All About climate change this week –
To Improve Accuracy, BBC Tells Its Reporters To Stop Giving Air Time To Climate Deniers
The BBC recently announced that they would give significantly less airtime to “people who deny climate change exists.. in order to improve the accuracy and fairness of the network’s news coverage.” The BBC noted that it “needs to avoid ‘false balance,’ a fallacy that occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal value,” specifically climate change deniers. By Emily Atkin on ThinkProgress.org.
IPCC co-chair calls for re-thinking of policy assessments
Did you know that governments go line by line to approve the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report for policy makers? Well they do, and some think its getting in the way. Article outlines how the working group III came back with their contribution for the fifth assessment in April, but pieces were not agreed upon and ultimately left out of the final report that is provided to policymakers. Left out information is to be published in Science and includes categorizing countries based on their level of economic development and carbon emissions. David Victor, a working group member, references the left out pieces as reflecting “Most of the growth in emissions worldwide is coming from upper middle income countries. I think that’s one of the most important scientific facts when it comes to getting serious about policy. You need to know where the emissions come from.” This specific instance of letting policy get in the way of addressing climate change is a big issue, and it is for many working group members, including for the co-chair of the working group III Ottmar Edenhofer. Edenhofer states that “The real challenge lies in the entanglements of facts and values at the science-policy interface and how the IPCC deals with it. We tried to be explicit about our assumptions and to present a rational debate of facts and values. This enlightened approach came under attack in Berlin.”
China and US sign deals on climate change
Tuesday, the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China, signed eight partnership pacts to cut greenhouse gases. One of the pacts including an agreement on knowledge sharing, where “China’s Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute, a subsidiary of state-owned power company China Huaneng and Washington-based Summit Power Group agreed to share information on clean coal power generation technology.” Chinese officials also told the media that “wider two-way talks would include a special high-level meeting on climate change, focused on discussing domestic and international policies and possible cooperation.” Published on The Guardian.
The Sustainability Co-Op 