Originally created in 2004, Prometheus is a project of University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Prometheus is designed to create an informal outlet for news, information, and opinion on science and technology policy.
New Zealand political developments contributed to a 31% increase in coverage from the previous month.
July Monsoon rains, floods and consequent landslides gripped India and contributed to a 5% increase in media coverage of climate change from June 2019.
July 2019 media coverage of climate change in Germany continued to rise like the mercury in the thermometer in continental Europe: it was up 9% from June and has been rising since April 2019.
US television news coverage dropped 37% in July 2019, from the previous month’s numbers. CNN in particular dropped nearly 50%. Perhaps coverage of the ‘horse race’ for the Democratic nomination for US President displaced some attention in the finite CNN news hole.
July media attention to climate change and global warming continued through ecological/meteorological, political, economic, scientific and cultural themes. Of note, New Zealand political developments contributed to a 31% increase in coverage from the previous month. Also, July Monsoon rains, floods and consequent landslides gripped India and contributed to a 5% increase in media coverage of climate change from June 2019 (along with an overall doubling of the amount of media coverage of climate change in India since April 2019). Meanwhile, July 2019 media coverage of climate change in Germany continued to rise like the mercury in the thermometer in continental Europe: it was up 9% from June and has been rising since April 2019. However, United States (US) television news coverage dropped 37% in July 2019, from the previous month’s numbers. CNN in particular dropped nearly 50%. Perhaps coverage of the ‘horse race’ for the Democratic nomination for US President displaced some attention in the finiteCNN news hole, despite the many new stories described below.
Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage in India – from January 2000 through July 2019.
United Kingdom (UK) media coverage has steadily increased over time. For instance, coverage in the first seven months in 2019 (January – July) has more than doubled from the first seven months of 2018. However, when these increases across outlets are disaggregated one can detect a slightly different set of trends. For example, stories in The Guardian (and Observer) and in The Times (and Sunday Times) ran the majority (55%) of climate change articles across these seven news outlets. Of note, the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) accounted for just under 5% of overall newspaper stories in these seven UK news organizations (see Figure 2).
Ecological and meteorological content dominated overall media coverage throughout the month of July. Of note, Europe faced a number of heat waves in July that were tied to changes in the climate. Starting the month, records were set across the continent. Many stories documented the record-breaking heat. For example, journalist Rob Picheta from CNN reported on July 1, “Europe’s scorching heat wave expanded across the continent on Saturday, with people from Britain to the Balkans sweltering under abnormally high temperatures after a record-breaking week. France is expecting temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts on Saturday, a day after it shattered its record mark multiple times in one day. Spain, which is dealing with the aftermath of a wildfire that tore through 10,000 acres of forest in the country’s north-east on Friday, is bracing for temperatures of up to 42 degrees, according to its national meteorological body AEMET. The country is still affected by a “mass of tropical wind coming from Africa,” the agency said. And the UK saw its hottest day of the year by some distance, with the mercury rising to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 Fahrenheit) and threatening the country’s hottest-ever June mark of 35.6 degrees, set in 1976”. A few days later, reporter Doyle Rice from USA Today linked the high temperatures to the hottest global June on record. He noted, “Global warming exacerbated the heat wave that baked Europe late last week, a report released Tuesday said. The news came as a separate report said the globe sweltered to its hottest June on record. Europe’s heat wave, which included France’s all-time high temperature of 114.6 degrees last week, was “made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change,” the World Weather Attribution group said in a release. They also said this is true for every heat wave in Europe nowadays. Specifically, the report said the extreme conditions from June 26-28 in Toulouse, France, were as much as 10 times more likely now than they were in 1900, before greenhouse gas emissions from industry had a major effect on the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere, which has warmed the planet to levels that cannot be explained by natural causes”.
Also in early July, denizens along the US Gulf Coast braced for the impacts of Hurricane Barry to start the hurricane season. Just missing New Orleans, residents across the US state of Louisiana nonetheless were impacted. Numerous stories ran that tracked the storm and made links between hurricane events and climate change. For example, leading up to the storm making landfall, US National Public Radio journalist Rebecca Hersher reported, “People across southern Louisiana are spending the weekend worried about flooding. The water is coming from every direction: the Mississippi River is swollen with rain that fell weeks ago farther north, and a storm called Barry is pushing ocean water onshore while it drops more rain from above. It’s a situation driven by climate change, and one that Louisiana has never dealt with, at least in recorded history. And it’s raising questions about whether New Orleans and other communities are prepared for such an onslaught”. As a second example, journalists Kathy Finn and Timothy Gardner from Reuters wrote, “While no single storm can be linked directly to climate change, the trend of warming air and seas around the globe has caused conditions that scientists say will, on average, make storms stronger and rainier”. In the wake of the storm, New York Times journalist Christopher Flavelle reported, “New research shows that the extreme weather and fires of recent years, similar to the flooding that has struck Louisiana and the Midwest, may be making Americans sick in ways researchers are only beginning to understand. By knocking chemicals loose from soil, homes, industrial-waste sites or other sources, and spreading them into the air, water and ground, disasters like these — often intensified by climate change — appear to be exposing people to an array of physical ailments including respiratory disease and cancer … The movement of toxic substances by storms and wildfires joins a long list of threats that climate change poses to Americans’ health, whether they be more severe heat waves or the spread of dengue or other ailments previously restricted to the tropics. What makes this threat different, researchers say, is the ability of many contaminants to persist in the environment or in people’s bodies after the disaster has passed, and to accumulate in with each new storm or fire”. Read more …
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MeCCO Monthly Summary: Monumental Challenges Remain
Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
July 2019 Summary
New Zealand political developments contributed to a 31% increase in coverage from the previous month.
July Monsoon rains, floods and consequent landslides gripped India and contributed to a 5% increase in media coverage of climate change from June 2019.
July 2019 media coverage of climate change in Germany continued to rise like the mercury in the thermometer in continental Europe: it was up 9% from June and has been rising since April 2019.
US television news coverage dropped 37% in July 2019, from the previous month’s numbers. CNN in particular dropped nearly 50%. Perhaps coverage of the ‘horse race’ for the Democratic nomination for US President displaced some attention in the finite CNN news hole.
July media attention to climate change and global warming continued through ecological/meteorological, political, economic, scientific and cultural themes. Of note, New Zealand political developments contributed to a 31% increase in coverage from the previous month. Also, July Monsoon rains, floods and consequent landslides gripped India and contributed to a 5% increase in media coverage of climate change from June 2019 (along with an overall doubling of the amount of media coverage of climate change in India since April 2019). Meanwhile, July 2019 media coverage of climate change in Germany continued to rise like the mercury in the thermometer in continental Europe: it was up 9% from June and has been rising since April 2019. However, United States (US) television news coverage dropped 37% in July 2019, from the previous month’s numbers. CNN in particular dropped nearly 50%. Perhaps coverage of the ‘horse race’ for the Democratic nomination for US President displaced some attention in the finiteCNN news hole, despite the many new stories described below.
Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage in India – from January 2000 through July 2019.
United Kingdom (UK) media coverage has steadily increased over time. For instance, coverage in the first seven months in 2019 (January – July) has more than doubled from the first seven months of 2018. However, when these increases across outlets are disaggregated one can detect a slightly different set of trends. For example, stories in The Guardian (and Observer) and in The Times (and Sunday Times) ran the majority (55%) of climate change articles across these seven news outlets. Of note, the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) accounted for just under 5% of overall newspaper stories in these seven UK news organizations (see Figure 2).
Ecological and meteorological content dominated overall media coverage throughout the month of July. Of note, Europe faced a number of heat waves in July that were tied to changes in the climate. Starting the month, records were set across the continent. Many stories documented the record-breaking heat. For example, journalist Rob Picheta from CNN reported on July 1, “Europe’s scorching heat wave expanded across the continent on Saturday, with people from Britain to the Balkans sweltering under abnormally high temperatures after a record-breaking week. France is expecting temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts on Saturday, a day after it shattered its record mark multiple times in one day. Spain, which is dealing with the aftermath of a wildfire that tore through 10,000 acres of forest in the country’s north-east on Friday, is bracing for temperatures of up to 42 degrees, according to its national meteorological body AEMET. The country is still affected by a “mass of tropical wind coming from Africa,” the agency said. And the UK saw its hottest day of the year by some distance, with the mercury rising to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 Fahrenheit) and threatening the country’s hottest-ever June mark of 35.6 degrees, set in 1976”. A few days later, reporter Doyle Rice from USA Today linked the high temperatures to the hottest global June on record. He noted, “Global warming exacerbated the heat wave that baked Europe late last week, a report released Tuesday said. The news came as a separate report said the globe sweltered to its hottest June on record. Europe’s heat wave, which included France’s all-time high temperature of 114.6 degrees last week, was “made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change,” the World Weather Attribution group said in a release. They also said this is true for every heat wave in Europe nowadays. Specifically, the report said the extreme conditions from June 26-28 in Toulouse, France, were as much as 10 times more likely now than they were in 1900, before greenhouse gas emissions from industry had a major effect on the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere, which has warmed the planet to levels that cannot be explained by natural causes”.
Also in early July, denizens along the US Gulf Coast braced for the impacts of Hurricane Barry to start the hurricane season. Just missing New Orleans, residents across the US state of Louisiana nonetheless were impacted. Numerous stories ran that tracked the storm and made links between hurricane events and climate change. For example, leading up to the storm making landfall, US National Public Radio journalist Rebecca Hersher reported, “People across southern Louisiana are spending the weekend worried about flooding. The water is coming from every direction: the Mississippi River is swollen with rain that fell weeks ago farther north, and a storm called Barry is pushing ocean water onshore while it drops more rain from above. It’s a situation driven by climate change, and one that Louisiana has never dealt with, at least in recorded history. And it’s raising questions about whether New Orleans and other communities are prepared for such an onslaught”. As a second example, journalists Kathy Finn and Timothy Gardner from Reuters wrote, “While no single storm can be linked directly to climate change, the trend of warming air and seas around the globe has caused conditions that scientists say will, on average, make storms stronger and rainier”. In the wake of the storm, New York Times journalist Christopher Flavelle reported, “New research shows that the extreme weather and fires of recent years, similar to the flooding that has struck Louisiana and the Midwest, may be making Americans sick in ways researchers are only beginning to understand. By knocking chemicals loose from soil, homes, industrial-waste sites or other sources, and spreading them into the air, water and ground, disasters like these — often intensified by climate change — appear to be exposing people to an array of physical ailments including respiratory disease and cancer … The movement of toxic substances by storms and wildfires joins a long list of threats that climate change poses to Americans’ health, whether they be more severe heat waves or the spread of dengue or other ailments previously restricted to the tropics. What makes this threat different, researchers say, is the ability of many contaminants to persist in the environment or in people’s bodies after the disaster has passed, and to accumulate in with each new storm or fire”. Read more …