6 ms·

If there was no climate change but you have the world to look at, you would still be able to find several extreme weather events every year. As we don't have a

If there was no climate change but you have the world to look at, you would still be able to find several extreme weather events every year. As we don't have a handle on _all_ weather events, we are prone to think these events are somehow exceptional, when all that is happening is that this is where the media focus is at present. If the media decided to focus on some other topic, eg siamese twins, or accidents in the military, or whatever, we would soon think we won't get a seat on the bus for conjoined twins, or imagine that every soldier is likely to be killed by friendly fire. It is impossible for us to faithfully discern truth from the media presentation.

anigbrowl 4y ago
You're making two arguments here: that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything, and that we're incapable of deriving truth from media reports. Neither is true. We often have adequate priors and when individual perceptions aren't sufficient statistics offer a base of comparison. Media bias and cognitive biases exist, of course, but uncertainty and bias can also be measured and mitigated. It's notable that sometimes the loudest complaints of media bias come from competing media outlets with lesser or negative commitment to reliability.
- verisimi 4y ago
  I'm saying that you can't know the reality, nor can you know the reality from what is presented by the media. You seem to think you can discern something useful from what the media says. I'm saying that all you can notice is when the media is pushing a particular narrative, you don't know the underlying truth. Unless you have personally verified it. And no one does.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    This is just solipsistic paranoia. People can and do research subjects on their own initiative. Media outlets typically credit expert opinions so people can also look into those experts and see if they're influential in their field, what their publication and citation history is etc. 'The media' is not a monolith, but rather an industry that delivers information with a distribution of timeliness, reliability, and neutrality. Your approach is less 'don't believe everything you read' and more 'you can't believe anything, everyone is lying, getting at the truth is basically impossible.'
    - verisimi 4y ago
      My approach is to be clear about the difference between what I know and believe. Accreditation, publication and citation mean nothing to me. Experts mean nothing to me. Flattering titles mean nothing to me. I want to hear the argument, and I want to understand how I can verify it for myself. If I can't verify it - and climate change as presented is unverifiable, unfalsifiable - then what am I meant to do with all these heartfelt beliefs? Should I believe them anyway because everyone else does? What relation do lots of earnest beliefs (and some dishonest, alarmist mouthpieces - the media) have to do with the truth?
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
You would not find an obvious and unquestionable trend towards more extreme events. Media presentation has nothing to do with it. This is about hard science making verified predictions. In fact if anything the predictions have erred on the side of understatement and caution, and reality has already far outstripped their optimism. I don't understand the psychology of deniers. There's ample objective evidence of incoming climate catastrophe, but there's still the party line of "It's not really happening, and even if it is we're not sure why, and even if we are sure why it's too expensive to do anything." Absolutely none of those are true.
- briandear 4y ago
  We aren’t climate “deniers.” We just don’t subscribe to the sky is falling religion. A few times a generation the sky is allegedly falling. And it’s always overstated for political gain. Where is the actual proof humans are changing the climate? Not theory. Not models. But scientific proof? If we are going to make huge policy shifts that affect everyone’s economic prosperity, then it better be more than some computer modeling. Yes the climate is changing. Does flying on a 747 make it worse? Can you prove it? Conclusively? Because I’m not going to support policy decisions based on a best guess or faith. And is climate change bad? Any proof of that? If it gets warmer and it increases the growing season in Siberia or Canada, is that “bad?” And what’s the consequence of batteries everywhere? What are the environmental consequences of that? How about covering the land with solar panels? Can that have a negative effect? Windmills? Any effect on wildlife? Mao tried to exterminate sparrows and it led to a famine. Debating human caused global warming is like debating fundamentalist Christians. There is no coming catastrophe. That’s made up. It’s like using Revelation to increase donations to the church.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Read the IPCC report, it addresses all those concerns quite explicitly.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago
aeroman 4y ago
Media focus does play a role, but weather records from many parts of the world go back over 100 years. These are independent of what the media is focussing on today and give us a very good picture of whether a particular weather event is 'extreme' or not. These events really are exceptional. As an example, last month the UK temperature record was broken by over 1C, across large regions of the country. Usually, temperature records are broken by small amounts, maybe 0.2C. This heatwave really was extreme for the UK. 7 out of 10 of the hottest days in UK history have been since the year 2000. In a country with particularly long temperature records, this is also pretty amazing, and evidence of a significant change in the cliamte and extreme events.
- verisimi 4y ago
  Do you realise that the historical records have been 'normalised', ie they are not the simple record that was made?

anigbrowl 4y ago

You're making two arguments here: that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything, and that we're incapable of deriving truth from media reports. Neither is true. We often have adequate priors and when individual perceptions aren't sufficient statistics offer a base of comparison. Media bias and cognitive biases exist, of course, but uncertainty and bias can also be measured and mitigated. It's notable that sometimes the loudest complaints of media bias come from competing media outlets with lesser or negative commitment to reliability.

verisimi 4y ago
I'm saying that you can't know the reality, nor can you know the reality from what is presented by the media. You seem to think you can discern something useful from what the media says. I'm saying that all you can notice is when the media is pushing a particular narrative, you don't know the underlying truth. Unless you have personally verified it. And no one does.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  This is just solipsistic paranoia. People can and do research subjects on their own initiative. Media outlets typically credit expert opinions so people can also look into those experts and see if they're influential in their field, what their publication and citation history is etc. 'The media' is not a monolith, but rather an industry that delivers information with a distribution of timeliness, reliability, and neutrality. Your approach is less 'don't believe everything you read' and more 'you can't believe anything, everyone is lying, getting at the truth is basically impossible.'
  - verisimi 4y ago
    My approach is to be clear about the difference between what I know and believe. Accreditation, publication and citation mean nothing to me. Experts mean nothing to me. Flattering titles mean nothing to me. I want to hear the argument, and I want to understand how I can verify it for myself. If I can't verify it - and climate change as presented is unverifiable, unfalsifiable - then what am I meant to do with all these heartfelt beliefs? Should I believe them anyway because everyone else does? What relation do lots of earnest beliefs (and some dishonest, alarmist mouthpieces - the media) have to do with the truth?

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

You would not find an obvious and unquestionable trend towards more extreme events. Media presentation has nothing to do with it. This is about hard science making verified predictions. In fact if anything the predictions have erred on the side of understatement and caution, and reality has already far outstripped their optimism. I don't understand the psychology of deniers. There's ample objective evidence of incoming climate catastrophe, but there's still the party line of "It's not really happening, and even if it is we're not sure why, and even if we are sure why it's too expensive to do anything." Absolutely none of those are true.

briandear 4y ago
We aren’t climate “deniers.” We just don’t subscribe to the sky is falling religion. A few times a generation the sky is allegedly falling. And it’s always overstated for political gain. Where is the actual proof humans are changing the climate? Not theory. Not models. But scientific proof? If we are going to make huge policy shifts that affect everyone’s economic prosperity, then it better be more than some computer modeling. Yes the climate is changing. Does flying on a 747 make it worse? Can you prove it? Conclusively? Because I’m not going to support policy decisions based on a best guess or faith. And is climate change bad? Any proof of that? If it gets warmer and it increases the growing season in Siberia or Canada, is that “bad?” And what’s the consequence of batteries everywhere? What are the environmental consequences of that? How about covering the land with solar panels? Can that have a negative effect? Windmills? Any effect on wildlife? Mao tried to exterminate sparrows and it led to a famine. Debating human caused global warming is like debating fundamentalist Christians. There is no coming catastrophe. That’s made up. It’s like using Revelation to increase donations to the church.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Read the IPCC report, it addresses all those concerns quite explicitly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 4y ago

aeroman 4y ago

Media focus does play a role, but weather records from many parts of the world go back over 100 years. These are independent of what the media is focussing on today and give us a very good picture of whether a particular weather event is 'extreme' or not. These events really are exceptional. As an example, last month the UK temperature record was broken by over 1C, across large regions of the country. Usually, temperature records are broken by small amounts, maybe 0.2C. This heatwave really was extreme for the UK. 7 out of 10 of the hottest days in UK history have been since the year 2000. In a country with particularly long temperature records, this is also pretty amazing, and evidence of a significant change in the cliamte and extreme events.

verisimi 4y ago
Do you realise that the historical records have been 'normalised', ie they are not the simple record that was made?