This site paid some attention to last week’s Int’l Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen last week, but not a great deal (previous post). Neither did a particularly large slice of the US media. Travel budgets, one thinks, can be blamed for that. The Tracker happened this morning across a piece on the non-profit, developing world-oriented SciDev.Net wire, from Imelda V. Abano. She reports that the chairman of the meeting, an American on faculty at the host Univ. of Copenhagen, had some sharp words for journalists in general. It is easy to believe – The Tracker’s hand is up – that media across all platforms provide a steady diet of mostly-sensible climate change news. That’s what I look for, it’s what I find. The meeting chair said, it says here, that climate news is too important to be left to journalists. The madam chairman further said that too many journalists work for “organizations more interested in making money than presenting a clear interpretation of climate change to the public.” One rejoinder is that the two interests are fully compatible. Interesting observation, though. Good on SciDev.net to circulate it.

One might note that at his Climate Progress site blogger Joe Romm has recently, similarly, specifically excoriated US journalists for letting so many Americans get away with snorting derisively at anthropogenic climate change. The Tracker has a lower regard than Romm apparently does for the ability of news reporting to command public opinion. But Romm is a polarizing figure by disposition, it appears;  he seems to be one of those impatient types who have serious cases of hard-ass. Such people evince little patience for, or civility for that matter to, those who don’t see what’s obvious to them (as in “Why are you carefully folding your towel you idiot when there’s a damned TSUNAMI bearing down on this beach. GET MOVING!!). We do need people like that, however maddening they can be.

Speaking of Romm: He has another, newer post on batteries and, if one reads down into it, mention of  a super duper sounding gee whiz and possibly game changing spin-battery idea from researchers at Univ. of Miami and in Japan. It’s been published in Nature. Romm appears to have spotted something that got entirely too little attention in news media, including at narrow-focus, gadget-freak outlets. There is even a U. Miami Press Release out on it. Tracker wants to learn more about this.

-CP

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under About Journalism, Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.