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Reuters’ climate-change coverage ‘fell by nearly 50% with sceptic as editor’
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian
Reuters’ climate-change coverage fell by nearly 50% after a climate sceptic joined the news agency as a senior editor, a study has found.
The sharp decline in coverage since 2011, recorded by the Media Matters for America advocacy group, reinforces charges from a former staffer that Reuters cut back on climate stories under the influence of Paul Ingrassia, who is now the agency’s managing editor.
Media Matters found a 48% decline in climate-change coverage over a six-month period, after Ingrassia joined the agency in 2011.
The New York Times and other news organisations have cut back on climate coverage, closing down blogs and redeploying correspondents, at times citing financial constraints. However, Bloomberg, Reuters’ main competitor, has deepened its investment in climate change and sustainability coverage. The agency’s founder, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been a strong advocate for action on climate change.
(26 July 2013)
Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas
Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times
The polar ice cap is melting, and if executives at the Russian energy company Novatek feel guilty about profiting from that, they do not let it be known in public.
From this windswept shore on the Arctic Ocean, where Novatek owns enormous natural gas deposits, a stretch of thousands of miles of ice-free water leads to China. The company intends to ship the gas directly there.
“If we don’t sell them the fuel, somebody else will,” Mikhail Lozovoi, a spokesman for Novatek, said last month with a shrug.
(24 July 2013)
Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs
Matt McGrath, BBC
Scientists say that the release of large amounts of methane from thawing permafrost in the Arctic could have huge economic impacts for the world.
The researchers estimate that the climate effects of the release of this gas could cost $60 trillion (£39 trillion), roughly the size of the global economy in 2012.
The impacts are most likely to be felt in developing countries they say. The research has been published in the journal Nature.
Scientists have had concerns about the impact of rising temperatures on permafrost for many years. Large amounts of methane are concentrated in the frozen Arctic tundra but are also found as semi-solid gas hydrates under the sea.
(24 July 2013)
