I was actually struck by how much media attention this IPCC report got, compared with the earlier reports. Front page news on the NY Times, at least on the website, which kept modifying the headline all day, I wish I'd kept screenshots of the different titles. It was the very first item on the Radio-Canada (French-language version of CBC) television news on Friday night, and they did an in-depth report on it later in the program. I don't remember any coverage like that with the previous IPCC reports.

If it got buried by other stories in the mainstream media, it's probably due to the fact that many editors felt the IPCC wasn't saying anything the public hasn't already heard, they just haven't heard it from the IPCC before. And also there's the issue of the MEGO effect (My Eyes Glaze Over), which makes mainstream media editors leery of climate change science stories in general. "Too complicated, people will zap the channel or skip over the story."

I don't understand Nisbett. I thought the report got a great deal of attention. So count me confused....

Benny Big Eye

I heard a number of non-enviro friends remark on the report -- it clearly seeped into their consciousness. Where that gets us -- well, that's another question.  

>   2. Find some way of getting good policies in place without a groundswell of popular support.

>Most people reflexively assume we have to do the first. I'm beginning to incline to the second. Much more on that in a later post.

This should be interesting. However in your post on this,you might want to avoid words like "reflexively". If you have come up with a new and innovative tactic or strategy it might be wise not imply that the rest of environmental movement is on automatic pilot, or is foolish or unthinking or blinkered or too narrow or something like that for not having thought of it first. If you have something new, or even have rediscovered something that is being overlooked, at least consider it is because you are smart rather than because everyone else is stupid.  :)

I guess my point was that it's conventional wisdom that we need something like a "sea change in consciousness at the grassroots." That notion's been around so long now that lots of people don't stop to question it. I don't know that I'm ready to say it's wrong, just that I'd like to complicate the question a little and introduce some countervailing considerations. And not because I'm smart, just cause they pay me to fill up this blog every day. What am I gonna do, write anti-anti-dirty-hippie screeds all day every day? (Believe me, I'm tempted.)

www.grist.org

The IPCC report didn't get more than one day's worth of attention because it didn't really say anything new. So scientists are worried about global warming and attribute some of it to man. So what? They've been saying this for many years now. The new IPCC numbers are just an adjustment of previously reported details. There really isn't anything so new here that people haven't already heard it before.

The IPCC just said the waterfall is closer to our drifting boat, and we are accelerating forward, same old stuff.  The silence is strange.

Between that class act by Larry King & the fine commentaries from the preeminent scientific brainiac, Glenn Beck and his esteemed guest J Inhofe, CNN has once again shown how to report news in the 2000s: Read the GOP talking points.

From where I sit, there's been a huge change in the public mood. You never get "sea changes in consciousness at the grassroots", people's worldviews are more like huge battleships that take forever to turn around. I think you're too close to the glacier to see how fast it's retreating. Now, before I use another metaphor, consider some of the things that are new since Feb 6, 2006:
Cellulosic ethanol
George Bush admitting AGW
"Carbon neutral"--word of the year
an avalanche of previously skeptical or hesitant notables "coming out" on AGW
Al Gore is an admired public figure
the Vanity Fair "green" issue.

Now I realise what these add up to is not: concrete action. But we're talking about the public consciousness.

Details of the IPCC report have been trickling out for months now, and it's still not officially finished yet, and it's a really dry, detailed scientific document stuffed with abstruse concepts and a tangle of "likely", "very likely", "extremely likely", "more likely than not"... a story like this getting the lead in most of the media around the world is a pretty big deal. Did you expect fireworks?

I don't expect people to talk about it much, but I think that for many this was the thing that quietly confirmed what they've been thinking about for a long time. It's the last nail in the coffin of the denial stage. That whole stupid debate is officially over, and that's HUGE.

I guess it depends on which you watch and engage in ...

DailyKos, which certainly ranks up there in terms of political activist communities, has had a major upsurge of Global Warming-related discussions since the New Year.

I remember the 60's in New Zealand, and the obsesive attention of rightwing radio to "Womens Lib" - the incessant putdowns, mockery, hysteria.

You never hear that sort of stuff now. Even the right wing fields female attackdogs like Coulter, female politicians for Senate seats.

But those days were the last throes of the old guard. Within a year, 1968, job openings were no longer restricted by sex. It was over for their side.

Likewise, now:
To determine the reaction, don't listen to us grist readers in the choir, NYT readers, dailykos diaryists etc, listen to rightwing talkradio.

That same obsessive attention of the rightwing talkmedia is now lazer-focused on the same kind of mockery and hysterical denial that preceded that sea change in the 60's  except now its all about mocking AGW.

Mark my words, they are finished.

Periodically I grit my teeth and tune into Limbaugh, and when I did so this (Tuesday)morning it was to hear him inaugurate a global warming theme song ("Hellfire," which us boomers will all remember fondly).  He said he was doing this because of the increasing frequency of GW segments.  As far as I can tell, it's still the same old trash talk from him, but a whole lot more of it.  Recall that a couple of weeks ago his front page had TWC climatologist Heidi Cullen shoulder-to-shoulder with Nancy Pelosi for four days.  I've seen references to other media wingnuts similarly giving GW increased coverage.  

It also became clear this AM that Monday's Fraser Institute event trashing the SPM had been a goose egg in terms of media coverage.  There's no way that would have happened a year ago.

While I haven't tried to do any sort of count, there also seem to have been a whole lot of editorials and analysis pieces saying the debate is over.  This includes plenty of U.S. publications, although the big surprise for me was the Torygraph, which had just published Monckton's garbage a few months ago but changed its stance over the weekend.

All in all, the trend seems good.

I actually thought it got a lot of attention. But why release on a Friday? Shades of the Bush administration!

I think if it hadn't been for the whacky weather (gw-related or not), this report, Al Gore, and AIT would have been ignored. Nuthin' like a 60-degree January day to make converts.