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Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and ever

Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and every criticism labeled as conspiracy theory and vica versa for a-lot of other outlets. Maybe if solutions like geo-engineering were at least discussed instead of the chorus of the media/politicians telling people that taxes and fees are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the crisis. Just my 2cents, but we would be so much further ahead if the conversation has some actual balance instead of these-days where people are complaining that having a 5/95 skew in favour of the armageddon scenario if we don't have a global tax on carbon, move to 100% renewables and electric cars as being too generous to the critics of this plan.

emilsedgh 8y ago
It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard instance against situations instead of level-headed ones. We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we have to teach politics in schools: On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call them out. On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes vs. a poor one.
- shard972 8y ago
  Not really, it's just that the nature of democracy leads power to concentrate within two power centres. Just look at Australia over the last decade and you can see how even politicians who are in favour of carbon taxes will campaign against them one year and fight for them another based on the current political solution. Hell for another issue, gay marriage. It was quite the sight to see the Deputy leader of the labor party who is openly gay vote against gay marriage legislation because the party had decided that wasn't the way they wanted to do it. In any case, that doesn't account for the media which we don't vote for in any way. Also just because we have centuries of experience with politics, it's about as developed as many of the other social sciences, which is to say very underdeveloped and at times heading backwards in it's understanding of the subject's truth.
Latteland 8y ago
Those responses seem like something from the people who don't believe there's an actual problem. Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. We don't debate whether the earth is the center of the universe or is the earth flat, because debating that would be a false equivalence of equal chance, but one side of those debates is absurd. We are basically at that point on the question of does human activities increase global warming (yes), will this be really really bad (yes), can we do something about it (yes, but its hard to decide). Let's not waste time arguing about whether the earth is flat, let's move on to figuring what to do about it.
- shard972 8y ago
  > Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. Thats actually just wrong and shows how closed minded people are to how science works. Even if they were paid by big oil, shouldn't their evidence stand on it's own merits? Just like the claims made by scientists? And no, I don't buy your false equivalence because the earth being round or gravity existing is empirically proved. Climate science has not and probably will not be ever proved on that level. If we could, then weather forecasts would also be perfect because we would be able to perfectly model exactly how the climate works but we don't, we strive every day to try and model the future better. Just to give you a recent example: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/30277-climate-alarmists-temperature-data-erroneous-and-incomplete-says-researcher https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/30277-c... Can you show me how much hes being paid by big oil to do this? Or how all of the issues he found are just BS? Or maybe it's not exactly true that all researchers are all on the exact same page the media is typically on?
  - c0nducktr 8y ago
    It's actually not wrong. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
    - 8y ago

emilsedgh 8y ago

It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard instance against situations instead of level-headed ones. We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we have to teach politics in schools: On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call them out. On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes vs. a poor one.

shard972 8y ago
Not really, it's just that the nature of democracy leads power to concentrate within two power centres. Just look at Australia over the last decade and you can see how even politicians who are in favour of carbon taxes will campaign against them one year and fight for them another based on the current political solution. Hell for another issue, gay marriage. It was quite the sight to see the Deputy leader of the labor party who is openly gay vote against gay marriage legislation because the party had decided that wasn't the way they wanted to do it. In any case, that doesn't account for the media which we don't vote for in any way. Also just because we have centuries of experience with politics, it's about as developed as many of the other social sciences, which is to say very underdeveloped and at times heading backwards in it's understanding of the subject's truth.

Latteland 8y ago

Those responses seem like something from the people who don't believe there's an actual problem. Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. We don't debate whether the earth is the center of the universe or is the earth flat, because debating that would be a false equivalence of equal chance, but one side of those debates is absurd. We are basically at that point on the question of does human activities increase global warming (yes), will this be really really bad (yes), can we do something about it (yes, but its hard to decide). Let's not waste time arguing about whether the earth is flat, let's move on to figuring what to do about it.

shard972 8y ago
> Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. Thats actually just wrong and shows how closed minded people are to how science works. Even if they were paid by big oil, shouldn't their evidence stand on it's own merits? Just like the claims made by scientists? And no, I don't buy your false equivalence because the earth being round or gravity existing is empirically proved. Climate science has not and probably will not be ever proved on that level. If we could, then weather forecasts would also be perfect because we would be able to perfectly model exactly how the climate works but we don't, we strive every day to try and model the future better. Just to give you a recent example: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/30277-climate-alarmists-temperature-data-erroneous-and-incomplete-says-researcher https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/30277-c... Can you show me how much hes being paid by big oil to do this? Or how all of the issues he found are just BS? Or maybe it's not exactly true that all researchers are all on the exact same page the media is typically on?
- c0nducktr 8y ago
  It's actually not wrong. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
  - 8y ago