The New York Times yesterday reported on a new Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report stating:
“Ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct. The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting their growth…Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said.”
And then comes the bombshell…
“And the worst is yet to come, the scientists said…”
The report goes onto highlight how climate change will impact on every single one of us. It drew out the example of food security as just one way that our changing climate will impact on us all.
With such clear and frankly terrifying predictions coming from the most authoritative source in the world on climate change, one would have hoped the editors of the main UK newspapers would hev cleared whatever they had lined up on their front pages.
It appears not…
If we browse through today’s front page we can see that no paper has chosen to cover these new revelations with the exception of one paper…The Guardian.
Worse still was listening to The Today Programme on BBC radio 4 who managed (I’m sure in the name of ‘BBC balance’) to find someone who once again wanted to cast doubt on the growing consensus of man-made climate change (If you’re still not sure if there is a scientific consensus around global warming then please click here).
As Gary Dunion quipped on twitter:
I understand that doomsday predictions don’t sell papers (unless it reinforces an existing belief system as with the case of many Guardian readers) but this is too serious for people and papers to ignore.
We desperately need action and for that to come about we desperately need a better educated public on the risks that climate change poses.
Can this happen though for as long as the main sources of new are driven by financial gain rather than public good?
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