If we analyze the strong denial campaign in the United States of America and the public scientific scandal of Climategate, we can see that there is actually a relation between journalism and natural science, but this one seems to be a rough and not a healthy one. If the communication process is observed from the eyes of the public, we can think that scientists have some hidden interests and journalists are just doing their job, helping society to know the „true story behind what it is shown“, actually they are putting out all those flaws that drive into uncertainties and sometimes into lies. However, if you think as a scientist, you are doing an objective process of communication about what the earth is showing and can be represented. Under this context, Does journalism adequately represent the uncertainties with regards to the 2-degree limit?.
With this question journalists, scientists, right-wing politicians, activists and media critics gather to talk about how journalists communicate climate change topics, especially when it comes to dealing with uncertainties in projections. During the debate lot of interesting point of views came out: Media critics stated that journalists are doing everything wrong because they do not have the background needed to understand what it is explained in the IPCC report, framing the results as more uncertain as they actually are. Within this line, activists think journalist care about creating conflict and not informing uncertainties, and scientists concerned about how journalists put into perspective their results, creating in some cases a false conception of physical processes. On the other hand, politicians support journalism, and think they work to serve society and play a major role in the information process, they believe that when it comes to uncertainties misunderstandings are not a journalisms problem, they are a problem of the way scientists communicate their results to the public. Journalist, think they are doing their best job with the information available and with the inputs scientists give them.
With all these points of view, it is possible to see two statements: first, journalism is doing a bad job in communicating natural science and IPCC results, because they show what they understand or what they think is going to create a bigger impact on society. Second, journalism is there to give information to society and they are doing the best they can do with the information they can get. As can be seen, they are divided into two parties, and it seems they have strong arguments to put into discussion, so is it possible for them to meet half way? Should scientists think more about better strategies to communicate? Should journalism think about asking questions to understand and not to create a „newsworthy“? At the end of the panel, it seems there is not an easy answer to all of this and it looks like it is more about a cooperative process rather than asking if journalism adequately represent uncertainties or not because we can find a lot of different answers to this question.