[Tanada]

Like the OP points out, a lot of folks are getting their chosen collection of stories via interneted social media, twitter, facebook, aggregators. The problem there, is that their choices self select the topics they see.

I think FB has algorithms that do that automatically - no need to self select.

It does, and I was including that; google also watches what you choose and tailors the presentation to your interests. Google also often shows an article and explicitly asks you whether you are interested in a topic. Couple clicks on "no" for global warming, and its done for. Similar for youtube (a part of google, but still).

By "self select" I don't mean a necessarily active, deliberate choice, clicking a button, or whatever. But rather the inclusive set of behaviors that is used by aggregators to display content that users will click on.

Yes that is exactly the point I tried to make earlier as well. If your online life consists of Hollywood starlet trouble of the week and your cable TV viewing consists of The Kardashians and the Survivor reality TV shtick pretty soon Google and FB and Twitter and whomever else will use the metadata generated to target your information gathering to those topics so they can sell advertising to people who watch those sort of things. I watch sci-fi and documentaries and shows like Years Of Living Dangerously and environmental issues show up in my news feeds and google searches as a result. It is not some grand conspiracy, it is just the business of selling ads to targeted consumers.

[ennui2]

If there was so much censorship, news aggregator sites like Desdemona Despair wouldn't exist. I used to personally harvest doomer news stories to paste on my FB wall. I did this for a good 2-3 years straight. I still see a fair share of doomy stuff scroll by my Science Daily feed or off of Google News without even looking for it. Nobody gave a rat's ass. There's plenty of news like the one from the UK about limits to growth being true, or go back to the major news "event", Earth 2100. Or Live Earth, a worldwide event. There is no censorship (outside of Fox News). PEOPLE JUST DON'T CARE.

[Hawkcreek]

In my opinion, the only reason GW is beginning to receive so much play is that the elite are starting to also wake up. They are becoming afraid, for some reason.
Maybe they are beginning to realize that it won't be very much fun to land your private jet, if the entire remaining world population is at the airfield ready to tear you to pieces (before they die).
All the other stories are kind of side issues for the powerful. It has always been that way. The weak and powerless are just a minor issue to the elite when they want something.

[Lore]

GW is gaining attention right now driven by events. You have a high percentage of people in the Western World aware of climate change and are simply connecting the dots as drought, floods and storms become more intense and frequent. It gets increasingly harder for news outlets to ignore it all when people are actually losing their lives, but still, they often downplay the GW connection when reporting these stories.

[Whitefang]

Not a bad summery of that methane monster, must be a day and night job to keep that one out of people's minds.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2849 ... nster-roar

He went on to issue a stark warning. "Further acceleration of these processes is very likely to lead to an 'abrupt climate change' system reorganization from a cold, snowy, ice-covered Arctic Ocean to a 'blue Arctic Ocean' regime," he said. "The final state could have a global temperature average being 5 or 6 degrees Celsius warmer and the transition to this state could occur in one to two decades, as has occurred many times in the past as recorded in paleorecords."
The advent of the "blue Arctic Ocean" Beckwith warns us of is only a matter of time, and will most likely happen before 2020, considering that exponential decline in Arctic summer sea ice volume has already been determined by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System data and models, which have been corroborated with recent CryoSat measurements, as well as modeling by the Naval Graduate School Regional Climate Models.
Beckwith believes the first of these "blue ocean" events will likely last a few weeks to one month the first time it happens, but then extend to several months just a few years later.
We are already in the midst of what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history.

Meanwhile, the IPCC has not addressed Arctic methane releases as a runaway feedback loop, nor has the mainstream media across the political spectrum.
"Then, the greatly increased Arctic warming from albedo collapse would likely result in a year round 'Arctic blue ocean' within a decade or two, completing the regime shift to a much warmer climate," he said.

Thus, Beckwith, like Shakhova, warns of the 50-gigaton methane burst, and fears it is only a matter of time before it occurs.
I asked Leifer if he believed we have already triggered a rapid increase in global temperatures that could lead to the kind of abrupt climate shifts of which Beckwith warns.
"Recently, it has been announced that 2014 is the warmest year ever in the instrumental records," he said. "A large preponderance of the heat added to the climate system over the last decade or so has gone into heating the oceans and when this heat balance cycles back to the atmosphere we will see a very rapid rise in global average temperatures."

Current super Nino could be the new normal, spark to the 50 Gton release, leading to the hothouse in one or two decades. 30% harvest loss, wordwide.....peak humanity.
I bet those 30.000 millionares from Sao Paulo already bugged out, way before the power goes down. Wonder if those olympic games will still be held next year, must be near impossible to hide the disaster of a dying population.

[ennui2]

Just don't buy this argument.

Here's an example of a ScienceDaily article that just spontaneously popped into my FB feed.

http://www.sciencealert.com/middle-east ... tudy-finds

There is plenty of doom right out in the mainstream. People are just numb to it at this point.

[onlooker]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015 ... /75223786/
Notice the quote "The interesting thing about this story is that it never mentions global warming, even though we know that there's a strong correlation between rising temperatures and wildfires". So environment stories not just censored but it seems intentionally not reported. Which it some cases may be one in the same.

[Ibon]

I mostly agree with Ennui on this question of censorship. The way we censor ourselves from the truth is far more devious then some capitalists or corporations or governments censoring the public.

The vast majority of humanity does not care for they are so fully embedded in the artificial human landscape (and increasingly in the digital one) that they have fully lost the ability to recognize the synthetic nature of their existence. It's not even active denial. It's a deeper level of ignorance.

It takes more than a few heat waves and hurricanes to penetrate this ignorance.

[onlooker]

Which is precisely why me, you Ibon and others are now convinced that humanity will now have to adapt to vastly changing circumstances and consequences that will not only initiate a die-off but completely change the human landscape regarding the way we do everything in a way that has never occurred before. That is what is both so exhilarating yet frightening about the times we are entering. That they promise a complete and utter overhaul of human ecosystems whether we wish it or not. The wildcard is global warming how bad it can get and how fast.

[Ibon]

Which is precisely why me, you Ibon and others are now convinced that humanity will now have to adapt to vastly changing circumstances and consequences that will not only initiate a die-off but completely change the human landscape regarding the way we do everything in a way that has never occurred before. That is what is both so exhilarating yet frightening about the times we are entering. That they promise a complete and utter overhaul of human ecosystems whether we wish it or not. The wildcard is global warming how bad it can get and how fast.

Agreed. The exact when and wheres and hows are not known but the trajectory is clear.

[ennui2]

I think I've made my point here, but assuming I still haven't convinced some people that there is no significant censorship on the environment, here's a major doomer porn article from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/magaz ... .html?_r=0

I expect a lot more articles like this around the time of the climate conference. Just because Fox News and the WSJ don't like covering the environment doesn't mean it's not getting mainstream coverage.

[dohboi]

I don't know if censorship is the right word, but there is very little coverage of the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event since the evolution of complex life.

For me, this should be front page news every day. GW and other harms nearly as frequent.

Most people are completely unaware of the first and still largely ignorant of the dynamics and consequences of the second, in my experience.

[onlooker]

I would add that what is really striking now is how little press coverage, the unnerving situation in the Arctic is getting. This has the potential to be truly catastrophic as our resident expert Cid Yama has carefully documented. Yet are we hearing this anywhere? This surely should be front and center on all news outlets.

[onlooker]

of course the normal stuff, blame someone for the troubles of the world. Of course maybe someday some poor SOB will be in water up to his neck and will be trying to blame someone, anyone for it. haha.

[Keith_McClary]

"One reason these numbers have been stable in recent years may be because most Americans are not hearing or talking about this issue. Our survey finds, for example, that only 40% of the American public says they hear about global warming in the media at least once a month and only 19% hear about it at least once a week," the authors wrote in the report.

The report adds that only 12 percent of Americans hear other people talking about global warming issues at least once a month. Only 4 percent said they hear others talk about these issues at least once a week.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/10962 ... al-why.htm

[ennui2]

No censorship.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015 ... e-science/

[onlooker]

No censorship.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015 ... e-science/

Yes but even when they report about these things, seems most people either ignore it or have something better to watch or read like the Kardashians or Zombies etc.

[ennui2]

No censorship.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015 ... e-science/

Yes but even when they report about these things, seems most people either ignore it or have something better to watch or read like the Kardashians or Zombies etc.

But then that is about people, not a conspiracy on the part of media colluding with business interests.

Here's more.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... te-change/

The common thread is that best climate reportage happens in egghead periodicals like National Geographic and Scientific American. But it's not like Newsweek or the major networks will fail to cover the climate conference just because they make money on car ads. After all, Earth 2100 (which nobody seems to remember) was aired by ABC.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100

[onlooker]

I agree Ennui that MSM is covering more and more global warming. But where I really see the lack of clarity and forthrightness is any attempt to connect the dots. To present stories and than say this broke a record and this type of hurricane probably would not have happened 20-30 yrs ago. Also, the most dire situation is right now in the Arctic and I for one have heard/seen ZERO coverage of what is going on there from MSM.