Despite the debate surrounding the existence of climate
change, it is most definitely happening. One of the most pronounced effects of
climate change has been sea level rise due to the melting of masses of ice
around the world. The Antarctic Ice Sheet stores enough water to rise the
global sea level by 58 meters and some scientists, as in the study that this
news article is based on, believe that by burning the remainder of the Earth’s
fossil fuels, the ice sheet will be eliminated and the sea level will make this
58 meter rise.
The New York Times
published a news article based on a paper published in Science Advances by scientists from Germany, the UK and California.
The Times article summarizes the key
points from the research article in that is goes into detail about how the sea
level rise would occur and what areas would be greatly affected. The author of
the Times article even goes as far as
collecting statements from some of the researcher on the paper and including the
personal quotes in the article. The article then takes a political detour,
discussing the lack of effective political action taken in the past 30 years
and the possible actions of President Obama and his opposition within the
Republican Party. The article does mention that this study was based on a model
but does not go into enough detail about the study’s actual methods to point
out that this is only calculated data. The article ends with some text on the
history of seal level rise awareness and the great negative impacts we make by
burning fossil fuels leading to, ultimately, the end of the world as we know
it. It is interesting that the author closes the article with a statement from
a researcher not involved in the study that brings up the ethics of ignoring a
problem that will not affect us in our lifetimes. “What right do we have to do
things that, even if they don’t affect us, are going to be someone else’s
problem a thousand years from now?”
The research article in Science
Advances outlines the models and simulations that were performed to
determine the rise of global sea level as the ice sheets, specifically the
Antarctic Ice Sheet, as more fossil fuels are burned raising oceanic and/or
global temperatures. The article states that ice loss is driven by two
self-reinforcing types of feedback: the marine ice-sheet instability, which occurs when
ocean warming leads to subsequent sub-shelf melting, and the surface elevation
feedback, which occurs when a critical temperature is reached, the lower
elevation of the ice and increases surface mass loss. The simulations seem to
be centered on the levels of CO2 emitted and correlate this to the
melting. There is little to no discussion on the actual chemical reactions that
must take place to cause an increase in temperature and also no mention of the
ozone hole which would also be a key factor to this loss of ice. The research
article makes no mention of further work or investigation and there no mention
of any possible solutions to the impending sea level rise.
The Times article
seems to utilize the research article as more of an example and spends more
time on sensationalizing the topic and including causal remarks from the
researchers about their surprise at the results of the simulation. The Science Advances article includes only a
reference as to how they determined the total amount of fossil fuels left to
burn and does not state that they take into account any information regarding
the actual amounts remaining in mining areas or possible storages yet untapped.
The comments included from the researchers are of little scientific merit and
only impress the point that the researchers were surprised and in disbelief as
to how serious the situation is. The lack of explanation or discussion of the
reliability of the simulation models is also of concern and leaves room for
error or misinterpretation.
Overall, the Times
article brings an important topic to the attention of the public with evidence
from a scientific research article which is a positive result. However, the
article ignores most of the specific data presented in the paper and instead
brings in the political opinions of the author, drastic comments about the
future of human existence and unreferenced statements about ice loss and sea
level rise.
New York Times
Article
Science Advances 11
Sep 2015:
Vol. 1, no. 8, e1500589
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500589
Vol. 1, no. 8, e1500589
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500589
I do agree that the New York Times articles leaves a lot to be desired. It is interesting that the article states, "Climate scientists have long assumed that countries would recognize the dangers of continuing to dig up and burn the world’s fossil fuels. Yet they have been saying that for 30 years, and political efforts in that time to limit the burning have been ineffectual." Though I agree that more effort to reduce fossil fuels emissions needs to occur sooner rather than later, I think this overlooks the search for other energy sources. I thought that it would have been important for the New York Times author to tie in the economics as to why countries continue to burn fossil fuels at the rate they do as a reason for why countries have not switched to cleaner energy sources. That being said, it is startling that the ice melting rate is as rapid as it is. This suggests that more effort than ever should be focused on finding effective alternate energy sources.
ReplyDeleteThe NYT article was quite pessimistic, and did not mention low emissions scenarios. The Science Advances article does state that in some predictions snowfall can be increased in the Antarctic. How accumulation of this snow may or may not lead to ice formation was not elaborated. But, I think it would have been nice to give the general audience some hope for a positive climate change.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the statement that this NYT article is sensationalizing the topic and using a bit of information from the original Science Advances article as a small springboard into the topic. Based on how the article was written (with a pessimistic focus, as Alex mentioned), I'm lead to believe that the main purpose is to convince readers of the impending impacts of climate change, specifically on sea ice. I think that the article will fail to convince unbelievers (or even people who are somewhat skeptical) of the harmful impact of fossil fuel use. This is because the NYT article, based off of the Science Advances study, focuses on a time scale of 1,000 years. Although on a geologic time scale, this is a very short period of time, the average reader will likely not be disturbed by this since it will occur well past their lifetime. Incorporating the original article into the NYT article did a disservice to both; not enough focus was placed on the original data and the findings did not do much to bolster the NYT's argument. I think the final quote did a good job of tying the arguments together, but that the should have been more of these connections made throughout the article.
ReplyDeleteThe times article uses science to argue for a policy change which is not necessarily bad. As long as the article is explaining the science without bias in a sound manner, then they did a good job. However, the article should have explained the mechanisms from the research of why ice disintegrates due to global warming. I am also curious to know what the estimate is for the world reserves of fossil fuels. Finally, I don't know what way people can be convinced of climate change. Certain writing techniques might work like sensationalizing a topic, but sometimes it might not. I am not necessarily a fan of that because I think some people get jaded.
ReplyDeleteI thought that both the academic and pop sci article provide an interesting perspective on the climate change and sea level rise discussion. Given that consumption of fossil fuels has not dramatically slowed, what are the long term impacts of continuing our current rates of consumption? While I agree that the NYT piece shifts the focus to the human aspect of the story, centering on the impact to coastal cities and citing the failure of politicians to act, I actually felt they did a pretty good job staying true to the original article and would disagree that it was sensationalism. I felt the author was very deliberate in emphasizing that this was a somewhat hypothetical scenario (what would happen if we burn all the fossil fuels, rather than what will happen when we do burn all the fossil fuels).
ReplyDeleteGreat summary on the NYT article as well as the academic paper! I definitely agree that the NYT article inaccurately represented the study and instead cherry-picked the most dramatic statements to further its sensational approach to the topic. One of the parts that I thought was most laughable was their portrayal of Dr. Ken Caldeira, a professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University. Dr. Caldeira expressed surprised at NYT's description of how "half the Antarctic ice sheet would melt or fall into the sea in the first thousand years", to which he responded, "I didn't expect it would go so fast... I thought it would take something like 10,000 years". The article continues to say that "[this] most basic finding... is less surprising, at least to scientists who specialize in studying the history of the earth". To be honest, I don't know what NYT information was based off of because the Science Advances study definitely doesn't show the ice sheet melting within 1,000 years. Lastly, I found it interested how in the study it clearly stated that the entire ice sheet stores water equivalent to 58 m in global sea-level rise, but in the NYT article it says that it can increase the sea-level to more than 160 feet...? Are they not looking at global increase? I'm confused.
ReplyDelete