Scientific Assessments of Climate Change Information in News and Entertainment Media

An elite survey of members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union conducted in 2007 reveals that the vast majority of climate scientists positively assess both national print news reports and Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth as informative, with lower grades being assessed on climate change content that appeared on network and cable television news as well as in Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear. Multivariate analysis reveals that more positive scientific assessments are associated in most cases with the level of confidence scientists have in the research conducted by their colleagues as well the severity of the impact they anticipate from global warming in the years ahead.