New Environmental Law Institute® Book Published — Reporting on Climate Change: Understanding the Science

September 2003

The Environmental Law Institute® has released the third edition of Reporting on Climate Change: Understanding the Science, a resource for print and broadcast editors and reporters dealing with what many consider the foremost environmental issues facing modern society.

"Most of the public gets most of its information — and therefore most of its impressions and misimpressions — on environmental and natural resources issues from the mass media," said ELI President Leslie Carothers. "This guide will strengthen journalism’s substantive scientific base in reporting on this vital issue. As such, it helps carry forward ELI’s historic commitment to integrating sound law, science, and policy."

 

Reporting on Climate Change draws exclusively on the mainstream scientific findings reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and provides reporters and editors highly readable and highly authoritative background information on the science of global climate change. It deliberately avoids the purported scientific positions put forward by advocacy and special interest organizations to focus instead on the scientific findings widely believed to represent world-class climate research and findings.

Reporting on Climate Change does not address the wide range of highly contentious policy, economic, and social issues that are also an important of well-rounded journalism on the climate change issue, but instead focuses on the fundamental science as reported by IPCC. It is designed ideally to appeal to the interested but non-expert audience, and it is likely to be useful both to journalists specifically and also to other communicators and educators seeking sound scientific information on the climate change issue.

Reporting on Climate Change was produced by ELI with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. The complete version of the guidebook will be available online at http://www.elistore.org. For more information contact Bud Ward at 703-821-0690 or budward@cox.net.