Guest lecture by Therese Haakonsen Karlseng in Media & Politics, Lillehammer University College

1. Media and Politics: Climate
Change
Therese H. Karlseng, Managing Director Inland
Norway Energy Agency

2. My background
• Political Science, Fridtjof Nansens
Institute
• Point Carbon
– International Carbon Markets
• Ministry of Petroleum and Energy
– National Climate Change Policy, EUpolicy, International Negotiations
• Hedmark County Consil
– Energy, Mitigating Climate Change,
Climate Change Adoptation
• Norwegian Parliament
– Energy/Environment, Transport and
Communication (Media)
• Inland Norway Energy Agency

3. About INEA
Regional knowledge centre for energy efficiency and
renewable energy. The first of its kind in Norway. We
support the transition to more sustainable energy
systems ie. mitigating climate change.
INEA spread management practices, provides
guidance, and offer a range of services based on
specific local needs. We serve municipalities, public
and private businesses and households.
INEA is a non-profit and independent company.

4. Road Map
• An Inconvenient Truth and Framing of Climate
Change
• Framing Climate Change and the Norwegian
Parliamentary Election
• The new IPCC-report
– Process
– Key Findings
– Media Coverage and Responses – deniers
• Questions

5. An Inconventient Truth
• Nisbet: Frames are interpretive
storylines that set a specific train of
thought in motion, communicating
why an issue might be a problem,
who or what might be responsible for
it, and what should be done about it
• Which frames do Al Gore use in
this film?

6. Frames Used
Monster
Al Gore mentions: Hurricanes, downpours,
floddings, droughts, soil evaporation, icemelting affecting polar bears and the golf
stream (if it stops we could enter a new ice-age
in 10 years time..), sea level rise affecting
millions of people, illness, vectors, 100 of
millions of refugess

7. Public Accountability
Al Gore: ”Scientist are obliged to represent the truth as
they see it.” ”We already know all we need to know. We
have everything we need – say political will”
President Obama similarly invoked the public
accountability frame and Gore’s film while announcing
his science policy advisers:
”Because the truth is that promoting science isn’ t
just about providing resources—it’ s about protecting
free and open inquiry. It’ s about ensuring that facts and
evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or
ideology. It’ s about listening to what our scientists have
to say, even when it’s inconvenient— especially when it’
s inconvenient”

8. Moral and Ethics
Gore: ”How should I spend my time on this
earth” ”It is a moral issue – to rise again to
secure our future”

9. What About Scientific Uncertainty of
Human Induced Climate Change?
• Gore: It is a misconseption created by a few
with the objective to reposition global
warming as theory rather than a fact.
• Scientist agree on the human induced climate
change.
• However in the US (at that time) more than
50 % of the articles on climate change
mentiones uncertainty

10. Media and Climate Change
• Political reporters apply a conflict and
strategy frame to the policy debate
• News criteria: identification, importance,
sensation, conflict, actuality (Kvisa)
– Journalists in Norway and other countries use these
criteria to write stories that sell
– Or you use these to get your news story on

11. • The conflict and strategy frame on climate
change creates a false balance; by giving
equal weight to contrarian views on climate
science, journalists has presented the false
impression that there is limited expert
agreement on the causes of climate change
• And many reporters do not challenge climate
sceptics arguments

12. • Generally: It is getting better - less false
balance. In Norway – national media is better
than local media
• INEA: Should we participate in the debate on
human indued climate change or use other
frames ie. an economic frame showing the
possibilities of savings, green jobs etc.

13. Climate Change in the Norwegian
Parliamentary Election

14. Strategy
• Climate change is one of the (or the) greatest
challenges of our time
• But can you win an election on this topic?

15. • Al Gore: ”If an issue is not on top of the
constituencys tongue, it is easy to ignore. We
deal with that tomorrow”
• Nisbet: Although the Obama administration is
committed to addressing climate change, the
necessary level of public engagement with
the issue still appears to be missing.
- So what is the situation like i Norway?

16. 2011: Spring
floddings and
rain summer
and autumn

17. 2011:
Insurance companies
register 37 113
damages due to
water in buildings.
Compensation
payments NOK 2,2
billion

18. 2013: Spring rain
and floddings
Nettavisen 22. mai: Tog står,
veier er stengt og kjellere er
oversvømt
Trafikken på E6 ved Espa er hindret av
flom og vannmasser
Vallset: Hus og biler under
vann etter flom i lokal bekk
Kvam sentrum ødelagt – her fra oversvømt
jorde og undergravd jernbanelinje i Kvam
Foto: Mosvold Larsen/NTB scanpix
Nationen 31. mai: Over en
million dekar matjord rammet
av flommen

22. Source: MDG-net

26. Norwegian Parliamentary Election and
Climate Change – which Frames
were used?

27. Moral and
Ethics…

29. Other Frames?

30. The new IPCC report – last
Friday
– Process
– Key findings
– Media focus - responses and climate
change deniers
Questions?

31. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)
•
UN's scientific climate panel.
•
IPCC does not undertake research of its own but focuses on
review and structuring of existing research to assess the state of
research.
•
Provide world's countries with best possible scientific basis on
climate change and effects for humans, natural environment and
society
•
More than 800 experts from 85 countries working on the IPCC
reports to be published in 2013-14 (Fifth Assessment Report, AR
5).
•
AR5 contributions from three working groups. WG1 - physical
science basis of climate change, WG2 - impacts, adapation and
vulnerability, and WG3 - mitigation of climate change. Syntesis
Report (oct 2014) draws on assessments made by WGs

33. IPCCs 5th report says
• with 95% certainty, humans are the dominant
cause of global warming since the 1950s
• the period from 1983-2012 in the Northern
Hemisphere was likely the warmest 30-year
period of the last 1,400 years. Each of the
last three decades has got successively
warmer, and these decades have all been
warmer than any of the preceding decades
since 1850.
In
the
last
IPCC
report
2007
that
came
a4er
Gores
film
–
scien9st
were
90
%,
very
likely
–
now
95
%
• 90
%
certainty
hea9ng
of
the
oceans,
90%
emissions

34. International reactions
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the study was a call for
governments, many of which have been focused on spurring weak
growth rather than fighting climate change, to work to agree on a
planned UN accord in 2015 to combat global warming. “The heat is
on. Now we must act,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the report “yet another
wake-up call.”“Those who deny the science or choose excuses over
action are playing with fire,” he said in a statement, referring to
skeptics who question the need for urgent action.
European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it was
time to treat the Earth’s health.
“If your doctor was 95 per cent sure you had a serious disease, you
would immediately start looking for the cure,” she said.

35. Skeptics’ reaction: “No one should
trust the UN Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change report issued
today,” said Bob Carter of the Ottawabased International Climate Science
Coalition. “The IPCC has a history of
malfeasance that even includes
rewording recommendations of expert
science advisers to fit the alarmist
agenda of participating governments.”