|  Climate change coverage changes focus
Climate change isn't just science news anymore.
For many media outlets, the scientific debate over the existence of climate change is over, and the question of its social impacts is taking center stage.
At a daylong seminar in Portland Saturday, more than 80 print and broadcast journalists from across the country sat face to face with leading experts on climate change. The East Oregonian Publishing Company's year-long look at climate change in 2006, which was published in The Capital Press, was among work cited as leading the curve on addressing the issue.
On the agenda Saturday was moving news coverage beyond the existence of a warmer world and into the consequences.
Bob Doppelt, director of the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative, said his experience as a source for a news story on climate change triggered questions in his mind about whether journalists were seeing the same the picture as the majority of climate scientists.
Doppelt leads a research team focused on social science of climate change. Seeing how the media was struggling to tackle climate change issues moved him to start talking to reporters about what aspects of the story they found challenging.
Saturday's seminar, "The Changing Climate Issue: Reporting Ahead of the Curve," was designed to bring scientists and journalists together to talk to each other in an unprecedented event that was "just for journalists and just on climate change," said Doppelt.
"The issue is fairly new and changing rapidly," he said. "How do you cover that story fairly and do it in a credible way?"
The level of interest in the topic from journalists across the country was twice what was expected, said Doppelt, suggesting to him "the issue is ripe right now."
Speakers helping reporters learn the implications of climate change included co-authors of recent reports to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, climatologists, and seasoned environmental journalists.
A panel of journalists, including Capital Press Executive Editor Elaine Shein, The Oregonian's environmental reporter Michael Milstein, Christy George of Oregon Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio reporter Richard Harris, shared insights on reporting climate change news.
Instead of balancing a handful of climate skeptics with the bulk of scientific findings on global warming, reporters are entering conversations with economists, sociologists, city planners and policy analysts, said Harris, the keynote speaker and a science reporter for NPR. They're looking at the most likely climate change scenarios and asking how human health and safety - or the national economy - will be impacted.
"The stories we're headed into are much more difficult," said Harris. "Every economist can have a different answer."
Skeptics of climate change still have a voice and a place in the news, Harris said. They still have opinions that reflect popular values and influence political action. Some raise good scientific questions, but they don't need to carry equal weight in science stories.
Climate experts including Washington state climatologist Dr. Philip Mote, Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, Dr. Michael Hanemann of the University of California-Berkeley and IPCC report co-authors Dr. Jayant Sathaye, Dr. Patricia Romero-Lankao, Dr. Kathleen Miller gave reporters detailed presentations on the state of global warming science. Though some of the science may be settled, they said, the political, economic and philosophical debates are just getting started.
Morris "Bud" Ward, a founder of the Society of Environmental Journalists, told reporters climate change news is quickly spreading from science beats to the city desk, business pages and food sections as communities wrestle with the implications of climate science findings.
"Environmental reporters are going to lose this story as an exclusive story on their beat," said Ward. "This story is too big for any one desk."
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