KEYSTONE — Global warming is the hottest story of our time, and it will get even bigger as the full implications of melting ice caps and rising sea levels percolate through the media pipeline and into general public awareness, a panel of journalists said last weekend during the American Bar Association’s environmental law conference. The discussion was focused on how the media has covered the story and whether or not public perception of global warming has changed in recent months and years. Among the questions the panelists tried to answer is why it has taken so long for the story to reach critical mass. Most of the panelists credited Al Gore’s documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ with helping to generate attention. The Democratic takeover in Congress has also advanced public debate, the panelists said. And even though the basic global warming science - heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere - is ‘third-grade’ stuff, according the Wall Street Journal’s John Fialka, the issues have been clouded by a massive, industry funded propaganda and disinformation campaign aimed at creating uncertainty. But now the issue is taking center stage, and journalists must help explain the evolving story in terms that readers can […]