a few. A BBC correspondent said it is arguable that journalists need qualifications in science, politics and economics to straddle the demands of climate change reporting.

Yet the issue has become newsworthy at a time when many newsrooms have been downsized while servicing an accelerating 24-hour news cycle. Not enough people. Not enough expertise. Not enough time.

Despite the present crisis of confidence among some UK journalists, I believe it remains a live story and that underlying the short-term news cycles is a number of titanic struggles and shifts which will force the issue back into mainstream press coverage no matter what tag it is given - these include the biggest global energy transformation since the industrial revolution; the unfolding, gobsmacking scientific mapping of the phenomenon (from ocean acidification to polar ice) as well as the reformation of an inward-looking scientific community to accept more transparency and robust public debate and explanation; and the great ideological clash over climate change policy including right-wing fears that it is a front for left-wing eco-fascism.

Then there’s the actual climate. If the scientists and insurance companies are right, it will produce increasing horror temperature, drought and precipitation events as well as more natural catastrophes. How we adapt to a dramatically changing climate, if or when it emerges, could, sadly, become the most compelling story of all. Read more of this story here.

See the comments - over 90% of the over 200 comments are skeptical. Will the ABC or the author notice.

By Lauren Frayer

Eruptions from Indonesia’s ferocious Mount Merapi keep getting worse, prompting more villagers to run for their lives and puzzling scientists trying to decipher Mother Nature’s plans.

Hot ash clouds are sweeping across central Java, shooting up to six miles into the sky and snarling local air traffic. Today’s booming eruptions have been the strongest since Merapi—whose name means “Mountain of Fire” in Javanese—exploded on Oct. 26, volcanologist Kurniadi Rinekso told Agence France-Presse.

Indonesian officials announced five more deaths from the suffocating lava and smoke, raising Merapi’s total death toll to at least 44, CNN reported. Nearly 75,000 people are huddled in evacuation shelters far from their livelihoods, and it doesn’t look as if they’ll be able to return home anytime soon.

“It looks like we may be entering an even worse stage,” state volcanologist Surono told The Associated Press. After predicting earlier this week that eruptions would ease up, scientists are throwing up their hands as they are confronted today with eruptions three times stronger than expected. “We have no idea what’s happening now,” Surono said.

Merapi’s ash prompted global concern today when a Qantas airliner suffered engine failure after takeoff from Singapore’s airport. The incident occurred several hundred miles away from Merapi, and officials say they’re still investigating, but it appears unlikely that volcanic ash could have affected the plane. The A380 managed an emergency landing back in Singapore, and no one was hurt.

The latest eruptions have also been accompanied by tremors, a sign that energy is still pent up inside the volcano and unable to escape, the head of the Volcanic Technology Development and Research Center, Subandrio, told The Jakarta Post.

“This can [also] be seen from the hot clouds that have been rising from the mountain’s peak,” he said.

Indonesia’s island archipelago sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where the world’s most volatile fault lines lie deep under the earth’s crust. Earthquakes and volcanoes are common there along the eastern and western Pacific rims.

See post here. See how volcanoes affect climate here.