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It might be that burning down every living tree would not make a dent in the oxygen supply, but having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phy

by vfc1 7y ago

It might be that burning down every living tree would not make a dent in the oxygen supply, but having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually). This type of articles is the last thing we need right now, it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad and there is no real urgency in doing anything about it. Especially if that implies a change of behaviors like eating less meat. Nobody wants to give away their cheeseburgers as Elizabeth Warren factitiously says, this how you make headlines and get elected for office, tell people what they want to hear, stay away from the truth.

partialrecall 7y ago
Adherence to the truth is more important than adherence to a narrative. Promoting a good cause by allowing falsehoods to spread may seem helpful in the short term, but in doing so you're building a house on a foundation of sand. When you promote trivial falsehoods instead of calling them out, you allow your opposition to be the one who calls out those falsehoods, and thus undermine your cause. When somebody on your side says something well-meaning but wrong, you should be the one to call them out. In doing so, you deny your enemy the opportunity to do so.
- jstummbillig 7y ago
  This is incredibly naive in a reality, where the POTUS can contradict himself on social media – with traceable evidence dating back often not more than a week – and absolutely nothing coming of it. Right now, when it comes to public opinion and action, volume clearly beats a good signal/noise ratio. This is not an isolated issue, this happens all around the globe. Populism is on the rise. Simple beats true. Yes, you can argue this is not the way it is supposed to be, but it is how it is. But if you really care about making a change for the better, then this is most definitely not the time for deliberate narratives. You might have the peoples attention, but not their patience. If you want change, do not squander it.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    Fighting lies with more lies is short term thinking. You will ultimately erode the public's ability to recognize the truth at all. When the truth can no longer work for you because you've either divorced yourself from it or rendered the public unable to recognize it, then what do you have left? Nothing matters more than the truth.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    Maybe we should take this as evidence that fighting lies with lies doesn't work, and in fact makes the problem worse?
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    You can't fight populism with populism because main draw of populism is an assertion that "everything you suspected about those people is correct, you are not doing anything wrong, all your problems are the fault of elites and all those sacrifices they want you to make are not needed, I have 3 simple fixes that would solve everything without any hardship or change whatsoever". When the core of your message is the opposite of that there is no way to phrase it in those terms. You can't join the race to the bottom and get where you need to go.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- ineedasername 7y ago
  If a true fact is playing in to a false narrative, there is a problem with how it's being presented. Calling that out is just as important as calling out falsehoods.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    The article contextualizes the truth in terms of the pro-climate narrative, > "Losing the Amazon, beyond representing a planetary historic tragedy beyond measure, would also make meeting the ambitious climate goals of the Paris Agreement all but impossible. World leaders need to marshal all their political and diplomatic might to save it." So what exactly are you calling out? Better the Atlantic be the one to call out this falsehood, than Fox News. No?
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      Why does it matter who calls out the falsehood? Otherwise, while the article may come out acknowledging climate change, the headline comes across as click-bait that could easily be pushed into a climate-denier narrative. Better to have a more neutral title like "The Amazon's Role in Global Oxygen Production". That stops the facts from being decontextualized.
      - partialrecall 7y ago
        > Why does it matter who calls out the falsehood? Because if Fox News were to call out this particular falsehood, they may very well sum it up with some bullshit like "and that's why liberals are dumb and we should burn more coal." With the Altantic, we instead have reasonable pleas to remember that climate change is a very serious issue. As for the matter of the given title: https://twitter.com/PeterBrannen1/status/1166446298897289216 https://twitter.com/PeterBrannen1/status/1166446298897289216
        ineedasername 7y ago
        Hah, yes, good to know it at least wasn't the writer's fault for the headline. As for who calls out the falsehood, I was thinking more in the vein of "all else being equal", but I suppose you're right and all else wouldn't be equal between the various news sources.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Yea, you shouldn't deny a reality because you believe in the noble lie. And to be fair, climate change is turned into a crazy red hearing of a political issue. There are lakes of sludge outside factory cities in China, insane amounts of plastic particulates in the oceans, tons and tons of textile waste. There are so many many forms of pollution much worse than CO2, and when you focus on just CO2, you get carbon laws like those enacted in Australia briefly that caused more fuel expenditure in moving ore to China for processing instead of processing it domestically. There needs to be a huge change in consumption. We need cell phones that last 10 years, not 2~3. We need to end the constant replacement cycle. Intel's shareholders should be glad when sales are below projections because the old chips are lasting longer. But this is not how our economy or industry works. It's all based about infinite growth, selling you new things, sending your e-waste to Africa to be harvested by kids and be smeltered in recycling shops without OSHA requirements or respirators, sending textile waste to Africa to be sold (but mostly burned), etc. etc. Until there is a major collapse globally and people recognize the scale of our folly of consumerism and over-consumption, people will not recognize the real changes needed to build a more sustainable world. And reducing overall consumption will also reduce CO2 emissions ... along with all types of other emissions. But it will take reduction. We cannot spend and buy our way out of environmental damage.
  - aaron-santos 7y ago
    > people will not recognize the real changes needed to build a more sustainable world I'm a bit more pessimistic. Consumerism and over-consumption is an open-eyed march toward doom. Educating (even by collapse) doesn't change the failure to coordinate. When the incentives are structured to trade values for temporary rosperity "The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse." [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - journalctl 7y ago
    Localized pollution and climate change are different issues. Both are bad, but you can’t equate “lakes of sludge outside factory cities in China” and the dramatic changes expected if the models are correct. Whataboutism isn’t helpful here (or anywhere, really). Climate change IS an issue, and it’s only going to get worse. Ten-year cell phones won’t make a lick of difference if we continue burning fossil fuels, and lakes of sludge will seem like Club Med in comparison to rising global temperatures.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. Now, it's a completely normal view to go out of your way to openly endorse lying about eg science as a moral course of action (this is far from the first time I've seen this expressed, and it extends to journalists and other figures with reputations to think about). I wonder if in a few years, we'll have tipped fully over to condemning those who publish or report science that doesn't fit a preferred narrative (though this already happens to some degree, as with Case and Deaton's study on white working class mortality). It's of a piece with the general decline in liberalism of the last 10 years (as another example, take the reputation of free speech as a concept), but I guess what I'm describing is how grotesquely fascinating it is to see a society and its institutions so rapidly lose their connection to basic decency and honesty. I'm not naive enough to think this was some hyperstable equilibrium, but it's fascinating to see how rapidly it happens.
  - obelos 7y ago
    “Put simply, our first suggestion is _don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth_.”[1] Climate denialism is the proverbial firehose of lies. Finely parsing words to maintain some Panglossian notion of a market dominated by rational choice of information-rich actors is not going to turn us away from disaster. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE10...
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      Thank you, this is a thoughtful response. That being said, the argument you're linking to, while quite sound, doesn't disagree with me. It's saying that, when rebutting concerted propaganda, simply making the truth available in an undirected manner and hoping people will find it isn't enough: you have to make an effort to get it to the right places at the right time. There's no endorsement therein of suppressing or falsifying facts. Slavish dedication to narrative over truth is putting the cart before the horse: any number of movements that we now remember as grotesque, "alternative facts"-driven impediments to society's progress started out on relatively sound epistemic footing and failed to adapt. The beauty of the scientific method (and the scientific establishment, when it's functioning well) is that it allows us to gracefully transition away from narratives that are increasingly anachronistic or incompatible with our observations. To go back to your link, consider what defines "propaganda": is it disliking conclusions, or is it indifference towards truth? I'd argue that your link defines it as the latter. For many of us, the conflict isn't between the good set of lies and the bad set of lies, it's between those who intentionally embrace and propagate lies and those who strive for an accurate model of the world. Anyone who's skimmed a history book can tell you that the "good" and "bad" labels don't tend to be very persistent... (the 20th century and it's hundred million dead of utopianism is rich with examples of this).
- strainer 7y ago
  But its not a falsehood to call the Amazon "lungs of the Earth" - its an illustration of the fact that the Amazon, until perhaps recently has been the "largest residual terrestrial carbon sink on the planet"[1] The article opens with this headline which is false: "Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply." If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupply oxygen and most of the free oxygen reserves in the atmosphere and oceans would be consumed through geological processes. It would take millennia to complete but its not an outcome which is valid to describe in an educational or truth straightening context as "not a dent". [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283 "Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink"
  - ehvatum 7y ago
    If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupply oxygen and most of the free oxygen reserves in the atmosphere and oceans would be consumed through geological processes Over what timescale? If you burned every speck of organic matter on the planet, and then you came back in 10,000 years, how much O2 would be in the atmosphere? The article under discussion seems to suggest about 20%.
    - strainer 7y ago
      I dont know if it would take ten thousand years or ten billion years for all the free oxygen in atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere to be depleted. But all of it is here and maintained by the sum total of interconnected living things and it would all go without it.
- blablabla123 7y ago
  > Adherence to the truth is more important than adherence to a narrative. Yeah but some narratives of the truth can become absurd. And so is this article. The problem right now is not an undersupply of O2 but an oversupply of CO2. In that sense the Amazon is actually part of the earth's lung. Unfortunately the article leaves out the information to which proportion forest contributes as CO2 sink. And also that alternative uses of the area might turn it actually into a CO2 source. That's maybe not intentional but not exactly relevant and therefore misleading.
BurningFrog 7y ago
> This type of articles is the last thing we need right now We always need the truth. If your agenda can't handle the truth, it's maybe not that great to begin with.
- dao- 7y ago
  The problem seems to be that there's quite a bit of nuance in the article, but most people won't remember that if they even manage to read through it. They might however remember and pass on the clickbaity headline as it conveniently fits their climate change denial agenda.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  Not the parent, but one reading of that comment is that the concern is not that the truth shouldn't be shared. I think being truthful is important, but the spin of the article minimizes the impact of climate change.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  It might make you feel good to write that, but there are much bigger lies being told. For example, tons of people believe that CO2 released by human activity does not cause global warming, and tons of people are promoting that idea. Arguing over just how much photosynthesis the Amazon is responsible for seems like a stupid article in light of that. Perhaps we can be selective over what we argue about and what we pay attention to. On the net, the claim "the Amazon is the Earth's lungs" being true or not is not really meaningful. We still shouldn't burn it down, and climate change is still bad and getting worse. Creating debate over trivialities is usually the aim of these types of pieces, and it's best not to allow ourselves to be manipulated so easily.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    > It might make you feel good to write that, but there are much bigger lies being told. if you held the opposite position in this debate, you would probably call this "whataboutism".
leetcrew 7y ago
posts like this decrease the credibility of climate change activism.
criley2 7y ago
If average temps go up 5°C (the current fear is that 2°C is the deadline, and at 3°C we're experiencing CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE including major loss of breadbasket regions, mass famine leading to mass revolt (think Arab Spring x 100)) then we are long, long past the current idea of modern civilization, billions of humans etc. At 5°C I bet 75% of world population has died to either lack of resources or wars over scarce resources. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/ I'd link more to IPCC but their website appears down, so sorry. I will say that the 5 degree scenario is called the "RCP 8.5" and is basically the worst disaster scenario published here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y
basch 7y ago
>it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad Does it? I read the article to be saying "you should be much much more concerned with the burning of fossil fuels than a forest." I read the article to be an attack on sensational journalism distracting people from the crux of the discussion. Its further point is that being concerned about oxygen and not temperatures rising is a logical error.
ajross 7y ago
> having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton See... but this is the kind of thing that leads to this kind of both-sides-ist article in the first place. In fact there are innumerable species of phytoplankton and other primary photosynthesizers, lots of which would be very happy to migrate toward the poles as the oceans warm. The planet may be warming rapidly, but it's been warmer in the geologic past and the microbial ecosystems did just fine. Obviously bigger organisms are going to be terribly disrupted (and for bigger fauna the beginning of a mass extinction already seems to be under way). This is, y'know, outrageously bad. But predictions of the end of life on earth are just feeding the right wing meme that liberals are irrational and opening the door for journalists to push this kind of "It's not so bad"[1] article as "balance". We need to be serious with our criticism. Urgency doesn't require sensationalism. [1] To be fair, not having read the complete thing yet: the text of the article seems really quite good. It's not whitewashing anything I can see. But the theme and headline are still a variation on "environmentalists are idiots".
- unholythree 7y ago
  I don't think the article is a critique of environmentalists so much as lazy pop science news that inacuratly simplfies and conflates issues. "Lungs of the Earth" stories distract from the very real problems with a inaccurate bumper sticker slogan.
pdonis 7y ago
> having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually) The global average temperature has been higher than that in the past, and there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere.
- orwin 7y ago
  > The global average temperature has been higher than that in the past Yes > there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere. Well, citation needed.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    >there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere. Well, citation needed. Isn’t that entirely the basis of the giant flora and fauna we know existed?
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    The loss of formatting is a problem for understanding your comment, but you seem to be arguing that there isn't evidence that the level of oxygen on the atmosphere is steadly going down since the Great Oxidation Event. If, so, there's plenty of evidence.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Agreed, that seems like the sensationalism he’s willing to ignore. Which as everyone else pointed out is harmful. Can GP explain if these plankton did not exist in these times of higher temperatures? Because I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t, but we’ve had whales and plankton separately for millions and millions of years over drastically different climates. So I’m curious how they are making such absolute statements. I don’t know nearly enough about plankton, maybe someone could explain?
- gambiting 7y ago
  Yes, but the temperature rose to those levels over millenia, not just hundreds of years. Ultimately, life on Earth will adapt - it's just that we might not survive long enough to witness the adaptation.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Um, the oxygen component is a red herring and distraction to the climate debate. It took many millennia of a tiny oxygen excess to get us the atmospheric mix we know. It's CO2 (and species and habitat loss) that matters, and the Amazon is hugely important for those, and for the climate of the region. Which the article seems pretty clear on. So how is it presenting an impression climate change isn't that bad, or there's no urgency?
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I don't think HN User "vfc1" read the article. That happens with troubling frequency on HN.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > It took many millennia of a tiny oxygen excess to get us the atmospheric mix we know It actually took a few billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Leader2light 7y ago
We are long past peaceful solutions. The only real solution is to kill 80% or more of the human race. Dumbass Bill Gates should be spending his money on creating viruses, not preventing them. He had some bullshit answer about how that is not true, just give it a few more decades and reality will hit home.
partiallypro 7y ago
> This type of articles is the last thing we need right now, it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad and there is no real urgency in doing anything about it. Actually it does the opposite. The climate change deniers have for so long hinged on the fact that people openly lie about the climate to push an agenda. You can't fault them for that...and having people who are proponents of doing something calling out the nonsense/lies that their allies say, actually emboldens the climate change position. If you can't even hold your own viewpoint accountable how are you going to hold deniers accountable or change their minds? People have focused so much on shoving a viewpoint down people's throats that they have completely forgotten how persuasion works and that you need a social movement to have a political one.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > Actually it does the opposite. The climate change deniers have for so long hinged on the fact that people openly lie about the climate to push an agenda. Actually, you're both right. The title and the facts upon which it are based, will to some degree reinforce those who are resistant to or skeptical of the climate change message, in that it once again demonstrates the fact that the messages broadcast in the "leftist" media contains factual inaccuracies, also known as fake news or lies. Of course, if they actually read and properly integrated the entire contents of the article into their worldview, this type of article "should" make the world a better place, since it is informative and ~truthful. But that's not how human minds work, as we all know when we're specifically discussing an article about human psychology and cognition, but so easily forget (or under-appreciate) while having discussions on other topics. You're right that telling the truth should be the correct path, but considering the complexities of reality, I reckon the grandparent is probably more strategically correct. It seems logical that the more truthful message should win out in the end, but if you're not willing to be truthful all/most of the time (how would this even be coordinated?), then it may be a sub-optimal strategy.
wilg 7y ago
> but having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually) Isn't the point of the article that you could kill every living thing besides humans (including plankton) and not disrupt the oxygen supply? Also, another point of the article is that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of oxygen decline, which seems urgent.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Breathing too hard would also end the oxygen supply eventually, but trying to make any one factor the cause for the end seems to be a waste. You might as well be trying to find which one reason is responsible for the collapse of Rome. Or maybe you find that one thing about the USA that makes it intolerable in your opinion, but it will always pale to the multicausal.
imhelpingu 7y ago
In terms of giving people a reason for skepticism, simply telling the truth (for once) is a drop in the pan compared to all the bald-faced, dishonest, say-anything "activism" performed by various groups (e.g. the entire neoliberal media establishment) pertaining to global warming. I think climate change is a serious issue and a threat to the species, just by the way.

by vfc1 7y ago

partialrecall 7y ago

Adherence to the truth is more important than adherence to a narrative. Promoting a good cause by allowing falsehoods to spread may seem helpful in the short term, but in doing so you're building a house on a foundation of sand. When you promote trivial falsehoods instead of calling them out, you allow your opposition to be the one who calls out those falsehoods, and thus undermine your cause. When somebody on your side says something well-meaning but wrong, you should be the one to call them out. In doing so, you deny your enemy the opportunity to do so.

jstummbillig 7y ago
This is incredibly naive in a reality, where the POTUS can contradict himself on social media – with traceable evidence dating back often not more than a week – and absolutely nothing coming of it. Right now, when it comes to public opinion and action, volume clearly beats a good signal/noise ratio. This is not an isolated issue, this happens all around the globe. Populism is on the rise. Simple beats true. Yes, you can argue this is not the way it is supposed to be, but it is how it is. But if you really care about making a change for the better, then this is most definitely not the time for deliberate narratives. You might have the peoples attention, but not their patience. If you want change, do not squander it.
- partialrecall 7y ago
  Fighting lies with more lies is short term thinking. You will ultimately erode the public's ability to recognize the truth at all. When the truth can no longer work for you because you've either divorced yourself from it or rendered the public unable to recognize it, then what do you have left? Nothing matters more than the truth.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  Maybe we should take this as evidence that fighting lies with lies doesn't work, and in fact makes the problem worse?
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  You can't fight populism with populism because main draw of populism is an assertion that "everything you suspected about those people is correct, you are not doing anything wrong, all your problems are the fault of elites and all those sacrifices they want you to make are not needed, I have 3 simple fixes that would solve everything without any hardship or change whatsoever". When the core of your message is the opposite of that there is no way to phrase it in those terms. You can't join the race to the bottom and get where you need to go.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
ineedasername 7y ago
If a true fact is playing in to a false narrative, there is a problem with how it's being presented. Calling that out is just as important as calling out falsehoods.
- partialrecall 7y ago
  The article contextualizes the truth in terms of the pro-climate narrative, > "Losing the Amazon, beyond representing a planetary historic tragedy beyond measure, would also make meeting the ambitious climate goals of the Paris Agreement all but impossible. World leaders need to marshal all their political and diplomatic might to save it." So what exactly are you calling out? Better the Atlantic be the one to call out this falsehood, than Fox News. No?
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Why does it matter who calls out the falsehood? Otherwise, while the article may come out acknowledging climate change, the headline comes across as click-bait that could easily be pushed into a climate-denier narrative. Better to have a more neutral title like "The Amazon's Role in Global Oxygen Production". That stops the facts from being decontextualized.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      > Why does it matter who calls out the falsehood? Because if Fox News were to call out this particular falsehood, they may very well sum it up with some bullshit like "and that's why liberals are dumb and we should burn more coal." With the Altantic, we instead have reasonable pleas to remember that climate change is a very serious issue. As for the matter of the given title: https://twitter.com/PeterBrannen1/status/1166446298897289216 https://twitter.com/PeterBrannen1/status/1166446298897289216
      - ineedasername 7y ago
        Hah, yes, good to know it at least wasn't the writer's fault for the headline. As for who calls out the falsehood, I was thinking more in the vein of "all else being equal", but I suppose you're right and all else wouldn't be equal between the various news sources.
djsumdog 7y ago
Yea, you shouldn't deny a reality because you believe in the noble lie. And to be fair, climate change is turned into a crazy red hearing of a political issue. There are lakes of sludge outside factory cities in China, insane amounts of plastic particulates in the oceans, tons and tons of textile waste. There are so many many forms of pollution much worse than CO2, and when you focus on just CO2, you get carbon laws like those enacted in Australia briefly that caused more fuel expenditure in moving ore to China for processing instead of processing it domestically. There needs to be a huge change in consumption. We need cell phones that last 10 years, not 2~3. We need to end the constant replacement cycle. Intel's shareholders should be glad when sales are below projections because the old chips are lasting longer. But this is not how our economy or industry works. It's all based about infinite growth, selling you new things, sending your e-waste to Africa to be harvested by kids and be smeltered in recycling shops without OSHA requirements or respirators, sending textile waste to Africa to be sold (but mostly burned), etc. etc. Until there is a major collapse globally and people recognize the scale of our folly of consumerism and over-consumption, people will not recognize the real changes needed to build a more sustainable world. And reducing overall consumption will also reduce CO2 emissions ... along with all types of other emissions. But it will take reduction. We cannot spend and buy our way out of environmental damage.
- aaron-santos 7y ago
  > people will not recognize the real changes needed to build a more sustainable world I'm a bit more pessimistic. Consumerism and over-consumption is an open-eyed march toward doom. Educating (even by collapse) doesn't change the failure to coordinate. When the incentives are structured to trade values for temporary rosperity "The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse." [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- journalctl 7y ago
  Localized pollution and climate change are different issues. Both are bad, but you can’t equate “lakes of sludge outside factory cities in China” and the dramatic changes expected if the models are correct. Whataboutism isn’t helpful here (or anywhere, really). Climate change IS an issue, and it’s only going to get worse. Ten-year cell phones won’t make a lick of difference if we continue burning fossil fuels, and lakes of sludge will seem like Club Med in comparison to rising global temperatures.
wutbrodo 7y ago
It's been really interesting to me to see how the concept that lying in support of your preferred narrative is the correct way to engage publicly with a problem has evolved over the last few years. It seems like only a few years ago that people who admitted to this strategy were roundly condemned. Now, it's a completely normal view to go out of your way to openly endorse lying about eg science as a moral course of action (this is far from the first time I've seen this expressed, and it extends to journalists and other figures with reputations to think about). I wonder if in a few years, we'll have tipped fully over to condemning those who publish or report science that doesn't fit a preferred narrative (though this already happens to some degree, as with Case and Deaton's study on white working class mortality). It's of a piece with the general decline in liberalism of the last 10 years (as another example, take the reputation of free speech as a concept), but I guess what I'm describing is how grotesquely fascinating it is to see a society and its institutions so rapidly lose their connection to basic decency and honesty. I'm not naive enough to think this was some hyperstable equilibrium, but it's fascinating to see how rapidly it happens.
- obelos 7y ago
  “Put simply, our first suggestion is _don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth_.”[1] Climate denialism is the proverbial firehose of lies. Finely parsing words to maintain some Panglossian notion of a market dominated by rational choice of information-rich actors is not going to turn us away from disaster. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE10...
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Thank you, this is a thoughtful response. That being said, the argument you're linking to, while quite sound, doesn't disagree with me. It's saying that, when rebutting concerted propaganda, simply making the truth available in an undirected manner and hoping people will find it isn't enough: you have to make an effort to get it to the right places at the right time. There's no endorsement therein of suppressing or falsifying facts. Slavish dedication to narrative over truth is putting the cart before the horse: any number of movements that we now remember as grotesque, "alternative facts"-driven impediments to society's progress started out on relatively sound epistemic footing and failed to adapt. The beauty of the scientific method (and the scientific establishment, when it's functioning well) is that it allows us to gracefully transition away from narratives that are increasingly anachronistic or incompatible with our observations. To go back to your link, consider what defines "propaganda": is it disliking conclusions, or is it indifference towards truth? I'd argue that your link defines it as the latter. For many of us, the conflict isn't between the good set of lies and the bad set of lies, it's between those who intentionally embrace and propagate lies and those who strive for an accurate model of the world. Anyone who's skimmed a history book can tell you that the "good" and "bad" labels don't tend to be very persistent... (the 20th century and it's hundred million dead of utopianism is rich with examples of this).
strainer 7y ago
But its not a falsehood to call the Amazon "lungs of the Earth" - its an illustration of the fact that the Amazon, until perhaps recently has been the "largest residual terrestrial carbon sink on the planet"[1] The article opens with this headline which is false: "Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply." If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupply oxygen and most of the free oxygen reserves in the atmosphere and oceans would be consumed through geological processes. It would take millennia to complete but its not an outcome which is valid to describe in an educational or truth straightening context as "not a dent". [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283 "Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink"
- ehvatum 7y ago
  If every living thing was burnt, the planet would cease to resupply oxygen and most of the free oxygen reserves in the atmosphere and oceans would be consumed through geological processes Over what timescale? If you burned every speck of organic matter on the planet, and then you came back in 10,000 years, how much O2 would be in the atmosphere? The article under discussion seems to suggest about 20%.
  - strainer 7y ago
    I dont know if it would take ten thousand years or ten billion years for all the free oxygen in atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere to be depleted. But all of it is here and maintained by the sum total of interconnected living things and it would all go without it.
blablabla123 7y ago
> Adherence to the truth is more important than adherence to a narrative. Yeah but some narratives of the truth can become absurd. And so is this article. The problem right now is not an undersupply of O2 but an oversupply of CO2. In that sense the Amazon is actually part of the earth's lung. Unfortunately the article leaves out the information to which proportion forest contributes as CO2 sink. And also that alternative uses of the area might turn it actually into a CO2 source. That's maybe not intentional but not exactly relevant and therefore misleading.

BurningFrog 7y ago

> This type of articles is the last thing we need right now We always need the truth. If your agenda can't handle the truth, it's maybe not that great to begin with.

dao- 7y ago
The problem seems to be that there's quite a bit of nuance in the article, but most people won't remember that if they even manage to read through it. They might however remember and pass on the clickbaity headline as it conveniently fits their climate change denial agenda.
michaelmior 7y ago
Not the parent, but one reading of that comment is that the concern is not that the truth shouldn't be shared. I think being truthful is important, but the spin of the article minimizes the impact of climate change.
throwaway5752 7y ago
It might make you feel good to write that, but there are much bigger lies being told. For example, tons of people believe that CO2 released by human activity does not cause global warming, and tons of people are promoting that idea. Arguing over just how much photosynthesis the Amazon is responsible for seems like a stupid article in light of that. Perhaps we can be selective over what we argue about and what we pay attention to. On the net, the claim "the Amazon is the Earth's lungs" being true or not is not really meaningful. We still shouldn't burn it down, and climate change is still bad and getting worse. Creating debate over trivialities is usually the aim of these types of pieces, and it's best not to allow ourselves to be manipulated so easily.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  > It might make you feel good to write that, but there are much bigger lies being told. if you held the opposite position in this debate, you would probably call this "whataboutism".

leetcrew 7y ago

posts like this decrease the credibility of climate change activism.

criley2 7y ago

If average temps go up 5°C (the current fear is that 2°C is the deadline, and at 3°C we're experiencing CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE including major loss of breadbasket regions, mass famine leading to mass revolt (think Arab Spring x 100)) then we are long, long past the current idea of modern civilization, billions of humans etc. At 5°C I bet 75% of world population has died to either lack of resources or wars over scarce resources. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/ I'd link more to IPCC but their website appears down, so sorry. I will say that the 5 degree scenario is called the "RCP 8.5" and is basically the worst disaster scenario published here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y

basch 7y ago

>it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad Does it? I read the article to be saying "you should be much much more concerned with the burning of fossil fuels than a forest." I read the article to be an attack on sensational journalism distracting people from the crux of the discussion. Its further point is that being concerned about oxygen and not temperatures rising is a logical error.

ajross 7y ago

> having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton See... but this is the kind of thing that leads to this kind of both-sides-ist article in the first place. In fact there are innumerable species of phytoplankton and other primary photosynthesizers, lots of which would be very happy to migrate toward the poles as the oceans warm. The planet may be warming rapidly, but it's been warmer in the geologic past and the microbial ecosystems did just fine. Obviously bigger organisms are going to be terribly disrupted (and for bigger fauna the beginning of a mass extinction already seems to be under way). This is, y'know, outrageously bad. But predictions of the end of life on earth are just feeding the right wing meme that liberals are irrational and opening the door for journalists to push this kind of "It's not so bad"[1] article as "balance". We need to be serious with our criticism. Urgency doesn't require sensationalism. [1] To be fair, not having read the complete thing yet: the text of the article seems really quite good. It's not whitewashing anything I can see. But the theme and headline are still a variation on "environmentalists are idiots".

unholythree 7y ago
I don't think the article is a critique of environmentalists so much as lazy pop science news that inacuratly simplfies and conflates issues. "Lungs of the Earth" stories distract from the very real problems with a inaccurate bumper sticker slogan.

pdonis 7y ago

> having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually) The global average temperature has been higher than that in the past, and there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere.

orwin 7y ago
> The global average temperature has been higher than that in the past Yes > there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere. Well, citation needed.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  >there was plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere. Well, citation needed. Isn’t that entirely the basis of the giant flora and fauna we know existed?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  The loss of formatting is a problem for understanding your comment, but you seem to be arguing that there isn't evidence that the level of oxygen on the atmosphere is steadly going down since the Great Oxidation Event. If, so, there's plenty of evidence.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Agreed, that seems like the sensationalism he’s willing to ignore. Which as everyone else pointed out is harmful. Can GP explain if these plankton did not exist in these times of higher temperatures? Because I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t, but we’ve had whales and plankton separately for millions and millions of years over drastically different climates. So I’m curious how they are making such absolute statements. I don’t know nearly enough about plankton, maybe someone could explain?
gambiting 7y ago
Yes, but the temperature rose to those levels over millenia, not just hundreds of years. Ultimately, life on Earth will adapt - it's just that we might not survive long enough to witness the adaptation.

deleted 7y ago

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NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Um, the oxygen component is a red herring and distraction to the climate debate. It took many millennia of a tiny oxygen excess to get us the atmospheric mix we know. It's CO2 (and species and habitat loss) that matters, and the Amazon is hugely important for those, and for the climate of the region. Which the article seems pretty clear on. So how is it presenting an impression climate change isn't that bad, or there's no urgency?

bilbo0s 7y ago
I don't think HN User "vfc1" read the article. That happens with troubling frequency on HN.
BurningFrog 7y ago
> It took many millennia of a tiny oxygen excess to get us the atmospheric mix we know It actually took a few billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

Leader2light 7y ago

We are long past peaceful solutions. The only real solution is to kill 80% or more of the human race. Dumbass Bill Gates should be spending his money on creating viruses, not preventing them. He had some bullshit answer about how that is not true, just give it a few more decades and reality will hit home.

partiallypro 7y ago

> This type of articles is the last thing we need right now, it all piles up on the narrative that the consequences of climate change are really not that bad and there is no real urgency in doing anything about it. Actually it does the opposite. The climate change deniers have for so long hinged on the fact that people openly lie about the climate to push an agenda. You can't fault them for that...and having people who are proponents of doing something calling out the nonsense/lies that their allies say, actually emboldens the climate change position. If you can't even hold your own viewpoint accountable how are you going to hold deniers accountable or change their minds? People have focused so much on shoving a viewpoint down people's throats that they have completely forgotten how persuasion works and that you need a social movement to have a political one.

mistermann 7y ago
> Actually it does the opposite. The climate change deniers have for so long hinged on the fact that people openly lie about the climate to push an agenda. Actually, you're both right. The title and the facts upon which it are based, will to some degree reinforce those who are resistant to or skeptical of the climate change message, in that it once again demonstrates the fact that the messages broadcast in the "leftist" media contains factual inaccuracies, also known as fake news or lies. Of course, if they actually read and properly integrated the entire contents of the article into their worldview, this type of article "should" make the world a better place, since it is informative and ~truthful. But that's not how human minds work, as we all know when we're specifically discussing an article about human psychology and cognition, but so easily forget (or under-appreciate) while having discussions on other topics. You're right that telling the truth should be the correct path, but considering the complexities of reality, I reckon the grandparent is probably more strategically correct. It seems logical that the more truthful message should win out in the end, but if you're not willing to be truthful all/most of the time (how would this even be coordinated?), then it may be a sub-optimal strategy.

wilg 7y ago

> but having the earth temperature go up 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, and that would end the oxygen supply (eventually) Isn't the point of the article that you could kill every living thing besides humans (including plankton) and not disrupt the oxygen supply? Also, another point of the article is that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of oxygen decline, which seems urgent.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Breathing too hard would also end the oxygen supply eventually, but trying to make any one factor the cause for the end seems to be a waste. You might as well be trying to find which one reason is responsible for the collapse of Rome. Or maybe you find that one thing about the USA that makes it intolerable in your opinion, but it will always pale to the multicausal.

imhelpingu 7y ago

In terms of giving people a reason for skepticism, simply telling the truth (for once) is a drop in the pan compared to all the bald-faced, dishonest, say-anything "activism" performed by various groups (e.g. the entire neoliberal media establishment) pertaining to global warming. I think climate change is a serious issue and a threat to the species, just by the way.