4 ms·
It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size. Why is
by w0de0 4y ago
It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size.
Why is this the font of your passion, rather than the desperate situation of our planet?
- googlryas 4y agoWhy do you care about climate change when the world is going to end in nuclear war before we even hit +1.2C? Don't question my projections, if you do, you're just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI wonder how many nuclear bombs it would take to raise global temperature by an average of 1.2C? I'm sure a physicist could tell you, but I bet the number would be best expressed in exponential notation at least. And if we were setting off that many bombs every day, I bet people would be a bit concerned.
- googlryas 4y agoNo one will care about the temperature when there is no one.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- colpabar 4y agoWhat are they supposed to do? They said they don't trust the guardian for scientific news because they have read the actual scientific literature and noticed that the guardian engages in clickbait and hyperbole. They seem to understand the situation, they just don't like this particular outlet because in their experience it doesn't do a good job. Should they be typing in all caps about how we're all going to die instead? Like it or not, a lot of people have lost trust in mainstream media outlets because they have seen said outlets engage in hyperbolic clickbait bullshit.
- w0de0 4y agoA fair question. I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears (“concern trolling” - though I don’t cast that label on any comment here). The well meant and often needed pedantry of the informed serves the disingenuous demagogue readily. And the informed themselves are often distracted from a moral urgency by ambiguity. Ambiguity is kin to science but alien to modern and popular modes of ethical judgement. This failure of critical moral thinking is the crux of media’s challenge when reporting on climate change. I don’t believe the hoi polloi distrust journalists because they too are current with the latest studies. In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding. The latter suits the present powers, the former all the possibility of a future.
- timr 4y ago> I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears In other words, anyone who questions a media narrative -- however obviously thoughtless or ridiculous -- is "concern trolling", and therefore worth dismissing. > In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding. We have to stop this black and white thinking. There's absolutely a wide area of reasonable disagreement possible here: we can agree that climate is a problem, but disagree on the costs / benefit tradeoffs of any proposed solution. Science and policy are two very different things, but one side of the political spectrum seems devoted to turning "science" into a political bludgeon for their preferred policies. If you'd stop short of returning humanity to the stone age to stop climate change, then you, too, believe in reasonable tradeoffs. You can be a scientist and hold both things in your head at the same time.
- timr 4y agoIndeed, why bother with ensuring our predictions are reasonable at all? Let's just assume the absolute worst, all the time. If we stop being objective and surrender ourselves to emotion and panic, then it stops being science, and all authority is lost.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mistermann 4y agoThe justification I would give: to get ourselves out of this pickle, it is plausible that we will require skilled thinking. Therefore, pursuing good thinking would make sense, and a component of that would be identifying bad thinking (as demonstration, and also perhaps as something to add to the "To Fix" list). I continue to believe that the physical science is well beyond "good enough" and that humanity should now be investing in metaphysical inquiry (psychology, sociology, etc), as getting humans coordinated and pulling all in the same direction would be beneficial to sorting this mess and others out.