Peter Preston: Blown off course by Gustav | The Observer

Now, I don't doubt the threat or reality of climate change. It's ominous that such a threat isn't widely believed - and widely thought to be exaggerated. But have we - the scientists, the politicians, the hacks - got our tone of voice right? Every step we take is complex, and pretty uncertain. (A press seminar I was at recently saw one distinguished green belabouring another for daring to link hurricane frequency to global warming.) Tracking Gustav's last offshore hours isn't like measuring polar ice caps, to be sure. Moving butts in a bind isn't like mapping rainforests.

But credibility is common to both, and crucial. It counts when the likes of Hanna and Ike threaten devastation - and when they don't. So it's time to ask, more deeply, why the public's scepticism about climate change is growing, not fading. And every assertion we make has to be argued in detail stripped of hysteria, not wrapped in the mother of all hyperbole.