[Coral-List] Pew Report on Climate Change: The role of the press, the Internet and education

[RainbowWarriorsInternational]

Dear all,

Yes the outlook has never been bleaker, but that has never been an obstacle in defending the essence of science and the underlying principles.

There are three major obstacles in the common man or the general public having access, being taught or being given information about scientifically backed facts.

The Internet is under siege if you follow the "net neutrality" issue, where government regulators want to have some extent of control of what should be accessible to the Internet users, but this is a freedom of information and free speech issue and the US Supreme Court has an excellent track record in defending both.

So we are left with the educators and communicators.

Since the educators in their formal training are fed the basics of science and with it all its trappings, philosophies and its educational values in the formation of informed and educated citizens, I do not think they are at fault.

So we are left with the communicators, or what we call the communication, news and information media.

And of these the news media are the single most important lot.

My organization is a member of the Global Campaign for Climate Action and recently this coalition's director Kelly Rigg gave some views on the press. 

The Huffington Post ran an article in which Kelly Rigg addresses the press and urges them to do NO harm:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg/post_1210_b_778882.html.

This is in essence the real problem, the focus of the press, or simply put the criteria they use to decide which articles or news to run and which criteria or news to ignore.

In this every scientist has the right to defend and if so morally, ethically, socially or otherwise inclined feel the need to educate the public about the hard scientific facts on any issue.

It is the press which sets the conditions for public debate and if they get their facts straight, politicians will find it hard to ignore the truth.

And I would like to leave you with a quote that summons up one of the single most important reasons for the raison d'etre of science:

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved 
by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious 
realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The drive to know, the drive to dream and the drive to improve the lives of fellow men is what makes all the difference in the pursuit of science.

Milton Ponson, President
Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
(Rainbow Warriors International) Tel. +297 568 5908
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad 
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean 
Email: southern_caribbean at yahoo.com    http://www.rainbowwarriors.net

To unite humanity in a global society dedicated to a sustainable way of life