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Media and Climate Change Observatory<\/a> (MeCCO)<\/em> September was a busy month for media attention to climate change and global warming. However, coverage across the globe decreased 8.5% from the previous month of August 2018, and was also down slightly (2%) from September last year. An increase was most pronounced in Asia (up 15%) and the Middle East (up 15%) in September.Elsewhere, decreases were detected in North America (down 8%), Oceania (down 39%), Central\/South America (down 3%), Africa (down 36%) and Europe (down 9%) compared to the previous month of August.<\/p>\n In January of this year, MeCCO expanded coverage to sixty-two newspaper sources, six radio sources and six television sources. These span across thirty-eight countries, in English, Spanish, German and Portuguese. In addition to English-language searches of \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201cglobal warming\u201d, we search Spanish-language sources through the terms “cambio clim\u00e1tico” or “calentamiento global”, German-language sources through the terms \u2018klimawandel\u2019 or \u2018globale erw\u00e4rmung\u2019, and Portuguese-language sources through the terms “mudan\u00e7as clim\u00e1ticas” or “aquecimento global”. Figure 1 shows these ebbs and flows in newspaper media coverage at the global scale \u2013 organized into seven geographical regions around the world \u2013 over the past 177 months (from January 2004 through September 2018).<\/p>\n Considerable attention was paid to\u00a0political<\/em>\u00a0content of coverage during the month of September, as signs of a \u2018Trump Dump\u2019 returned in the US (where media attention that would have focused on other climate-related events and issues instead was placed on Trump-related actions (leaving many other stories untold)). For example, media attention was paid to Trump Administration announcements of rollbacks on regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas production. Journalist Timothy Puko from\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>reported on the proposed rollback of Obama-era climate rules,\u00a0\u201cmoving to ease requirements for oil and gas companies that were designed to limit leaks of the heat-trapping gas methane\u201d. Journalist Coral Davenport from\u00a0The New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0observed \u201cThe new rules follow two regulatory rollbacks this year that, taken together, represent the foundation of the United States\u2019 effort to rein in global warming. In July, the EPA proposed weakening a rule on carbon dioxide pollution from vehicle tailpipes.\u00a0And in August, the agency proposed replacing the rule on carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants\u00a0with a weaker one\u00a0that would allow far more global-warming emissions to flow unchecked from the nation\u2019s smokestacks\u201d.\u00a0The<\/a><\/em>\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>journalist Juliet Eilperin reported that \u201cin the fourth rollback of a major federal climate rule in less than two months, the Interior Department eased requirements Tuesday that oil and gas firms operating on federal and tribal land capture the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Officials said that the rule, adopted in 2016, was duplicative, given state laws, and imposed too heavy a burden on the private sector. Environmentalists and Democrats vowed to fight the reversal in court, saying that it would lead to greater air pollution and boost emissions linked to climate change. The 2016 regulation required operators to capture methane leaks, install more modern controls and develop a plan to reduce the release of the heat-trapping gas, which, for the first 20 years after being released into the atmosphere, is roughly 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The new rule largely eliminates those requirements, including limits on how much methane can be released and burned off. Experts said the previous standards would have prevented the release of nearly 180,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere each year\u2026According to Interior\u2019s analysis, the reduction in compliance costs would outweigh the royalties taxpayers would otherwise have received on the captured oil and gas, for a net saving of $734\u00a0million to $1.01\u00a0billion over a decade\u201d.<\/p>\n There was media coverage of the mid-September \u2018tweetstorm\u2019 by US President Donald J. Trump, just before Hurricane Florence made landfall less than 24 hours later. Figure 2 shows particularly notable tweets during this September 13 storm.\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em><\/a>journalists Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey wrote, \u201cAs Hurricane Florence churned toward the Carolinas, President Trump on Thursday diverted attention from the government\u2019s preparations for the monster storm to his personal grievances over last year\u2019s Hurricane Maria by falsely claiming a conspiracy to inflate the death toll in Puerto Rico. Trump drew immediate rebukes from Democrats as well as some Republicans for denying a\u00a0sweeping study, which was accepted by Puerto Rican authorities\u201d.<\/p>\n At the subnational level the Global Climate Action Summit hosted by Governor Jerry Brown also garnered attention in media accounts. Journalist James Rainey from\u00a0NBC News<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported, \u201cSeeking to cement California’s reputation as a global leader in combatting\u00a0climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed two measures designed to push the state to 100 percent renewable electricity and so-called carbon neutrality by 2045. Senate Bill 100 raises the state\u2019s already ambitious goals for producing electricity from wind, solar and other green sources. The aim is to ensure greenhouse gas emissions are low enough that they can be absorbed by forests, oceans, soil and other natural systems\u2026Brown…also issued an executive order pushing the state to reduce its net output of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere \u2014 including from the single largest source, cars and trucks \u2014 to zero by the same 2045 deadline. Meeting the 100 percent carbon-neutral goal in just 27 years and potentially becoming \u201cnet negative\u201d on carbon, gives California the most ambitious such target of any government in the world, the governor\u2019s office said\u201d. Reporter Liam Dillon from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0called this \u201cthe latest in a series of ambitious goals set by the state to combat the effects of climate change\u201d.<\/p>\n Media accounts also focused on\u00a0scientific<\/em>\u00a0dimensions of climate change and global warming during the month of September. For example, journalist Chris Mooney from\u00a0The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0covered how research teams from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico and the University of Alaska Fairbanks were working to understand how methane releases from freshwater lakes contribute to global warming. Read more …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) September 2018 Summary September was a busy month for media attention to climate change and global warming. However, coverage across the globe decreased 8.5% from the previous month of August 2018, and was also … Continue reading
\nSeptember 2018 Summary<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/sciencepolicy.colorado.edu\/icecaps\/research\/media_coverage\/summaries\/images\/2018_21_figure1.jpg\")
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