NOW, hosted by David Brancaccio, aired a piece on PBS this week entitled, “On Thin Ice” about the word’s melting glaciers and how this affects our lives and the lives of others around the world. Brancaccio travelled to India and the Gangotri Glacier with ice climber and environmentalist Conrad Anker, who is also profiled in the report. In addition, they explore Anker’s home state of Montana and the disappearing ice in Glacier National Park. The hour-long special report is beautiful on one hand and depressing on the other, but that’s what makes it such a damn fine piece of reporting. Please take the time to enjoy this report and think about what you can do in your own life to positively have an effect on the environment…. Isn’t it about time?

“Seventy-five percent of the world’s fresh water is stored in glaciers, but scientists predict climate change will cause some of the world’s largest glaciers to completely melt by 2030. What effect will this have on our daily lives? With global warming falling low on a national list of American concerns, it’s time to take a deeper look at what could be a global calamity in the making.

This week, in a special one-hour NOW on PBS, David Brancaccio and environmentalist Conrad Anker—one of the world’s leading high altitude climbers—trek to the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of the Ganges River, to witness the great melt and its dire consequences first-hand. The two also visit Montana’s Glacier National Park to see the striking effects of global warming closer to home and learn how melting glaciers across the globe can have a direct impact on food prices in the U.S.

Along the way, Brancaccio and Anker talk to both scientists and swamis, bathe in the River Ganges, view a water shortage calamity in India, and come as close as any human can to seeing the tangible costs of climate change.

“We can’t take climate change and put it on the back burner,” warns Anker. “If we don’t address climate change, we won’t be around as humans.”

Read David Brancaccio’s daily dispatches from India and see images from his extraordinary trip (Image courtesy of PBS.org).

Yesterday I wrote about Mediarology and the need for greater education and accuracy in reporting the issue of climate change. Instead of searching for a balanced story, reporters should be looking to write an accurate story. Climate expert Dr. Stephen Schneider, who coined the phrase Mediarology, has lobbied for and gained momentum in the effort to change public policy and perception towards better preserving the environment. As we wrote yesterday,

This is where Schneider hits it on the head: “…to the uninformed, each position seems equally credible.” This is why accurate reporting and not just trying for a semblance of balance is so necessary. The two biggest things business and special interest groups have done to harm the environment in the public debate are:

A) They changed the term from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change.’ Warming is bad, change is just different.

B) By injecting doubt into the world of hard science, they have allowed the lazy reporters to merely transcribe the false drivel, instead of questioning its accuracy.

I would like to mention a third catalyst in the fight for our future: The lobbying effort. The Center for Public Integrity has released a study documenting the dramatic increase in climate change lobbyists on both sides of the debate. By its count, since 2003 there has been an increase in lobbyists by more than 300%, with industry lobbyists outnumbering environmental lobbyists 8 to 1.

What does this mean to the world of journalism? That without the proper education, time and resources invested in the reporter, the cost-effective option will be to send out the feelers when a question arises. 8 to 1, that this question will be answered by someone lobbying on behalf of the industry groups. If members of Congress are outnumbered by climate change lobbyists 4 to 1 and industry lobbyists outnumber environmental lobbyists 8 to 1, you can see for yourself this worrying trend and from where we are most likely to get our information.

Number of Lobbyists on Climate Change by Sector

“Science is not politics. You can’t just get two opposing viewpoints and think you’ve done due diligence. You’ve got to cover the multiple views and the relative credibility of each view.”

Dr. Stephen Schneider is an expert in climate change from both a scientific and policy perspective. Therefore, when he says something like the above quote, you should take its importance to heart. He knows what he’s talking about… Yesterday we discussed Bryan Walsh’s interview with Eric Pooley about the importance of accurate reporting and not just balanced reporting. In the podcast, Pooley gives a good idea of the situation from a journalist’s perspective. Schneider goes into greater depth about the importance of proper science writing, this time from the scientist’s point of view. Schneider spoke earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago, about the importance of proper reporting on the subject of climate change. (Thanks to the Stanford U News Service for the heads-up and the quotes.) One of the issues Schneider talked about was CNN’s recent decision to eliminate its science team. Not that CNN can be trusted anyway, knowing that it fakes its transcripts and injects false video clips into stories. But at least it was trying to report on science issues… As Schneider asked,

“The problem is CNN just fired their science team. Why didn’t they fire their economics team or their sports team? Why don’t they send their general assignment reporters out to cover the Super Bowl?”

A source in the business of reporting gave me the perfect response to Schneider’s rhetorical question,

“I think CNN and the other networks would keep their science reporters if they could find the scientific counterpart of their “money honeys” that seem to dominate all broadcast business coverage. Or the ranters and yellers on the economy that make for such compelling —- yet non-informative —- TV viewing.”

We’ve discussed the bimbos who mascarade as journalists on TV before (and a personal note to Charles Gibson from ABC: I’m not just referring to women when I use the word bimbo).

But back to the issue of reporting on climate change and the challenge both reporters and scientists face in getting this right… Schneider has coined a great term to describe what happens in reporting on climate change: Mediarology. On his website, he has written an enormous amount on Mediarology and I would encourage you to read more there, but his introduction to the subject follows.

“In reporting political, legal, or other advocacy-dominated stories, it is both natural and appropriate for honest journalists to report “both sides” of an issue. Got the Democrat? Better get the Republican!

“In science, it’s different. There are rarely just two polar opposite sides, but rather a spectrum of potential outcomes, oftentimes accompanied by a considerable history of scientific assessment of the relative credibility of these many possibilities. A climate scientist faced with a reporter locked into the “get both sides” mindset risks getting his or her views stuffed into one of two boxed storylines: “we’re worried” or “it will all be OK.” And sometimes, these two “boxes” are misrepresentative; a mainstream, well-established consensus may be “balanced” against the opposing views of a few extremists, and to the uninformed, each position seems equally credible.”

This is where Schneider hits it on the head: “…to the uninformed, each position seems equally credible.” This is why accurate reporting and not just trying for a semblance of balance is so necessary. The two biggest things business and special interest groups have done to harm the environment in the public debate are:

A) They changed the term from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change.’ Warming is bad, change is just different.

B) By injecting doubt into the world of hard science, they have allowed the lazy reporters to merely transcribe the false drivel, instead of questioning its accuracy.

Journalism students are told to keep things fair and balanced in their reporting and those who succeed can hope for a role with Fox “News”. But for those out there who would like to both advance their careers beyond that of fluffer to Bill O’Reilly, as well as perhaps advance discourse and transparency in our world, they should take a lesson in how to report intelligently, instead of just focusing on a perceived balance.

Recently Bryan Walsh, a writer and podcaster for TIME on issues related to the environment, discussed the difference between balanced reporting and smart reporting with Eric Pooley. Pooley, a former managing editor for TIME, is writing a book on climate change and using this issue as an example, shows how economic and environmental illiteracy leads to balanced reporting (or the stenographer approach) instead of intelligent reporting. In the podcast, Pooley quotes the great English journalist Henry Lucy as saying,

“I’d rather take a poet and teach him about business than take a business person and teach him how to write.”

Pooley continues with his example of how the Warner-Lieberman Carbon Cap bill may have been killed last year, partially due to a lack of accurate reporting. He discusses how reporters were taking the balance of the opposing views on the subject, rather than reporting on the facts of the bill and what the actual effects would be.

“The result of this (uneducated group of journalists) is that since relatively few of us get taught, we do freeze up a little bit as a class around balance sheets and around economic studies… (This) leads reporters into the he-said, she-said, painstakingly balanced approach (to writing a story).”

With tighter budgets and fewer reporters on the beat, interconnected issues like environmental policy suffers in its coverage due to the lack of education and knowledge in the field. In the end, Pooley does commend the New York Times on their recent accouncement of a team of reporters dedicated to covering environmental issues (including business, science and political reporters). This approach will undoubtedly better serve the public and lead to more comprehensive, accurate reporting on environmental issues. The entire intervew (only 8 minutes long) can be heard here:

Reporting on Climate Change