Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2023, 59(5): 535-552 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2023.031

‘I Can Make Warnings about All Kinds of Statistically Possible Climate Extremes, but Who'll Warn Me about Me?’: Elements of Climate Scepticism in the Expert Presentation of Climate Change in the Media

Renáta Mikešová
Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i., Praha

The Czech Republic is among the countries in Europe with a relatively more sceptical view of climate change, especially when it comes to opinions about human responsibility for climate change and the need for individual measures to mitigate its impacts. This article focuses on a relatively less noticed aspect of climate-sceptic opinions in the presentation of this issue in the Czech media, namely doubts about the scientific knowledge on climate change expressed by scientists themselves. It is based on two basic observations. First, scientists and experts play a key role in the presentation of climate change. Second, highlighting the inconsistency of scientific reasoning and the uncertainty of science is one of the basic strategies of the climate-sceptic movement. The aim of this paper is to analyse the media coverage of two important Czech experts on climate change - Václav Cílek and Jan Pretel - and to determine whether they communicate the scientific uncertainty on this subject. The analysis shows a considerable number of doubts of various kinds in the articles of both of the two experts, which may have to do with the Czech public's circumspect attitude towards climate change and the slow change in their view of it.

Keywords: climate change, media, popularisation, expert, climascepticism

Received: June 8, 2021; Revised: April 25, 2023; Accepted: April 26, 2023; Prepublished online: April 27, 2023; Published: November 6, 2023  Show citation

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Mikešová, R. (2023). ‘I Can Make Warnings about All Kinds of Statistically Possible Climate Extremes, but Who'll Warn Me about Me?’: Elements of Climate Scepticism in the Expert Presentation of Climate Change in the Media. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 59(5), 535-552. doi: 10.13060/csr.2023.031
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