Appreciating Andrew Revkin (more on journalism and global warming)

Last December, Andrew Revkin published a Science Times story and Dot Earth post exploring the possibility that humankind's powers of persuasion, even at their very best, may not be up to the task of moving the public to action on global warming. He ran through a number of sociological reasons -- denial, our ability to normalize bad situations, our must-see-it-to-believe-it sensibility, the "finite pool of worry" the human mind can contain, etc. -- that might explain why public will to leave behind a carbon-intense global economy remains sluggish. In other words, he looks square at a lot of disheartening evidence and reports that we may not become sufficiently motivated until nature begins raining down truly catastrophic blows. And then he simply soldiers past despair:

As a journalist, of course, it would be hard for me to abandon the notion that language can help society meaningfully address the entwined energy and climate challenges. I’ll be posting some fresh efforts by experts to describe the situation and offer solutions. You can post yours, as well, at nytimes.com/dotearth.

It was characteristic Revkin -- stoic and steadfastly committed to practicing and refining a highly transparent, collaborative science journalism. As CJR pointed out last week Revkin has long had a prominent streak of media criticism running through his work, and an acute, reflexive awareness that journalistic practice has to evolve if it's to be equal to the challenge of reporting stories like global warming. Back in 2005 he contributed a chapter to NASW's Field Guide for Science Writers that concludes thusly:

There is one way that journalists dealing with the environment can start working on building reflexes that improve that balance of heat and light, boost the ability to convey the complex without putting readers (or editors) to sleep, and otherwise attempt to break the barriers to effective communication with the public.

This is to communicate more with scientists. By getting a better feel for the breakthrough–setback rhythms of research, a reporter is less likely to forget that the state of knowledge now about endocrine disruptors or PCBs or climate is in flux. This requires using those rare quiet moments between breaking-news days —sure there aren't many—to talk to ecologists or toxicologists who aren't on the spot because their university has just issued a press release.

The more scientists and journalists talk outside the pressures of a daily news deadline, the more likely it is that the public —through the media—will appreciate what science can and cannot offer to the debate over difficult questions about how to invest scarce resources or change personal behaviors.

Three years later, Revkin's Dot Earth blog has become exactly the sort of ongoing backchannel conversation described above. A shining example materialized in last week's print story and corresponding blog entry on the "journalistic whiplash" the public often experiences when the media provides blow-by-blow coverage of conflicting climate-science studies. At this writing, there are 250+ comments on the blog entry, including at least a score from well-known scientists and journalists, and many more deep substantive comments from Dot Earth's regular readers -- there's just an immense amount of good thinking pulled together here.

At the same time, this blog entry's comments section is -- like almost all climate-related Dot Earth entries -- a war zone. My heart usually quails a bit as I'm about to dip into Dot Earth comments; to work my way through the worthy material I know I'll have to sift through an awful lot of dreck and provocation from, as Revkin puts it, "those hunkered in intellectual silos (on various parts of the climate battlefield)."

Which brings me back round to applauding the stoic professionalism Revkin brings to his work. He faces the roil of Dot Earth's comments section, day in and day out, and stays focused on bringing together knowledgeable voices and intensifying the candlepower of his stories and blog posts. And he makes do with the fairly bare-bones New York Times blogging platform (see postscript below). There are other places one can find high-level discussion of climate science and solutions, but if there's a more compelling experiment in improving the signal between scientists and lay people than Dot Earth, I don't know of it. I hardly think you need the encouragement, Andrew, but stay the course.

Postscript to New York Times web technologists: Help poor Andy out, why don't ya -- implement a comment system that requires registration and includes a user-driven recommendation engine that allows readers to thumb comments up/down (as at Engadget), or "favorite" comments (as at HuffPo or BoingBoing, and soon here at OnEarth.org), or at least flag abusive comments. If you don't want to build it yourselves (or, as would be my guess, are lumbering along through development of a proprietary community platform) just plug in Disqus or Intense Debate for the time being. And maybe hire a community manager. You've got a large, wonderful, passionately engaged community here -- give them a job to do, they'll love it!