Learning from climate change news: Is the world on the same page?

and 15, summit was widely used and so was treaty. Later on, these words became negative indicators for COP22 and 23 respectively and were thus apparently not used widely any- more. It can well be that the term treaty had been replaced by climate deal and climate agree- ment at the time of COP21 and 22, since the output of COP21 was not a treaty but rather the Paris Agreement. COP21 also shows goal as informative, which likely refers to the target to limit global temperature rise to 2˚C. The meeting of COP15 was a special one, due to the occurrence of Climategate just ahead of its start. More than 1,000 stolen emails were leaked in an attempt to argue that scientists were manipulating their studies to falsely prove global warming (factcheck.org/2009/12/ climategate/). The media clearly picked up on this, judging by the occurrence of leaked, scep- tics and deniers in the most informative features. During the same edition, the concept of emissions trading became indicative. This related to the Emissions Trading System of the EU (ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en) that strives to lower European carbon emissions by the principle of cap and trade. A comparable concept is that of carryover credits. These would entitle countries to excess car- bon emissions since they previously reduced emissions further than the Kyoto Protocol required. This is especially a topic in Australia, which attempts to keep these credits valid under the new regulations of the Paris Agreement (ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/credits_en). 03: summit+, conference+, treaty+, protocol {

15: emissions trading+, summit+, leaked+, cap and trade+, sceptics+, deniers+, the conference+, accord+, global agreement {, credits { 21: goal+, climate deal+, protocol {, accord {, debate { 22: summit {, conference {, policies+, emissions trading {, climate agreement+ 23: treaty { 24: emissions trading { 25: trade deal+, carryover credits+ • Effects Various effects of climate change were also found indicative of COP meetings. No real trend could be seen, apart from what might be an overall terminological change from fires towards bushfires. What is striking, is that COP25 mentions by far the most effects. This is in line with the earlier suggestion that urgency got more traction during this edition. Several terms can, to a certain extent, also be explained by natural events occurring during a given COP edition. For example, there were particularly severe bushfires in Australia (disasterphilanthropy.org/disasters/2019-australian-wildfires/) and a volcanic eruption on White Island in New Zealand (britannica.com/event/White-Island-volcanic-eruption-of- 2019) during COP25 in 2019. 03: fires+ 04: hurricane+, storm+, winds { 15: pollution {, storms {, geothermal+ 20: storm+ 21: forests {, bushfires { 22: wildlife+, quake+ 23: bushfires+ 25: bushfires+, fires+, eruption+, smoke+, volcano+ PLOS ONE Learning from climate change news PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297644 March 20, 2024 19 / 27