Deglaciation in the Andean Region

human development, climate change

Media representations of uncertainty about climate change

This commentary first explains why it is important to study media representations of uncertainty around climate change. It then surveys the extensive literature on climate change and the media, and within this, the two bodies of scholarship relevant to media representations of uncertainty: i) ‘uncertainty’ as a dominant frame or discourse in media treatments; and ii) the presence of scepticism, in its various manifestations, in traditional and new media. The commentary then shows how the four submitted works have added to the existing literature: i) they have deepened understanding of the country differences between a wide variety of ‘Anglosphere’ countries and non-‘Anglosphere’ countries. Three of the works stand out for including three of the BRIC countries (Brazil, China and India) who are major emitters and major players in international negotiations; ii) they were the first to apply a taxonomy of scepticism to the content analysis, which gave a more nuanced appreciation of what type of climate scepticism can be found in which part of which newspaper in which country; iii) together they provide very large data sets over a period stretching from 2007 to 2012, which have not been replicated in the academic literature; and iv) one of the studies was the first to compare an uncertainty framing with other dominant frames such as ‘disaster’ and ‘explicit risk’. A critique is then given of the heavily quantitative approach used in the content analysis found in the works. It argues that a combination of a quantitative and a qualitative approach would have supplied more nuanced results. It revisits articles in the UK print media in 2009/10 and applies a different research method. The results suggest that a newspaper’s ideological leaning is an important driver of the treatment of climate science and scientists not just in its opinion pages, but in its news pages too. It concludes by placing this finding and others demonstrated in the submitted works within future priority areas of research identified by other scholars: the global characteristics of climate reporting and the drivers of country differences; the changing nature of sceptical discourse; and the role the media plays in fuelling, or reflecting, the political polarisation around climate change

Rocket nozzle thermal shock tests in an arc heater facility

A rocket motor nozzle thermal structural test technique that utilizes arc heated nitrogen to simulate a motor burn was developed. The technique was used to test four heavily instrumented full-scale Star 48 rocket motor 2D carbon/carbon segments at conditions simulating the predicted thermal-structural environment. All four nozzles survived the tests without catastrophic or other structural failures. The test technique demonstrated promise as a low cost, controllable alternative to rocket motor firing. The technique includes the capability of rapid termination in the event of failure, allowing post-test analysis

Disaster, uncertainty, opportunity or risk? : key messages from the television coverage of the IPCC's 2013/2014 reports

This article examines the television coverage of the three 2013 and 2014 reports by the Working Groups of the IPCC in five European countries: Germany, Norway, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. The presence, salience and dominance of four frames (disaster, uncertainty, explicit risk and opportunity) were examined in each of the bulletins monitored. The «disaster» frame was the strongest of all the frames, measured by all three metrics. «Opportunity» was the next most present, followed by «uncertainty». Although the IPCC put considerable emphasis on a risk management approach to tackling climate change in its communication of the WG2 report, the «explicit risk» frame was hardly present. The UK stood out for including some coverage of sceptical viewpoints

Book Review: climate change in the media: reporting risk and uncertainty by James Painter

With extreme weather on the rise across the globe, the way that the media reports climate change and its potential for damage is becoming increasingly important. In Climate Change in the Media: Reporting Risk and Uncertainty, James Painter looks at the way in which newspapers have shifted the way that they report climate change from a language of uncertainty to one of risk. Christopher Shaw finds this book to be a useful summary of climate politics and climate risk, but critiques the lack of discussion on how newspapers’ commercial pressures help to contribute to the wider discourse of excessive consumption, which in turn contributes to climate change

What do consumers read about meat? An analysis of media representations of the meat-environment relationship found in popular online news sites in the UK

Previous scholarship suggests that elite media have tended to pay little attention to the adverse environmental impacts associated with meat consumption and production. Through content analysis of 116 articles from 2019, published on eight popular online news sites consumed by a wide range of demographics in the UK, including lower-income groups (the sector most likely to eat meat), we identify common anti-meat and pro-meat environmental narratives, solutions and recommendations, and the dominant sentiment towards both meat consumption and production. We observed a significantly greater presence of anti-meat consumption and/or production narratives than pro-meat. Over half the articles showed anti-meat consumption sentiment, with only 5% predominately in favour. 10% were against unspecified or industrial production practices, 28% were against industrial-scale farming but supported sustainable methods; and none were entirely in favour of the meat industry. These findings are reflected in the dominant recommendation, present in over 60% of articles, to eat less meat. Our results add substantially to previous media research, particularly showing the increased volume of coverage of the meat-environment nexus, varying levels of contestation around meat eating, and the division of responsibility between consumers and industry

Divergences between mainstream and social media discourses after COP26, and why they matter

Lay Summary: Do news outlets and social media react the same way to international climate summits? In this paper, we compare the evaluations of the UN climate conference held in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021 (COP26) across a sample of English-language mainstream news outlets in four countries with those of prominent activists, politicians, international organizations, and celebrities on Facebook and Instagram. We find strong differences in the two media arenas, with news outlets presenting the summit as a moderate success and social media leaders characterizing it as a failure. We discuss the implications of this divergence on media effects and communication efforts, specifically the dangers they may pose to educating the public on key climate policy matters and mobilizing lasting support

Radioptimization - Goal based rendering

Journal ArticleThis paper presents a method for designing the illumination in an environment using optimization techniques applied to a radiosity based image synthesis system. An optimization of lighting parameters is performed based on user specified constraints and objectives for the illumination of t h e environment. The system solves for t h e "best" possible settings for: light source emissivities, element reflectivities, and spot light directionality parameters so that the design goals, such as to minimize energy or to give the the room an impression of privacy, are met. The system absorbs much of the burden for searching the design space allowing the user to focus on the goals of the illumination design rather than the intricate details of a complete lighting specification. A software implementation is described and some results of using the system are reported. The system employs an object space perceptual model based on work by Tumblin and Rushmeier to account for psychophysical effects such as subjective brightness and the visual adaptation level of a viewer. This provides a higher fidelity when comparing the illumination in a computer simulated environment against what would be viewed in the "real" world. Optimization criteria are based on subjective impressions of illumination with qualities such as "pleasantness", and "privateness". The qualities were selected based on Flynn's work in illuminating engineering. These criteria were applied to the radiosity context through an experiment conducted with subjects viewing rendered images, and the respondents evaluated with a Multi-Dimensional Scaling analysis

Communicating climate futures: a multi-country study of how the media portray the IPCC scenarios in the 2021/2 Working Group reports

The way governments and policy makers think about climate futures has a wide-ranging impact on how they formulate policy and plan for climate change impacts. In the lead-up to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the IPCC adopted a new scenarios framework that aimed to provide a fuller picture of the interacting elements and policy choices that affect climate change. However, these scenarios, known as Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), are complex and difficult to communicate. Most audiences, including policy makers, receive much of their information about climate change from mainstream media, and particularly online news sites. We therefore examined the five most popular online news sites in the UK and the USA, five popular English-language news sites in India, English-language news media from a wide range of African countries, and the Reuters News agency. Based on manual content analysis to assess 252 articles, we identify several important findings, amongst them: in all countries, the media provide little detailed explanation of how scenarios are developed, very little mention of SSPs, and virtually no detailed explanations of them; generally, journalists use the words ‘projections’, ‘futures’, and ‘pathways’ when talking about the IPCC scenarios, although some usage of ‘predictions’ or ‘forecasts’ is apparent; contrary to previous research, there were very few doomsday narratives such as ‘only 12 years to act’. We conclude by drawing out some implications for more effective communication of the IPCC scenarios