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Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a fo

Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?

lkbm 4y ago
SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
- lisper 4y ago
  These historical successes are encouraging, but it is very important not to extrapolate any of them to anthropogenic climate change. The processes underlying every single one of the examples in the SSC article operate on time scales of years or decades. CO2 causes effects over centuries and persists for millennia. It is a completely different beast.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    The atmospheric chemistry one was Ozone which turned out to be real, and was solved through regulation.
    - lisper 4y ago
      Yes, but you've missed the point: the problem with ozone was depletion in the upper atmosphere by CFCs. But CFCs do not persist for millennia and ozone is continually produced by natural processes. So if you stop emitting CFCs the problem naturally fixes itself in a short period of time (a few decades). But even if we reduced CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow that would not solve the problem because we are already at 150% of pre-industrial CO2, and CO2 persists for thousands of years. We've taken carbon that was sequestered by natural processes over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it back into the atmosphere in a period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go quietly or quickly back into its bottle.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This article is notable in that it contained this sentence: > Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on. Which made me realise, the first time I read it, that he didn't know what he was talking about and was just repeating what he heard in his weird echo chamber with unwarranted confidence. If you're in that bubble that will apparently seem like a totally normal thing to say, if you're not then it will seem like utter insanity. Even more so when you follow the link, and realise he's linking to a New York Times op-ed, which doesn't even agree with the claim (though it's trying pretty hard to give the impression it is). > THE environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products — less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs. Oh so recycling actually works, but we need fake jobs for people who don't care about economic efficiency? I'm glad we got some clear eyed realists in to explain this all to us.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > Oh so recycling actually works, but we need fake jobs for people who don't care about economic efficiency? I'm glad we got some clear eyed realists in to explain this all to us. That's not what the op-ed is saying. The existence of benefits does not mean the benefits are bigger than the costs. In context, that sentence is part of an argument against the idea that landfills are filling up. So how big are the benefits relative to the costs? Well, it cites some data to say that recycling paper and metal does a good job, and that everything else combined is pretty useless. That doesn't strike me as wrong in any obvious way. Combine that with "That money could buy far more valuable benefits, including more significant reductions in greenhouse emissions." and "He concludes that the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals, and by imposing a $15 tax on each ton of trash that goes to the landfill." and this doesn't sound like an argument for fake jobs or ignoring economic efficiency to me.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      So the quote: > Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on. Linking to an article that, in your words: > cites some data to say that recycling paper and metal does a good job and > the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals But also says metal mining and logging communities are against it because they 'have accepted the environmental trade-offs'. Again, from within a certain bubble that may not seem contradictory and illogical, but it is. Nor is cheaper ways of reducing CO2 a sensible argument. Every method of reducing CO2, except for one, has cheaper options. We should do all the ones that are a net positive, and so save us money, not only the very best one. The whole article is weak sophistry of this kind. As I said, it doesn't support the argument, just does its best to pretend it does.
at_a_remove 4y ago
I am very fond of the Summer of the Shark.
eru 4y ago
Doing this for back-issues of Zero Hedge would be particularly entertaining.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  ZH is a great example of the asymmetric warfare of fighting bullshit. They report a mix of truth, distorted interpretations and wholly made up nonsense simultaneously. It costs them almost nothing to generate this trash, and efforts to inspect it would be stymied by the level of effort in tracking citations (if they exist, which is almost never) or even just reporting on whether some predicted topic occurred. Another problem is that many of the predictions are premised on a non-reality that in and of itself makes addressing the content difficult. disclaimer: I love reading ZH and have for at least a decade because it is entertaining in a gross way. They are basically consistently wrong but like crypto people, everything is positive signs that they are right.
  - eru 4y ago
    I sometimes feel the urge to read Zero Hedge with a five year delay. Ie read their output from June 2017 today. I imagine that would be mildly entertaining, because a lot of their bullshit would be so much more obvious. Do you remember when they made a big deal out of how the gold derivatives market is bigger than the market for physical gold? As if that is a problem. Or the scandal about Goldman allegedly manipulating aluminium prices by ferrying the metal around town?
    - foobiekr 4y ago
      I remember both of those. That’s why I kind of love it. So much of it is obvious bullshit, every now and then and negative truth, but bullshit in the way that watching Alex Jones is kind of fun. Somewhere out there are people who are true believers, and they are the suckers that keep the world turning.
kevinmchugh 4y ago
It might be hard to tell whether a foretold disaster never materializes because a) it was sensationalized or b) because the attention spurred action (which is good!).
- kergonath 4y ago
  Also sometimes things just don’t happen for some unforeseen or unknown reason. It does not mean that initial reporting was sensationalised.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
Endemic zika virus is horrible if you're in a region that has it like me. As if we didn't have enough with dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and malaria... Any of these diseases feel like getting run over by a bus to get and only two of those have effective preventative vaccines (Yellow fever and now thankfully malaria), but if I get dengue again I could possibly die. The fact that herd immunity kicked in is definitely why you haven't heard as much about it but trust us, this isn't a fun thing to get used to and many, many lives are affected daily by neglected tropical diseases. Maybe you will notice when these diseases make it north of Florida.

lkbm 4y ago

SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...

lisper 4y ago
These historical successes are encouraging, but it is very important not to extrapolate any of them to anthropogenic climate change. The processes underlying every single one of the examples in the SSC article operate on time scales of years or decades. CO2 causes effects over centuries and persists for millennia. It is a completely different beast.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  The atmospheric chemistry one was Ozone which turned out to be real, and was solved through regulation.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Yes, but you've missed the point: the problem with ozone was depletion in the upper atmosphere by CFCs. But CFCs do not persist for millennia and ozone is continually produced by natural processes. So if you stop emitting CFCs the problem naturally fixes itself in a short period of time (a few decades). But even if we reduced CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow that would not solve the problem because we are already at 150% of pre-industrial CO2, and CO2 persists for thousands of years. We've taken carbon that was sequestered by natural processes over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it back into the atmosphere in a period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go quietly or quickly back into its bottle.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This article is notable in that it contained this sentence: > Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on. Which made me realise, the first time I read it, that he didn't know what he was talking about and was just repeating what he heard in his weird echo chamber with unwarranted confidence. If you're in that bubble that will apparently seem like a totally normal thing to say, if you're not then it will seem like utter insanity. Even more so when you follow the link, and realise he's linking to a New York Times op-ed, which doesn't even agree with the claim (though it's trying pretty hard to give the impression it is). > THE environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products — less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs. Oh so recycling actually works, but we need fake jobs for people who don't care about economic efficiency? I'm glad we got some clear eyed realists in to explain this all to us.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Oh so recycling actually works, but we need fake jobs for people who don't care about economic efficiency? I'm glad we got some clear eyed realists in to explain this all to us. That's not what the op-ed is saying. The existence of benefits does not mean the benefits are bigger than the costs. In context, that sentence is part of an argument against the idea that landfills are filling up. So how big are the benefits relative to the costs? Well, it cites some data to say that recycling paper and metal does a good job, and that everything else combined is pretty useless. That doesn't strike me as wrong in any obvious way. Combine that with "That money could buy far more valuable benefits, including more significant reductions in greenhouse emissions." and "He concludes that the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals, and by imposing a $15 tax on each ton of trash that goes to the landfill." and this doesn't sound like an argument for fake jobs or ignoring economic efficiency to me.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    So the quote: > Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on. Linking to an article that, in your words: > cites some data to say that recycling paper and metal does a good job and > the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals But also says metal mining and logging communities are against it because they 'have accepted the environmental trade-offs'. Again, from within a certain bubble that may not seem contradictory and illogical, but it is. Nor is cheaper ways of reducing CO2 a sensible argument. Every method of reducing CO2, except for one, has cheaper options. We should do all the ones that are a net positive, and so save us money, not only the very best one. The whole article is weak sophistry of this kind. As I said, it doesn't support the argument, just does its best to pretend it does.

at_a_remove 4y ago

I am very fond of the Summer of the Shark.

eru 4y ago

Doing this for back-issues of Zero Hedge would be particularly entertaining.

foobiekr 4y ago
ZH is a great example of the asymmetric warfare of fighting bullshit. They report a mix of truth, distorted interpretations and wholly made up nonsense simultaneously. It costs them almost nothing to generate this trash, and efforts to inspect it would be stymied by the level of effort in tracking citations (if they exist, which is almost never) or even just reporting on whether some predicted topic occurred. Another problem is that many of the predictions are premised on a non-reality that in and of itself makes addressing the content difficult. disclaimer: I love reading ZH and have for at least a decade because it is entertaining in a gross way. They are basically consistently wrong but like crypto people, everything is positive signs that they are right.
- eru 4y ago
  I sometimes feel the urge to read Zero Hedge with a five year delay. Ie read their output from June 2017 today. I imagine that would be mildly entertaining, because a lot of their bullshit would be so much more obvious. Do you remember when they made a big deal out of how the gold derivatives market is bigger than the market for physical gold? As if that is a problem. Or the scandal about Goldman allegedly manipulating aluminium prices by ferrying the metal around town?
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    I remember both of those. That’s why I kind of love it. So much of it is obvious bullshit, every now and then and negative truth, but bullshit in the way that watching Alex Jones is kind of fun. Somewhere out there are people who are true believers, and they are the suckers that keep the world turning.

kevinmchugh 4y ago

It might be hard to tell whether a foretold disaster never materializes because a) it was sensationalized or b) because the attention spurred action (which is good!).

kergonath 4y ago
Also sometimes things just don’t happen for some unforeseen or unknown reason. It does not mean that initial reporting was sensationalised.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

Endemic zika virus is horrible if you're in a region that has it like me. As if we didn't have enough with dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and malaria... Any of these diseases feel like getting run over by a bus to get and only two of those have effective preventative vaccines (Yellow fever and now thankfully malaria), but if I get dengue again I could possibly die. The fact that herd immunity kicked in is definitely why you haven't heard as much about it but trust us, this isn't a fun thing to get used to and many, many lives are affected daily by neglected tropical diseases. Maybe you will notice when these diseases make it north of Florida.