Media, Internet

THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY has considered media coverage about science, in general, as inadequate, and coverage about global warming and climate change, in particular, as distorted. Scientists have maintained that their consensus about the causes and consequences of global warming has been overshadowed by coverage that portrays global warming as a source of scientific controversy and debate. The peer-reviewed findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represent more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries who have reached the joint conclusion that the burning of fossil fuels is causing significant climate shifts, findings that have been substantiated by the National Academy of Sciences, among other prestigious scientific bodies.

Nonetheless, the media have tended to give importance to climate change skeptics. For example, the Western Fuels Association, a ...