Keeping Climate Stories in Context

CLIMATE CHANGE -- September 18, 2012 at 11:59 AM EDT

Keeping Climate Stories in Context

Update: 3 p.m. ET | If the amount of personal email that hit my inbox last night or the comment thread on Spencer Michel's blog post featuring Anthony Watts is any indication, many of you care in some way, shape, or form about the NewsHour's coverage of climate.

Let me try and clear a couple of things up regarding what was on-air, what was online, when and why.

Spencer Michels, our reporter on the story, posted a blog post and lengthier interview to our Rundown blog Monday evening, a couple of hours before the broadcast segment was on-air or online. Here is that video.

This was one element; it was not the entire piece. Many of those who wrote to me personally and who posted in the comments section may have believed that to be the entire broadcast segment. Click here to watch the entire broadcast segment.

The entire segment first aired on the broadcast around 6:28 p.m. ET, and then was encoded, transcribed and posted to our website by approximately 9:30 p.m. ET.

Spencer will have another blog post today offering the views of other scientists in the broadcast concerned about the threats of climate change.

Last night's broadcast piece was one segment, which you might want to look at in the context of several other segments we've been doing at the NewsHour on climate. We have an entire topic page dedicated to Coping with Climate Change.

Our climate coverage has included a conversation with climate scientist Jim Hansen and a piece on the massive losses to the cherry crops due to unseasonable weather in Michigan.

We did pieces focusing on Pacific Northwest tribes planning for climate change, and we took viewers to parts of coastal Louisiana where relative sea level rise is a reality they face now.

We went to two Texas towns running out of water due to the severe droughts of recent years and even took a look at challenges climate science education is facing in classrooms. Here is a YouTube playlist for the half dozen stories I've been part of.

Beyond the stories I've been involved with, PBS NewsHour has long covered the scientific research and analysis surrounding climate change, with several stories online and on-air this summer. In July, we looked at the connection between extreme weather events and climate change. We also explored what may help explain why a massive ice sheet in Greenland seemed to be melting in four days.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post implied that Anthony Watts is a scientist. As we reported on the broadcast last night, he is not.

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