Neither money nor media coverage lacking in US climate debate, study finds

Nature : Environmental groups and their supporters spend more money on climate-change and clean-energy activities and campaigns than skeptical conservative groups and their industry supporters, according to the report Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate . Published by Matthew Nisbet, associate professor of communication at American University in Washington, DC, the report questions some of the most common reasons given for US political inaction on global warming. One common misperception, he claims, is that media attempts at balance give too much coverage to the small minority of climate-change skeptics, whereas he found that not to be true. In fact, the report finds that during 2009 and 2010, some 9 out of 10 news and opinion articles about climate change in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.com reflected the consensus scientific position, writes David Adam for Nature. The recent failure in US cap-and-trade legislation, Nisbet concludes, was not due to a lack of money or a problem in communicating the message, but rather to the framing of global warming as a problem that could be solved by a single specific policy.