The Society of Environmental Journalists: SEJ Publications has an interesting set of articles on climate change and journalism – an interview with NYTimes journalist Andrew Revkin and an article on journalistic balance.

Do you think that climate change is covered adequately by the media? I mean, what kind of job do you think they’re doing?

AR: It’s certainly a decent amount of coverage these days, but I still…I don’t think people are covering it wrong. It doesn’t fit the norms of journalism. The heft of the story is not conveyed. Either the uncertainties make us all fuzz out and look at something more germane like a new explosion in Iraq or the latest scandal in Washington with lobbyists. So we turn away from it. Or we latch onto some new finding that feels like news (abrupt change) and our endless sift for the “front-page thought” makes us minimize the uncertainties.

But it’s not just a journalism problem. After covering it for twenty years…you can write the perfect story capturing both the gravitas and the uncertainties of human-induced climate change, perfect on every level, and it won’t change things.

We are not attuned to things on this time scale and with this level of uncertainty. Partly because of our political system being so short term, our business cycle being so short term, and because our concerns are focused mainly on what affects my family, then what affects my community, then what affects my state, then what affects my country, and then what affects my globe.

What would be the key points you’d stress with other journalists about climate change? What subjects should they hit?

AR: Not just for climate change, but just in general. When you can step back, whether it’s sprawl or nonpoint source pollution or climate change, there are things going on around you that are profound, that are transforming landscapes. And we ignore them because they are happening in this incremental fashion that journalism just does not recognize.

And it’s not the kind of thing that you can do daily or maybe even yearly. But once in a while, when there’s a slow news cycle, step back and see how many houses are being built on steep slopes, or how much leakage there is from underground gas tanks. Or what ecologists and biologists are saying about the way a valley, watershed or coast will be transformed over the next century and how does that relate to the surrounding institutions?

A perfect example is coastal development and sea level rise. One of the firmest things coming out of any climate model is that rising seas are the new normal for centuries to come. So if you are a journalist on the coast, this immediately starts a series of stories to see what is being done to reflect that.

You have to look at the world and ask, “Do our institutions reflect, are we still granting flood insurance to low lying areas?” It can lead to these types of stories.

On the mitigation side, college activism is exploding now. When I went to Montreal to cover the last round of climate-treaty talks the only people there who seemed to be talking sense were the youngest ones.

Earth and Sky site also has an interview with Andrew Revkin about his interest in the North Pole.

Nature (March 30, 2006) has an profile of the father and son scientists Roger Pielke Jr and Roger Pielke Sr. Each of them run a climate weblog. Pielke Sr focuses on climate science, while Pielke Jr focuses on science policy. Below are their explanations to Nature on how their weblogs help their research.

Roger Pielke Jr runs Prometheus: The Science Policy Weblog

“It started as an experiment for our centre, and now it serves a number of different purposes. It is kind of like an extra hard drive for my brain. I can search for things that I’ve written, something I might want later, sort of like my professional notes in a public format. “I’m surprised at the reach the blog has, which is rewarding for this centre with only eight of us here. We can put an argument on it and it shows up out there in the real world. I get contacted by professionals in the United States or elsewhere that I would have never met otherwise. “Blogs are also out there for the public, and it gives you an entirely different perspective on how well the public is getting your message.”

Roger Pielke Sr runs the weblog Climate Science

“My weblog was completely motivated by my son’s. I was sending all these e-mails out to people about committee reports and he said, ‘Why don’t you just do a weblog?’ “With so many journals out there now, it is hard to keep track. When a peer reviewed paper comes out, I can put up the abstract and a summary of key points on the blog. “Now I’m making my arguments to a broader community to see how well they stand up. I also use it as a professional diary and it has increased my network. “The feedback has been wonderful.”

I have been using this weblog in a similar way to Roger Pielke Jr. I have been posting articles of things that I have been reading in my research or teaching that I think will be interesting to the larger resilience community. I frequently use the weblog to show colleagues and students articles, figures, or ideas that I think are relevant to our work. From the posts on the site you are probably able to guess that I am working on the impacts of inequality in social-ecological systems and connections between agriculture and water.