Scientists Aim For Clearer Messages On Global Warming (npr.org) 299
Here's a sentence that's basically unintelligible to most people: Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented transition to a carbon neutral economy. A recent study found that some of the most common terms in climate science are confusing to the general public. From a report: The study tested words that are frequently used in international climate reports, and it concluded that the most confusing terms were "mitigation," "carbon neutral" and "unprecedented transition." "I think the main message is to avoid jargon," says Wandi Bruine de Bruin, a behavioral scientist at the University of Southern California and the lead author of the study. "That includes words that may seem like everyone should understand them."
For example, participants in the study mixed up the word "mitigation," which commonly refers to efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the word "mediation," which is a way to resolve disputes. And even simple terms such as "carbon" can be misleading, the study found. Sometimes, carbon is shorthand for carbon dioxide. Other times, it's used to refer to multiple greenhouse gases. "As experts in a particular field, we may not realize which of the words that we're using are jargon," says Bruine de Bruin.
The study is the latest indication that scientists need to do a better job communicating about global warming, especially when the intended audience is the general public. Clear climate communication gets more important every day because climate change is affecting every part of life on Earth. Nurses, doctors, farmers, teachers, engineers and business executives need reliable, accessible information about how global warming is affecting their patients, crops, students, buildings and businesses. And extreme weather this summer -- from floods to fires, hurricanes to droughts -- underscores the urgency of clear climate communication.
For example, participants in the study mixed up the word "mitigation," which commonly refers to efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the word "mediation," which is a way to resolve disputes. And even simple terms such as "carbon" can be misleading, the study found. Sometimes, carbon is shorthand for carbon dioxide. Other times, it's used to refer to multiple greenhouse gases. "As experts in a particular field, we may not realize which of the words that we're using are jargon," says Bruine de Bruin.
The study is the latest indication that scientists need to do a better job communicating about global warming, especially when the intended audience is the general public. Clear climate communication gets more important every day because climate change is affecting every part of life on Earth. Nurses, doctors, farmers, teachers, engineers and business executives need reliable, accessible information about how global warming is affecting their patients, crops, students, buildings and businesses. And extreme weather this summer -- from floods to fires, hurricanes to droughts -- underscores the urgency of clear climate communication.
Simple english, not only lack of jargon (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually saying that calls to action in climate change must be written in simple English as well as avoid words with specialised meaning. "Mitigate", "unprecedented", etc, are not jargon. They are just words that are not in many people's working vocabulary because many people do not have a large working vocabulary and are not well-educated in English language. This is a US study, and this is particularly common in the USA: many people in the USA do not have a high-level education in their primary language, with only a mediocre command of the language. Other countries, like France, ensure a much higher uniform level of education in their national language.
Writing in English to people who use it as a second, or third, language has the more obvious problem that people are not being addressed in the language they understand best.
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This is actually saying that calls to action in climate change must be written in simple English as well as avoid words with specialised meaning. "Mitigate", "unprecedented", etc, are not jargon. They are just words that are not in many people's working vocabulary because many people do not have a large working vocabulary and are not well-educated in English language. This is a US study, and this is particularly common in the USA: many people in the USA do not have a high-level education in their primary language, with only a mediocre command of the language. Other countries, like France, ensure a much higher uniform level of education in their national language.
It's a cool meme that 'murricans are mostly ignorant, and that enlightened people like the French have it all over us here in the hinterlands, but you and even the study are looking for an answer to what is not the question.
AGW denial is based on politics, and not scientists using big words that Americans cannot understand.
I can pick random people off the street, and expect everyone but actually mentally challenged people would completely understand "mitigation" and "unprecedented".
Some other terms
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There's a reason why you have roles like business analyst and others.
Communication is complex and it does need to be tailored for different audiences. Sometimes people can be 'too smart' for communications. I recall once given a presentation and then I made a broad statement along the lines of 'if there's a problem in code, it's not the compiler' And of course I was hit by a bunch of uber smart people who had their own little special cases where the was a compiler bug that took up an abnormal amount of time
Luntz, the renamer [Re: Simple english, not...] (Score:4, Interesting)
Frank Luntz was effective at downplaying Global Warming by renaming it Climate Change.
Yep. Luntz wrote the memo to the Bush administration instructing Republicans to adopt the phrase "climate change" because it sounds less "scary" than "global warming": https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
He also said "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate" and "a compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth."
Interesting, he has now changed his opinion on climate, and thinks that we should address it: https://www.politico.com/story... [politico.com]
https://grist.org/article/the-... [grist.org]
... a good article about the name change from "global warming" to "climate change" (pointing out that both phrases are accurate): https://skepticalscience.com/c... [skepticalscience.com]
Re:Simple english, not only lack of jargon (Score:4, Informative)
Frank Luntz was effective at downplaying Global Warming by renaming it Climate Change.
While I can find articles that corroborate this statement [thetimes.co.uk], it doesn't jive with the fact that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [wikipedia.org] was created in 1988.
Here's an article from 2013 that makes my point about the IPCC, and also points out that scientific papers used the term Climate Change as far back as the 1970's. [archive.org]
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The renaming has more to do with the variability in weather. It doesn't present as a constantly increasing temperature - that's just on the long-term climate scale. It's a better fit because of all the tireless arguments about how it's not actually warmer everywhere year over year. And when the polar vortex zooms down to the lower midwest during the winter (making it colder in the US) because of destabilized polar jet stream - that's global "warming" making it WAY colder over a large chunk of a winter.
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LOL! While that statement might be true, the underlying intention was to seem less alarmist so we could kick the can down the road while large fossil fuel corporations reap profits.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Messaging is not the problem. (Score:2, Interesting)
The number of unconvinced is swiftly vanishing. Those who reject it are not really looking for evidence for it, only for evidence against. And the large numbers who incorporated their disbelief into their personal identity won't internalize anything they perceive as an attack on who they are. And a lot of the world is still too poor to meaningfully change their life around the idea of mitigation.
The messaging is not the problem. The world by and large has heard the drum beat for a few decades. Shouting more
...poor choice of word... (Score:2)
"Undecided".... not "unconvinced."
Re: Messaging is not the problem. (Score:2)
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Re: Messaging is not the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a third option: polluter pays.
Why are the fossil fuel industries that are by-and-large causing this problem allowed to externalize their waste outputs at the cost of downwinders' health, and now the entire planet's ecosystem changing? Why are they allowed to be some of the biggest and richest companies on the planet while taxpayers have to pay to clean up the shit they spew into our air?
Very few other industries are able to get away with that - if they create hazardous waste, they need to pay for it to be handled properly as an internal cost, or a cost they carry forward to the end user. Let's stop with the subsidy and externalization in comparison to clean energy sources that don't produce waste streams that harm us all and "let the market decide" - which is what libertarians and the right are always banging on about, unless it's not going to benefit them; then it becomes a problem that government must take care of, or jam your head in the sand for another 20 years.
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There's a third option: polluter pays.
That might avoid the higher taxes that GP was talking about, if you also stop the govs from doling out corporate welfare. But it will still lead to higher prices, because when the "polluter pays", the polluter's customers are the ones who ultimately foot the bill. Which is only fair, since without the customers, the polluters would be out of business.
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The customers are already footing the bill. Just in a much worse way. Hurricane damage is expensive, for example - but you can't send a bill to BP for an entire city being destroyed by storm surge. Externalized costs need to be brought back in and rooted to the cause to make anything better.
Re: Messaging is not the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gasoline is cheap because we've decided as a society that coal and oil should be cheap.
No gasoline is cheap for 2 reasons: 1) because you can get it cheaply from the ground and refining it is easy and 2) because cheap energy is a huge boon to the rest of the economy (especially the industrial sectors). Also, control of oil wins wars which is why the US is so concerned with control of oil production. That is a common fallacy, that the US goes somewhere and steals the oil. We don't steal it, we just reserve the right to deny it to enemies in times of war. Not that that makes a difference to the soldiers doing the fighting and dying. It is a complex problem, but it is especially complex if you don't understand it and put it all on corruption and politics. There is a lot of warfare and physics in there too.
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Carbon capture is a stupid technology for our current situation because for most purposes it *costs more* to capture x tons of CO2 than it costs to prevent that CO2 from being emitted in the first place.
It will be an important technology eventually because someday we'll have de-carbonized all the low-hanging fruit and we'll still have to reduce atmospheric concentration from the level we got it to, but better to just focus on funding research on it and not waste money on deployment when every dollar we spen
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it *costs more* to capture x tons of CO2 than it costs to prevent that CO2 from being emitted in the first place.
Which is the reason for cap and trade systems. In effect, prevented CO2 is used to offset the remaining CO2 emission. Not every emission can be prevented when you're burning fuel, but you can make the things that can be done financially rewarding.
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Which is the reason for cap and trade systems.
No, cap and trade exists to rubberstamp bad behavior so that nothing has to change. This industry pollutes less than allowed, that one pollutes more than allowed, some money changes hands and pollution continues.
What we need is cap and TAX, not cap and trade. Cap carbon emissions, and tax overage enough to pay someone to fix the carbon released (and then some! this motivates corporations to handle it themselves instead of making government do it) with NO TRADING.
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In cap and trade company X pays company Y to offset their carbon emissions.
In cap and tax, company x pays the government instead.
Is your contention that the government will be more efficient than profit-motive driven Company Y in converting those dollars into Carbon not in the atmosphere?
Re: Messaging is not the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the truth that no one wants to accept; Global Warming/Climate Change takes a back seat to the economy. It always will. Why? Because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is more important than the economy.
So any solutions suggested are going to have to jive with economic prosperity. You can't raise costs on the middle/lower classes, for instance, and expect them to fall in line with your agenda. Doesn't matter how right you may be; the moment you hit their pocket book you've lost. Upper class too, but for different reasons.
What does this mean? Is everything doom and gloom and we're going to kill ourselves as a species? No, but it does mean we need creative solutions which are cheaper than the currently available solutions. We need to find a way to make EV cars cheaper and more appealing than ICE cars. We need to make nuclear more appealing than coal ( it might already be cheaper, the numbers tend to be fuzzy because of gov meddling ).
That's how to solve the problem. Not by telling people that they're going to owe more "to save the planet" ( which, frankly, was here a long time before us, and will be around a long time after us ), but by telling people, "We're going to make your lives easier and cheaper".
It's the economy [Re: Messaging is not the problem (Score:2)
So any solutions suggested are going to have to jive with economic prosperity. You can't raise costs on the middle/lower classes, for instance, and expect them to fall in line with your agenda.
Truth to that, but the deniers keep shouting "doing anything about the problem will kill the economy and raise costs on the middle/lower classes!" without any real documentation that this would be true. Their argument goes "other sources of energy are more expensive than fossil fuels now, so they will always be expensive... and the fact that they are expensive now means we should not put any money into research on improving them, because they're expensive."
I am a techno-optimist. I think that problems can
Leadership (Score:2)
The problem is people dont want to change their lifestyles and they dont want to pay more money for EVs and energy.
The problem is that the people in leadership roles of governments and business *also* don't want to change their lifestyle. Witness the fleet of private jets flown to Davos to discuss climate change. Or the EU parliament constantly travelling between Strasburg (it's official seat) Brussels (it's main offices) and Luxembourg.
When regular citizens see this kind of behavior, they wonder why *they* have to forgo their plane trips, etc...
Re: Messaging is not the *only* problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't that the language is opaque, it's that the end goals (less freedom for the unwashed masses) are quite transparent.
To be specific and long-winded, the bigger problem is that subjective value judgements are being dressed up as scientific certainties, and some not-so-subtle sophistry is afoot.
The following are all *independent* statements that are generally amenable to scientific falsification (either now or in the future with more data collection), but often get lumped into a single sound byte (which is logically wrong):
1. Global warming exists.
Data in the can shows this is mostly true.
2. The worst-case projections for global warming are catastrophic.
Data in the can cannot show this yet. A range of plausible scenarios exist and cherry picking the scariest one is activism, not science.
3. Man-made contribitions to global warming are nonzero.
As a qualitative statement it is true but separating the anthropogenic contribution from natural cyclical variation definitively requires more data than we have, so the range of plausible values for this requires approximations to reality and scientific judgement about plausible assumptions. The error bars are non-negligible but that often gets left out when the scariest number (100 pct) is implied to be the correct one by activists.
4. (Socialist) policies that preclude individuals from utilizing emissions-heavy conveniences will reduce the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.
This is true in the sense of a Carthaginian Peace, but the leap to restricting individual freedoms by banning automobiles or single-family homes is a solution in search for a problem. The socialist/collectivist instict to erase the American lifestyle and erase individualism in general predates environmentalism by a long time.
Leaping to collectivist policies implies there are no other ways to get to lower ghg emissions in a manner that doesn't center on punishing those nasty selfish suburbanites first and foremost.
Claiming it's the only way is unscientific.
And of course, all this usually culminates in the inevitable transparent power grab: My pet project/idea/master plan for society reduces individuals' net ghg emissions....therefore it should be mandatory. With *me* as the unquestioned benevolent dictator to see it through.
The problem isn't that the language is opaque, it's that the end goals are quite transparent.
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The problem isn't that the language is opaque, it's that the end goals (less freedom for the unwashed masses) are quite transparent.
Pure unadulterated baloney. Altering power technology infrastructure to one that emits less carbon dioxide is not in any way "transparently" attempting a "goal" of "less freedom for the unwashed masses." That's idiotic.
The fact that you start out with this bald-faced absurdity merely shows that your pretense of being an objective but skeptical analyst is nothing but a show.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The problem isn't that the language is opaque, it's that the end goals (less freedom for the unwashed masses) are quite transparent.
Yup, username checks out.
Re: Messaging is not the *only* problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The worst-case projections for global warming are catastrophic.
Data in the can cannot show this yet. A range of plausible scenarios exist and cherry picking the scariest one is activism, not science.
You don't seem to grasp the concept of cherry picking. Cherry picking would be choosing outliers when that is not appropriate. But when you are talking about "worst-case projections", outliers are exactly what you are talking about.
3. Man-made contribitions to global warming are nonzero.
As a qualitative statement it is true but separating the anthropogenic contribution from natural cyclical variation definitively requires more data than we have
This is completely false. We can do math. We know the effect of adding X tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, because we can measure the effects of CO2 in a lab. We know how many tons of CO2 we're adding to the atmosphere. Simple math on those tells us exactly what we're doing.
You just really don't like the result of that math, so you're trying very hard to pretend it can't be done.
This is true in the sense of a Carthaginian Peace, but the leap to restricting individual freedoms by banning automobiles or single-family homes is a solution in search for a problem.
And now you've devolved to completely lying, because you've run out of deflections.
You are the problem. Your narcissism is going to kill billions. And your sociopathy means you don't care.
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Too bad there's so much evidence in that direction, eh?
You guys have been crying "Doom!" for so many years, people are tuning you out. THAT'S what you're really pissed about. You made the Boy That Cried Wolf look tame in comparison. All of the bullshit disaster predictions you've made over the years have all fallen flat. Florida isn't underwater (NO one is underwater, in fact), the farms haven't turned into deserts, and we're not living in a SuperStorm hellscape. All predictions that were supposed to have come true by now.
No, people have caught on to your bullshit.You make more "End of the World" predictions than Jehovah's Witnesses. Don't think we haven't noticed. We see that you keep moving the goalposts. The National Park Service removing all the Glaciers will be gone by 2020 signs [kpax.com] is but the latest example.
I'm not sure you're a rational human being - isn't "moving the goalposts" the entire point? If society is making positive changes (it is) then the effects of our negative activities should certainly be dampened. I mean, if your mom sees you crawl out of the basement and tells you to put a coat on if you're going to the tiddie bar because it's cold outside, and you do, you don't come home and tell her she's an idiot because you didn't freeze (because you were wearing your coat).
In the US we had a lot of poli
Yeah we're fucked (Score:5, Insightful)
People too poorly educated to know the difference between mitigation and mediation aren't going to understand ANY of this. They are NEVER going to get it. Even if they're on your side, they don't know shit and it's not because of your arguments, it's because they like YOU.
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People too poorly educated to know the difference between mitigation and mediation aren't going to have much effect on climate change.
Sure, as long as they sit on their hands.
The only people that don't seem to understand the severity of the situation are the ones making billions off of fossil fuel production and consumption. I wonder what the source of their willful ignorance is?
Their internal reports (leaked) prove that they do understand it. I know where you were going with this but it's important to recognize that they are not ignorant at all. They know exactly what they are doing, consciously. That is what makes them evil and not merely inconvenient.
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Sure, as long as they sit on their hands.
Pretty sure that even if John Q. Public goes full on zero carbon footprint in their personal lives for all, it won't offset the gargantuan businesses and individuals that are fueling the majority of the problem.
To the ones that are the majority problem, it is a problem for thee, not for me. I feel that it is a giant scam that convincing individuals that their smallest effort will make a difference while not directly tackling the larger contributors. I'm welcoming a c
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Pretty sure that even if John Q. Public goes full on zero carbon footprint in their personal lives for all, it won't offset the gargantuan businesses and individuals that are fueling the majority of the problem.
That's not what this is about. It's about taking political action, not about decreasing your personal emissions. We need to decrease everyone's emissions, not just the rich or the poor, but the only way to do that is by reaching the rich.
Even Harvard is now divesting from fossil fuels, and they never even fully divested from apartheid. Clearly some can be reached.
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People too poorly educated to know the difference between mitigation and mediation aren't going to have much effect on climate change.
They still vote.
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Indeed. The realization I have had in the last two years is that people with average intelligence are pretty much morons. And then about half are below average.
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People too poorly educated to know the difference between mitigation and mediation aren't going to understand ANY of this. They are NEVER going to get it. Even if they're on your side, they don't know shit and it's not because of your arguments, it's because they like YOU.
Yeah, that's it. Keep talking down to people, and wondering why the football players would rather keep flushing your head in the toilet than listening to what you have to say.
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The three largest genocides on Earth, namely the high carb diet, two point one billion victims ATM, the fossil fuels promoted over nuclear and the decimation of the human reproductive system are embraced and beloved by 'progressives'.
[citation needed]
Also, fuck your nuclear propaganda false dichotomy bullshit.
Re: Yeah we're fucked (Score:4, Informative)
We just have highly unreliable wind and largely useless solar. Look at the wind graph here: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Bounces between 10GW and zero GW.
Now, if we had abundant and reliable nuclear power like France do...
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Actually, people understand you perfectly well (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the content of your message they don't like. You keep saying want a "carbon-neutral" economy, but people intuitively understand that carbon is literally the foundational material of nearly every manufactured product, including the products we use to manufacture, store, and convey all other products. You might as well say you want a "heat-neutral" economy, or an "electron-neutral" one.
You say you want to completely change the entire material world by fiat, and then wonder why people aren't falling over
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You say you want to completely change the entire material world by fiat, and then wonder why people aren't falling over themselves to cheer you on. So who's the one not understanding things?
The people who don't understand that we need to change the whole world or all we hold dear will likely be lost anyway.
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Stop pretending you care about what we hold dear.
Mu
People like you support the push for climate change because you think it is going to cause societal change and usher in a new period of glorious Marxism where you will flourish.
People like me support the push for defense from climate change because I think that if we don't do it we will likely "all" die, for some value of "all" which is sufficiently close that there's no point in arguing about it.
The sad part is when the US government fiinally fixes climate change it will be the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle and lower classes to the corporations that the world has ever seen. You see this already with the Democrats Green New Deal and infrastructure bill. It is literally a transfer of money to the corporations to fix things.
How do you propose we "fix things"?
But you are smart right? So much smarter than anyone else.
I'm smarter than you.
That is why you fix RVs for a living
Even smart people make bad decisions.
and play Marxist revolutionary on the internet.
I don't "play" anything on the internet. I am who I am, I believe what I believe, and your arguments are tired, weak, and pathetic... when you even have any, instead of simply engaging in endles
Actually people don't understand. You, for example (Score:2)
It's the content of your message they don't like. You keep saying want a "carbon-neutral" economy, but people intuitively understand that carbon is literally the foundational material of nearly every manufactured product, including the products we use to manufacture, store, and convey all other products.
Meh. It is the bilions of tons carbon that we dig out of the ground and burn that needs to be addressed, not the vastly smaller amount that goes into making things (and thus does not go into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide).
The fact that you misunderstand this underlines the point that the phrase is poorly chosen and not understood,
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You are kind of proving the point of this whole thread. Either through ignorance or willfulness you are using "carbon-neutral" to mean anything containing carbon. Carbon-neutral refers to the production of carbon based greenhouse gasses (e.g. CO and CO2).
You might as well say you want a "heat-neutral" economy, or an "electron-neutral" one.
This are kind of a bad example. Can you name one industry that actually produces more electrons than it destroys (or for that matter one that destroys more electrons than it produces)?
Only one solution (Score:2)
I've analyzed the data. I looked at the various simulations, checked out the various mitigation plans, and ran the math. And you know what, I've figured out there's only one way to solve this problem: ditch this fucking planet. I am serious, this planet is shit .. various predators .. wolves, snakes, pestilence, and motherfucking parasites. I am not talking about any animals, I am talking about the humans. They suck. They fucked up this planet. We're told by fools that we should stick around and fix things
Just another solipsism (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just another form of the same begged-question logic that the left believes people were "tricked" into supporting Trump.
"I'm good, and I believe X, so it's incomprehensible that someone else might simply disagree with me!"
Except this time it's leavened with condescension "..it must be because they're too dumb to understand my words."
Solipsism, semantics, and being patronising: all core pillars of modern liberalism.
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And the core to having your core set of users understand your product, as well. Do you go on and on and on about HOW a program does something, or do you just tell them what to do to make them able to do their work.
Some users you can just tell them "Enter your value here and it will produce the results over there when you submit it."
Other users: "Enter your value here..." "My what?" "Your value... your data... the information you want it to process" "Oh, okay" "Then click here and it'll spit it out over ther
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This is just another form of the same begged-question logic that the left believes people were "tricked" into supporting Trump.
It depends on which people you're talking about. The median trump voter in 2016 had a higher yearly income level than the median clinton voter by around $10,000. The people with money who voted for trump believed that he would help them keep their money, and they were right. Voting for him was still a bad idea when it comes to long-term prosperity, but they at least had some idea what they were doing. It's the poor trump supporters who were tricked. He told them their taxes would go down; they went down for
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Correlation and causation. A majority of whites (54%) voted for Trump, and they skew wealthier than minorities. Did the "rich" vote for Trump, or just basically white people?
You're doing the same thing: Trump voters weren't TRICKED into anything.
You assert with hand-wavy certainty that whites were 'tricked' into voting for Trump, but the vast, vast majority of undereducated minorities voted for Clinton...are we going to on the same logical basis assert that their votes were 'tricked' into Clinton's camp?
T
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Trump voters weren't TRICKED into anything.
I literally just explained why they were.
You assert with hand-wavy certainty that whites were 'tricked' into voting for Trump, but the vast, vast majority of undereducated minorities voted for Clinton...are we going to on the same logical basis assert that their votes were 'tricked' into Clinton's camp?
No, because the same logical basis does not exist. Clinton was clearly a better choice for undereducated minorities than was Trump.
To continue the Democratic narrative that they were 'tricked' into voting him is self-delusion by the Left that is addicted to ever more strident anti-White, anti-American rhetoric.
I'm white and American. I don't see people complaining about the problems with majorities of either group as anti-white or anti-American. My country right or wrong, and if wrong, to be put right.
And for ALL THOSE NEGATIVES, Republicans still voted for him. Because he seemed to embrace the exhaustion white conservatives have felt at their ongoing popular demonization
which is fucking stupid, once again. Because Trump IS NOT ONE OF THEM. He is one of the wealthy elite, even if he is mostly broke he is still bei
so many "willfully ignorant" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if that's the right term for it, but we seem to have a lot of people running around nowadays that seem to be going out of their way to ignore evidence being thrust in their face by respected experts. Doesn't matter if they don't believe in moon landings, round earth, global warming, vaccines, or whatever.
Are there more of them / a bigger percentage of them in recent years, or are they just easier to notice nowadays?
And is there a simple short term to describe them? Nothing derogatory, I'm not meaning to insult with the word, I'm just trying to be specific without having to explain what I mean. "deniers" maybe?
Simplifying/Hyping until Wrong (Score:2)
we seem to have a lot of people running around nowadays that seem to be going out of their way to ignore evidence being thrust in their face by respected experts.
Agreed. Part of the problem that causes this though is the willingness of the media and others to try to add their non-expert and somewhat biased views on top of the evidence provided by experts to try and make things more compelling. This has the exact opposite effect and makes what experts are saying much, much less believable.
For example, experts will tell you that human-induced climate change made the heat wave in western North America and the resulting forest fires far more likely. The media report
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I'd agree that a "single expert should not be the basis of a belief", but when you have a whole raft of them, with mountains of evidence, and the only dissenting voices are opinions without evidence, and people citing each other, it's very compelling.
I did a little looking and was reminded of the term "confirmation bias", which basically means you tend to not trust/believe evidence and experts when they don't support your opinions. I think this hits pretty close to where I was going.
So the struggle seems t
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So many so called respected experts are liars or shills for whatever industry they work for.
Yep. And the oil companies pay them to pretend that (1) global warming doesn't exist, (2) and it's caused by natural effects anyway, and (3) it's too expensive to do anything about it.
"Carbon dioxide traps heat" (Score:2)
I've been amazed how much scientists have complicated the issue over the years. Just tell people "carbon dioxide traps heat". Plenty of people don't actually realize that.
And for the non-believers, it's simple enough to demonstrate with a pair of fish tanks, a couple of thermometers, a sodastream canister, and some sunlight.
Re: (Score:2)
My rendition of it:
The Earth's energy system is a leaky bucket. Energy streams in from the sun during the day, and the only energy leaving the Earth does so as radiant energy escaping into space at night. (or to put it another way, the sun-facing side of Earth collects energy while the opposite side sheds energy.)
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This is just basic physics and math.
Most people aren't good with either, even at basic levels, so that doesn't help.
Jargon? (Score:3)
"Mitigate", "Unprecedented", and "Carbon neutral" are not jargon. They may be words that get you a higher score on college entrance exams, but they're words that have real meaning that have been in language for a very long time. And in the case of "carbon neutral" it's an expression that isn't really hard to figure out in the context it's used.
This is basic literacy, and the problem isn't the scientists. It's the reader that doesn't know these words, and apparently doesn't know how to use a dictionary, or Google, to do what we all did when growing up and we read a word we were unfamiliar with: look the fucker up to learn it.
Scientists need to aim for clearer messages on sci (Score:5, Interesting)
Another
So when scientists use the word "theory" in a scientific context, a frightening percentage of the lay people hear not "our absolute best understanding" but instead "wild-ass guess" - the exact opposite! The meanings of "theory" in popular usage vs scientific usage are totally at odds.
If people don't understand how an understanding was reached, they have no reason to believe that understanding and will simply discard claims they don't like out of hand. So the big issue is not clearer messaging on climate change (which absolutely is happening!), but instead basic science literacy.
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Theory to most non-technical people means hypothesis. And as you observe, a whole lot of confusion comes out of that.
Everyone gets exposed to the meaning of hypothesis in high school, but then they never use the word again, and they forget about it. Even I use often use theory when I really mean hypothesis.
Maybe it's time to lose hypothesis, use theory to mean what hypothesis used to, and use law to replace theory. That seems to be the way language is moving anyway. Hypothesis is sort of unwieldy word.
Not much of a study (Score:2)
This isn't much of a study. From the study: https://link.springer.com/epdf... [springer.com]
"In our study, we therefore interviewed 20 members of the US general public to examine their responses to key terms drawn from publicly available IPCC materials, which are central to climate change communications."
That's it. 20 people. From this we will see lots of comments on /. about how "duh, Americans are just stupid".
That said, it's always best if jargon can be avoided when communicating with laymen. From TFA:
"The most rece
Re: (Score:2)
"The most recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was more than 3,900 pages long and highly technical, but it also included a two-page summary that stated the main points in simple language, such as, "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."
But even the simple summary is rife with words that can be confusing.
You mean like "unqeuivocal"? It's a great word, but I'd wager that most Americans don't know what it means.
Bold claim, citations please (Score:2)
"Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented transition to a carbon neutral economy. "
Where is the science supporting this statement?
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"Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented transition to a carbon neutral economy."
Where is the science supporting this statement?
In general, the science that we are talking about here is the science of understanding the effects of carbon dioxide on climate. What we do about it is a social discussion, not a science discussion.
But, if your question is serious, you could try starting here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5... [www.ipcc.ch]
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Thanks for the link to the 50MB IPCC report. It is very revealing. While it has wrapped itself in the trappings of science, there are huge and mostly unstated assumptions:
1. Climate change must be mitigated.
This is not questioned in the report. No science.
2. Mitigation is to be achieved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
That is it, end of story. One idea, one solution, no science for alternatives. This first paragraph of the foreword says it all:
"Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change i
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1. Climate change must be mitigated.
This is not questioned in the report. No science.
we don't have to mitigate it, we could just let our societies fail.
2. Mitigation is to be achieved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
That is it, end of story. One idea, one solution, no science for alternatives.
That's because we know GHGs are responsible for AGW, and we know that at best it will be cheaper to avoid emitting GHGs than to clean them up afterwards, and at worst it will be impractical to clean them up.
So this is a social discussion, not a science discussion?
Discussions of how society must bend to account for scientific understanding are both. If this frightens you, then you have nothing of value to add to this discussion.
Are you also an anti-vaxxer?
When did you stop beating your wife?
Certainties? (Score:2)
1) Banning gas boilers will increase the cost of heating homes around 6 times;
2) Heatpumps are largely useless for much of the UK housing stock;
3) People who live in flats and some tiny houses do not have anywhere to charge an EV car;
4) I am not convinced that the UK National Grid could stand a wholesale shift to electric home heating and driving. We've lost around 10GW of generating capacity in the last decade - nearly 20%
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2) Heatpumps are largely useless for much of the UK housing stock;
[citation needed [engadget.com]]
Ignoring a Clear Message (Score:2)
The message that is being ignored is:
"I am not personally affected at this moment, so therefore I don't care. If you're suffering, it sucks to be you."
Unfortunately, I don't know that it is possible to change this viewpoint. The sad reality is that it seems to be gaining popularity.
We're doomed (Score:2)
Ditch the Shrillness (Score:2)
Easy mistake to make (Score:2)
I get it. All the dumbasses who need everything explained over and over again can lead you to believe that maybe science needs to do a better job at explaining climate change (or is it global warming again?). But almost a hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair noted that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it", and he was neither the first nor the last who understood this.
I am sad to inform you that climate change is coming and there's no way
Obligatory xkcd (Score:4, Funny)
You can make the message as simple as you want (Score:3)
If you want to tackle climate change you need a federal jobs guarantee with a high enough min wage to allay peoples' fears. Also you'll need housing regulations to ensure they don't lose their homes.
You can't make massive changes in a country with 70% living paycheck to paycheck. Humans are inherently risk adverse, and they'll fight those changes tooth and nail. Climate change might be years from now, rent's due at the end of the month.
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I expect you to understand that scientists did not breed morons. I expect you to understand that there are people still out there who vote for a character like Donald Trump, and there is no justification for it except moronism.
They aren't slacking off. In fact, they are actively pursuing policies and lifestyles that will lead to their detriment. It would be poetically Darwinian...if only they weren't taking the rest of the world down with them.
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There is also a trend towards celebrating ignorance, and it's done in many ways. First by just plain bragging about being ignorant, often done as a way to show you're too rich and powerful to do the hard stuff yourself, or to prove you're not a nerd. It's expanded a bit into trying to show that you're not an "elite" (boy we hate those elites, we need more dummies out there doing doctoring!). And you see the politicians trying to be more like the common man, putting on local accents and trying to hide the
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Well, did you listen to Donald Trump in the four years he was president, and the years before that? Donald was a non-stop insult factory.
Donald also exemplifies that attitude that it's ok to be ignorant, as long as you're sure of himself. Plenty of credible reports that come from inside the administration that he didn't pay much attention to his advisers and didn't read his daily briefings very thoroughly.
Covid is not just a reason to insult people. Covid is also a real thing, a virus, it causes disease,
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we talking about for people from a home for the mentally disabled?
Possibly. I mean their list of people who need information starts with "Nurses"
Nurses, doctors, farmers, teachers, engineers and business executives need reliable, accessible information about how global warming is affecting their patients, crops, students, buildings and businesses. And extreme weather this summer -- from floods to fires, hurricanes to droughts -- underscores the urgency of clear climate communication.
Nowhere on that list do I see "politicians", "congressmen", "governers", "policy makers", "religious leaders" or any of the other people who really need to grasp the concepts and consequences of climate change.
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Are we talking about for people from a home for the mentally disabled?
Possibly. I mean their list of people who need information starts with "Nurses"
Nurses, doctors, farmers, teachers, engineers and business executives need reliable, accessible information about how global warming is affecting their patients, crops, students, buildings and businesses. And extreme weather this summer -- from floods to fires, hurricanes to droughts -- underscores the urgency of clear climate communication.
Nowhere on that list do I see "politicians", "congressmen", "governers", "policy makers", "religious leaders" or any of the other people who really need to grasp the concepts and consequences of climate change.
I cannot believe this blast of truth is sitting at "1".
Because we can blame scientists all we want. Maybe if they used the work fuck more often? It won't be their fault? Ain't gonna change a thing as long as there's money to be made for politicians.
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you been living under a rock since COVID 19, not being aware of just how stupid a lot of people are in the face of something serious?
If your hypothesis is to hold true, I wonder how bad it must get for people to finally smart up.
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Plus there is a real subcurrent no one is talking about with AGW.
Many like it warmer. They don't think about weather instabilities[...]
I'm pretty sure that we are in fact talking specifically about how people don't think.
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:5, Funny)
Miami might be sinking beneath the waves...
In Gum Stump PA, this is considered to be another advantage of warming.
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Are we talking about for people from a home for the mentally disabled?
Everyone with a healthy brain understands that sentence perfectly fine. Yes, my grandma too.
Stop treating people like morons. Because the main reason people are still morons nowadays, is because you did treat them like morons until. they. freaking. were.
Yes, pretty much. To be fair, one of the strong contributors to the general moronism is the petrol industry, because it could not allow people to understand what was happening from the 1980s onwards.
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also because it was poisoning their brains with leaded gas fumes until the 90s...
Re:Unintelligible?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The average American reads at between a 7th and 8th grade level -- that's roughly what literacy experts call "level 2" literacy, which is below the minimum functional standard for living in an advanced society.
This doesn't mean the average American is *stupid*. I think it means a typical American doesn't read very much, and what he does read isn't very challenging. Your literacy skills don't stay where your formal education left them; they get better through a lifetime of practice or decay from a lifetime of neglect. Even if your gradma had only a high school education, after a lifetime of reading she might very well enjoy surprisingly advanced literacy skills.
Scientists in their professional writing target an audience with level 5 literacy -- a standard of reading comprehension enjoyed by just 4% of Americans. When they simplify their work for a general audience, they're targeting level 3 literacy -- the standard of comprehension you are supposed to have when you graduate high school. But since literacy skills for most Americans *decay* after high school, only 48% of Americans can understand a text targeted at a level 3 audience.
You can explain complex topics to people with level 2 literacy, but it takes specialized skills that general scientists do not have. This is the job of educators and science journalists, who know how to accommodate a middle-school level of reading comprehension. The problem is that the average American adult has very little exposure to either educators or science journalists.
Not literally, no [Re:Correction:] (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not literally, no [Re:Correction:] (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to break it to you, but that post literally used the word "literally" correctly.
The post stated "they literally tested this in a home for the mentally disabled."
They did not literally test this in a home for the mentally disabled.
The paper is here [springer.com].
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The statement need not be correct for "literal" usage to be correct. You can lie and still say "literally".
They did not test this in a home for the mentally disabled. The statement is literally wrong.
Period.
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The fact that one uses WAT regarding an article about the poor understanding of these publications is sort of amusing.
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I would also like to see the cost of inaction. We know that extreme weather is a likely consequence, and rising sea levels, etc. All of that means dramatic changes to the ways we live/where we live etc. Migration of people, farming/manufacturing etc to cope with all that will all cost money too.
Intuitively, I'd say that runs to hundreds of trillions over the same period as you're interested in. I'm sure someone's done some sort of proper estimates, but I haven't see it.
Since this is a global problem I'd lik
So far, so good [Re: Costs] (Score:2)
Saying "the effects haven't been catastrophic yet" really doesn't say much. If you wait until a problem is irreversable, it isn't much comfort to say "well, we should have done something twenty years ago."
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Great, so let's factor in the cost of cleanup into the use of fossil fuels, much like fuel taxes pay for road damage caused by the use of the fuel.
No more externalizing the cost of waste disposal for any energy sector business - let the chips fall where they may. I'll bet that coal and oil don't look very attractive any more.
Re:Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
You pulled that number out of your ass, but let's look at it.
Anyone with a high school diploma can easily calculate that the costs for making our energy production carbon-neutral runs in the TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars over the next thirty or odd years..
The U.S. economy is 21.8 trillion dollars, so even if your number bore some relationship to reality, you're saying that over thirty years, it would cost 1.5% of our economy to completely revamp our energy infrastructure. That's not a big number.
But what you should be comparing it to is the cost that we spend in upkeep and replacement of infrastructure. Thirty years is about the time scale we take to replace energy infrastructure-- for example, the useful life of coal-fired power plant equipment has historically been 30-40 years when built, and over thirty years they need either to be replaced or refurbished (which is usually nearly as expensive as replacement).
So, we're spending that money on infrastructure anyway. The question is, what technology should we be spending it on?
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They can start by clearly stating the costs, since they're continually brushing these under the carpet.
Most people would spend any amount of money on a severe medical problem that would kill them, but won't spend any significant amount of money on solving the AGW problem. This is frankly ignorant at best. Ignorance is one thing, but refusing to listen to people who know more about something than they do is flat stupid.
The knowledge and information are available to anyone who wants to spend the time, so they're welcome to become educated so they can understand the situation better. But thinking they know it b
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There's some truth to this: the media likes to report on exciting things that are happening right now. A storm or a cold snap or a drought is news. A warming trend that's been consistent for the last forty years [berkeleyearth.org] is not.
But the warming trend has been consistent for the last forty years, and the core reasons for it are well understood. Even if the news would rather report weather events.
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Look, I'm not arguing one way or the other, but everything that would be called "weather" gets reported as "climate change". Wonder why large swathes of people aren't buying it?
Because they don't know shit and they're too lazy to learn shit, and don't want to learn shit if they think they won't like what they learn. Look at all the lazy fucks here on Slashdot, all people who ostensibly know how to use google and then they ask for citations for the most basic, generally known, well-proven facts. I am not against requesting a citation when something is hard to prove one way or the other, but if you could literally paste into google what someone said and get that citation, and you as
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How do you get more clear than that?
The track record of doomcrying is working against it, though. A selection:
July 17, 2008: Al Gore: “The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis.”
March 2009: ‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster — Declares Elizabeth May of Canadian Green Party
Oct. 2009: UK’s Gordon Brown warns of global warming ‘catastrophe’
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What I do think they understand (in their minds) is that the establishment can't be trusted, including accepted science.
The solution as I see it is to better educate everyone in critical thinking skills so they don't get stuck believing things based on logical fallacies in the first place.
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When taken together that data makes a very strong case for global warming, loss of polar ice etc. But individual bits of data are not conclusive on their own. I don't know an easy way to pain