World's Plant Life Far Less Diverse Than Thought 338
Meshach writes "A report out of FOX News (I know, I know) says that there are far fewer unique species of plants than previously thought. The report states that only about a third of named species are actually unique. The rest have been 'discovered' multiple times, often by separate scientists."
Re:ah faux news (Score:5, Informative)
That's almost by design. The Fox News bias is from the original founding idea: studies showed most vocal conservatives (as opposed to real conservatives) didn't want facts and didn't want to learn. They wanted to hear only what re-enforced their already limited and slanted viewpoints. It was consciously created with that in mind. Some of the "talent" involved have even made comments, off camera, at social events, like, "Oh, that's just the act, get over it," or, "It's what I do for a job, who believes that crap?"
Interestingly enough, surveys also show that those very same people, when presented with facts that disrupt or disprove what they want to believe will ignore those facts and will become even more emotionally entrenched and committed to what they want to believe is true - even after seeing proof it is false.
Okay, ignore Fox (Score:4, Informative)
But http://www.theplantlist.org/ [theplantlist.org] quotes their data right on the front page:
Accepted 298,900 28.7%
Synonym 477,601 45.9%
Unresolved 263,925 25.4%
Note that a full 25% could go either way. Fox is putting the predictable spin on the story that ALL news media will probably put on this to generate readership, but the takeaway is that now we know more. This is generally considered a good a thing, especially when you want to do this sort of thing repeatedly. They have a method, and are looking to expand and perfect it. Mission accomplished.
Re:ah faux news (Score:5, Informative)
>I'll make you a deal. I'll support a ban on submissions from Fox News as long as we never have to see another submission from MSNBC, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, or anything similar.
None of those media news outlets have gone to court, though, to argue that their right to deliberately lie to and consciously mislead their readership is protected by the First Amendment.
http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html [relfe.com]
That, to me, says cease using Fox News as a source (and burn it with fire).
Re:ah faux news (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, I think you would find that the position of the skeptics tends to be that a few dozen scientists are pretending to far more certainty than they really have, manipulating or ignoring data that doesn't fit their preconceived hypotheses, and using shaming and groupthink among academics to inflate their resultant crap into the presumed truth.
Frankly, I just have one (math) question for CAGW proponents: since when can you predict a chaotic, tightly-coupled, nonlinear system more than one iteration into the future within one sigma of reality?
Re:Bias does not exclude fairness (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't inherently discredit them as a news organization
No, the fact they filed and won a lawsuit arguing that they are allowed to deliberately lie about the news does.
Re:ah faux news (Score:4, Informative)
***Not saying that I trust Xinhua much either but it's nice to read strangely phrased news that isn't dowsed in patriotism (their own non-international news of course drips with National pride and should not be avoided)***
Try China Daily http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ [chinadaily.com.cn]. Their international news seems reasonable, and much of their domestic news is much more critical of things in China than I would have expected. I'm sure that there are subjects they avoid and others they distort, but overall, they read much like a reasonably good western news source. Compared to Fox News or Ria Novisti they seem sort of reputable.
Re:ah faux news (Score:5, Informative)
You can see the same mathematical concept in a pan of water on the stove, you can make a usefully accurate model to predict how long it will take to boil but there is no way to predict when or where the first bubble will start to form.
Climate model forecasts of climate trend (particularly golbal average temps) have matched observations within their defined error margin for over 30yrs now.
Since this stuff is so easy to google I can only assume you haven't tried answering your own question.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Would 50% of the post be discussing the third party news source instead of the real news. I don't even think the news is the spin of the third party (which was, "Look! Scientists have goofed an estimate!" (One that will alway be a moving target, in this case the plant count)). I think the real news is this: There is a group working to create an open, coordinated effort to prevent the very thing that the triple-faced thirdy party is spinning negatively.
In other news, post is now both the plurar and singular form of the word "post".
Re:The Actual Source (Score:2, Informative)
Anything they can do to make scientists look bad, right?