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'''Climate change alarmism''' or '''global warming alarmism''' is a critical description of a ] which stresses the potentially catastrophic effects of ]. The term "alarmist" is primarily used by those who reject the ] as an epithet for those who treat the issue objectively.<ref>, Kerry Emanuel</ref> |
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The term "alarm" is also often used to describe the reports on ] in the media during the 1970s and is commonly compared with what is currently perceived to be alarmism in relation to global warming.<ref name="Kapitsa, Andrei 2008">Kapitsa, Andrei, and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, "Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol", '']'', 10 July 2008, "Who remembers today, they query, that in the 1970s, when global temperatures began to dip, many warned that we faced a new ice age? An editorial in The Time magazine on June 24, 1974, quoted concerned scientists as voicing alarm over the atmosphere 'growing gradually cooler for the past three decades', 'the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland,' and other harbingers of an ice age that could prove 'catastrophic.' Man was blamed for global cooling as he is blamed today for global warming".</ref><ref name="Don 2007, p. 1">'']'', "Don't believe doomsayers that insist the world's end is nigh", 16 March 2007, p. 1. "The widespread alarm over global warming is only the latest scare about the environment to come our way since the 1960s. Let's go through some of them. Almost exactly 30 years ago the world was in another panic about climate change. However, it wasn't the thought of global warming that concerned us. It was the fear of its opposite, global cooling. The doom-sayers were wrong in the past and it's entirely possible they're wrong this time as well."</ref><ref name="Schmidt, David 2002">Schmidt, David, "It's curtains for global warming", '']'', 28 June 2002, p. 16B. "If there is one thing more remarkable than the level of alarm inspired by global warming, it is the thin empirical foundations upon which the forecast rests. Throughout the 1970s, the scientific consensus held that the world was entering a period of global cooling, with results equally catastrophic to those now predicted for global warming."</ref><ref name="Francis Wilson 2009, p. 32">], "The rise of the extreme killers", '']'', 19 April 2009, p. 32. "Throughout history there have been false alarms: "shadow of the bomb", "nuclear winter", "ice age cometh" and so on. So it's no surprise that today many people are sceptical about climate change. The difference is that we have hard evidence that increasing temperatures will lead to a significant risk of dangerous repercussions."</ref><ref name="The 2000">'']'', "The sky was supposed to fall: The '70s saw the rise of environmental Chicken Littles of every shape as a technique for motivating public action", 5 April 2000, p. B1. "One of the strange tendencies of modern life, however, has been the institutionalization of scaremongering, the willingness of the mass media and government to lend plausibility to wild surmises about the future. The crucial decade for this odd development was the 1970s. Schneider's book excited a frenzy of glacier hysteria. The most-quoted ice-age alarmist of the 1970s became, in a neat public-relations pivot, one of the most quoted global-warming alarmists of the 1990s."</ref><ref>Peterson, Thomas C., ], and John Fleck, "", ], 8 February 2008, pp. 1326, 1330–1331.</ref> Public perception of the realities and risks associated with climate change have been described as forming a continuum in which people with "alarmist" views form one extreme along the continuum, and those commonly characterized as "], "skeptics" or "naysayers" at the other extreme.<ref name="Leiserowitz2005">{{Cite journal|last=Leiserowitz |first=Anthony A. |year=2005 |title=American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous? |journal=Risk Analysis |volume=25 |issue=6 |pages=1433–1442 |issn=0272-4332 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00690.x |pmid=16506973}}</ref> |
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==Alarmism as a pejorative== |
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The term "alarmist" is commonly used as a ] by critics of the scientific consensus on climate change to describe those who endorse the mainstream scientific view. Examples include ] , ] , ] and the ] . The term is also used to describe, usually in a pejorative way, the perceived consensus of scientists and media who propagated the global cooling scare of the 1970s. Often, the alarmism related to global cooling is compared with the perceived alarmism tied to global warming. For example, Stephen Schneider has been called an alarmist in relation to both global cooling and global warming.<ref name="Kapitsa, Andrei 2008"/><ref name="Don 2007, p. 1"/><ref name="Schmidt, David 2002"/><ref name="Francis Wilson 2009, p. 32"/><ref name="The 2000"/> |
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==Alarmism as an extreme position== |
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Alarmism is described as the use of a ] which communicates climate change using inflated language, an urgent tone and imagery of doom. In a report produced for the ] Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit reported that alarmist language is frequently employed by newspapers, popular magazine and in campaign literature put out by government and environment groups.<ref name="Ereaut2006">{{Cite book|last1=Ereaut |first1=Gill |last2=Segrit |first2=Nat |title=Warm Words: How are we Telling the Climate Story and can we Tell it Better? |year=2006 |publisher=Institute for Public Policy Research |location=London}}</ref> It is difficult for the public to see climate change as urgent unless it is posed to them as a catastrophe, but using alarmist language is an unreliable tool for communicating the issue to the public. Instead of motivating people to action, these techniques often evoke "denial, paralysis apathy"<ref name="Dilling & Moser">{{Cite book|last1=Lisa Dilling|first1=|last2=Susanne C. Moser|first2=|title=Creating a climate for change: communicating climate change and facilitating social change|year=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, UK|isbn=0-521-86923-4|pages=1–27|chapter=Introduction}}</ref> and do not motivate people to become engaged with the issue of climate change.<ref>{{cite doi | 10.1177/1075547008329201}}</ref> In the United Kingdom, alarmist messages are often subject to "subtle critique" in the ] press, while the ] media often "embrace" the message, but undermine it using a "climate skeptic" frame.<ref name="Ereaut2006"/> In the context of the climate refugees—the potential for climate change to ]—it has been reported that "alarmist hyperbole" is frequently employed by ]s and ]s.<ref name="Hartmann2010">{{Cite journal|last=Hartmann |first=Betsy |year=2010 |title=Rethinking climate refugees and climate conflict: Rhetoric, reality and the politics of policy discourse |journal=Journal of International Development |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=233–246 |issn=09541748 |doi=10.1002/jid.1676}}</ref> |
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People who hold alarmist views of climate change represent one end of a continuum in public perceptions of climate change. Anthony A. Leiserowitz found that alarmists made up about 11% of the ] population, while "naysayers", who have a skeptical or cynical view of climate change, make up about 7% of the population. The remainder of the public lay between these two extremes. Their perception of climate change was similar to that of the alarmists, but they differed significantly from them on questions related to perceived risk.<ref name="Leiserowitz2005"/> |
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==Media coverage== |
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{{Main|Media coverage of climate change}} |
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Minority views—both alarmist and denialist—were reported to get disproportionate attention in the popular press, especially in the ]. One of the consequences of this is a portrayal of risks well beyond the claims actually being made by scientists.<ref name="Boykoff2009">{{Cite journal|last=Boykoff |first=Maxwell T. |year=2009 |title=We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the Environment |journal=Annual Review of Environment and Resources |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=431–457 |issn=1543-5938 |doi=10.1146/annurev.environ.051308.084254}}</ref> Others have noted the tendency for journalists to overemphasize the most extreme outcomes from a range of possibilities reported in scientific articles. A study that tracked press reports about a climate change article in the journal ] found that "results and conclusions of the study were widely misrepresented, especially in the news media, to make the consequences seem more catastrophic and the timescale shorter."<ref>{{cite doi|10.1179/030801805X42036}}</ref> |
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==Views of scientists== |
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Scientists who agree with the consensus view on global warming often have been critical of those who exaggerate or distort the risks posed by global warming. ] has criticized such exaggeration, stating that he "disapprove of the 'ends justify the means' philosophy" that would exaggerate dangers in order to spur public action.<ref>http://www.americanphysicalsociety.com/publications/apsnews/199608/upload/aug96.pdf</ref> Mike Hulme, professor at the ] and former director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, describes such exaggerations as "self-defeating," in that they engender feelings of hopelessness rather than motivating positive action.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6655449.stm|title=Climate messages are 'off target'|last=Ghosh|first=Pallab|work=]|accessdate=21 June 2010}}</ref> ] has objected to "alarmists think that climate change is something extremely dangerous, extremely bad and that overselling a little bit, if it serves a good purpose, is not that bad."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4923504.stm|title=A load of hot air?|last=Cox|first=Simon|coauthors=Richard Vadon|work=]|accessdate=21 June 2010}}</ref> |
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Scientists also have criticized press sensationalism in reporting on climate change. Myles Allen, director of the Climateprediction.net experiment, criticized press reporting that seized on the extreme end of predictions from the experiment rather than the much more likely outcome of moderate warming. |
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==See also== |
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==References== |
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{{Reflist}} |
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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2010}} |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Climate Change Alarmism}} |
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