Written by Lee Davis
March 3rd 2015
In the past several
years, severe weather has increased throughout the country. Many experts have
argued that the increase in this type of weather is the cause of Global Warming/
climate change. Global Warning is the increase in the earth’s atmospheric and
oceanic temperature. Global warming is caused by several of things. Global
warming is caused by landfills, humans, factories, and the production of
electricity among others. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most frequent cause of
global warming. People are unaware and uneducated about the Global Warming
effect. The media covers severe weather well but are the new sources catching our
attention about Global Warming?
When I began writing
this blog, I realized that I don’t know that much about the Global Warming. I
know what it is but I do not know as much as I would like to know about the
topic. I had to do a little research on the topic to get caught up. I looked
into some facts on Global Warming. Because of global warming, the sea level has
risen 6.7 inches in the past decade. Oceans are warming, ice sheets are getting
smaller, the arctic sea is defrosting and glaciers are disappearing. There is
more CO2 today than in the past 800,000 years. Consequences of Global Warming
include severe hurricanes, massive fires and the rapid melting of polar caps.
Global warming also places coral in danger and increases the sea heights. These
are all effects of global warming. These facts are mind blowing, and the
climate is changing rapidly every day. What we do every day in our lives
affects the climate of the world. But I don’t think the news give the viewers a
good view of global warming and its effects.
The media’s coverage
of global warming is very important, but the media’s coverage of severe weather
is as well. News channels such as the weather channel and weather nation both
have great severe weather coverage. Whenever a big severe outbreak occurs the
Weather Channel or the Weather Nation is on it first. This coverage even
includes live looks at the storms. Much is said about the storms and how they
form but not a lot is said about the global climate change and how it changes
our weather patterns. I found a chart on a New Jersey state PDF. The article
titled “Insights into Media Coverage of Climate Change and Severe Weather
Events in New Jersey, gives a several charts and info about global climate
change and severe weather. The first chart in the document lists a large amount
of things that are affected by climate change and how much the media covers
these topics. Coastal Resiliency, heat emergencies, mental health, water
supply, and economic impacts are several of the things listed in the chart. The
most frequently covered topics are coastal Resiliency, utility infrastructure,
relocation, economic impacts, insurance, seniors, and emergency preparedness. The
article discusses the impacts of Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy was a major
destructive category 3 hurricane which caused millions of dollars in damage
throughout the east coast. The article says that “continued public interest in
Sandy recovery efforts create unique opportunities for more extensive media
coverage about preparing over the longer term for impacts like sea level rise
and powerful storms”. The coverage of these storms before and after seemed to
change people’s mind about climate change and put more focus on it. Millions
were affected by this super storm in 2012, which got a lot of people’s
attention.
Many
journalists distort reality with their writing, and think that global warming
and climate change is caused by pollutants but this isn’t actually true.
Several scientists have called out journalists calling them ignorant because of
their lack of knowledge on the subject. Most people connect the word global
warming and climate change with pollution because they live in a world where
pollution is a major issue. Global warming and climate change does not come
from one single thing; it is caused by a cluster of things. Many people watch
and look at the news but don’t look into it further. If you look deep into the
topic, several things pop out. Looking at several chart I found interesting
information on the weather in the past decade. One thing is the massive
constant increase in large downpour events in the last decade. Since the 1990s
there has been a constant increase in downpour events. Another thing to look at
is the winter weather. Total seasonal snowfall has decreased in some southern and
western areas. Overall snow cover in the northern hemisphere has decrease in
the past ten years due to higher temperatures.
Reaching the media
effectively is critical to sharing the most timely, accurate information about
severe weather events or efforts to prepare for climate change. Facebook and
twitter are great resources for any news source. People are constantly sending
out information over social media. The problem with news organizations relaying
information from social media is that it could be false or distorted. The
problem is that no a lot of people know the connection of severe weather and
climate change. It is a very scientific topic and very hard to discuss. Severe
weather and climate change are directly proportional. Climate change causes
more severe weather. I feel like climate change needs more attention because
people lack information about it. A lot of people lack information about weather
because they are not as interested as some people. News sources need to incorporate
a bit of talk about climate change in their broadcast and explain the
phenomenon of climate change/ global warming.
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