Things to see, people to do . . . (Swim out past the breakers, and watch the world die, part 1)
a.k.a. so much to post about, far too little time . . .
The Continuing Death of Journalism and Its Contribution to the Continuing Death of the World -- In the obviously huge news that I hope most of you have already heard, the effects of global warming on ice sheets continue to happen at a much faster rate than predicted. Like, the things we thought we could count on happening later? Happening now. Meantime, the LA Times runs a front page story yesterday highlighting the newest tactics by the "business as usual" crowd, who are now -- at last!-- admitting that yes, global warming is real, but calling themselves "the radical middle" and positing that it will be much cheaper and more cost effective to "adapt" to the effects of global warming than do anything to stop it.
In ultra-brief, things deeply wrong with this view -- (1) it takes good ideas that are part of what we really should do, such as not building more houses in hurricane-prone wetlands areas, for examples, and treats this as an either/or alternative to actually doing things about global warming; (2) it evinces a complete lack of concern, caring or even comprehension that someone might be concerned or caring about any view other than a purely human-centric one, i.e. as long as we survive I don't think it even occurs to them that other species matter; (3) it bases things purely on a monetary cost treatment, i.e. as long as it saves people/business money, that we will live in what most of us will view as a shittier world doesn't seem to be relevant to them; (4) as the article actually managed to point out, because we can predict a few effects of global warming (for example some particular disease increases in certain regions, drought areas, and where the hurricanes are most likely to destroy houses) doesn't mean we can predict them all; and (5) it completely ignores some predicted possible effects of global warming that very much affect humans and even large corporate interests, such as the possible permanent heat death of the entire planet (this idea is controversial and its main proponent is a shill for the the nuclear power industry who rubs me the wrong way in a host of ways, but he makes a very credible, logical sounding case on this issue that there's at least a strong chance of this happening, to my layman's analysis; I'll leave it to the climatologists among you to say for reasonably sure he's wrong)
There's also something deeply wrong with this article -- This is in some ways more disturbing to me. Seriously. Because it's what's wrong with journalism, and if we don't know what is going wrong with our world, we can't fix it. And journalism simply isn't adequately or accurately informing us anymore, and to the extent it does inform of events, it frequently does so innacurately and far too incompletely, and to the extent it provides analysis, as several recent blogs on both sides of the Hillary/Obama divide have pointed out, it provides deliberately misleading and/or incredibly stupid analysis--sometimes it is hard to tell which. It not only fails to point out most of the flaws I just mentioned in the above article, or gives them extremely brief discussion, it treats this view as if it is not part of the scientific fringe but as if it *actually* might be the reasonable middle ground between deniers and "alarmists". What makes this worse is that the *one* area of LA Times news reporting where they are normally sane and where they haven't become essentially a conservative mouthpiece the majority of the time is on environmental issues --they've done magnificent, groundbeaking work on how the combination of excess pollution and global warming are destroying the oceans, and mentioned the implications of these things for our future survival. They shocked the hell out of me with a recent editorial pointing out the flaws in nuclear power as a solution to global warming and at least mentioning (albeit it was a short editorial and didn't have time to say "why") that a solar/wind combo makes more sense as the way to go (solar can do it all alone, if needed, and I direct everyone to Scientific American a couple of months ago as a recent semi-in depth example of an article discussing this). And then they put *this* right next to the story about "giant ice sheet melting 15 years ahead of earliest predictions; might cause sea level to rise" (that wasn't the actual headline, btw, that was me being sarcastic)
I'm all for providing fringe views, when they are presented as such, and when they are reasonably analyzed. But this is part of a drumbeat that keeps trying to minimize the problem, and it's part of our news as tools for corporate behemoth money interests rather than as actual information, and it really dismays/pisses me off.
The Continuing Death of Journalism and Its Contribution to the Continuing Death of the World -- In the obviously huge news that I hope most of you have already heard, the effects of global warming on ice sheets continue to happen at a much faster rate than predicted. Like, the things we thought we could count on happening later? Happening now. Meantime, the LA Times runs a front page story yesterday highlighting the newest tactics by the "business as usual" crowd, who are now -- at last!-- admitting that yes, global warming is real, but calling themselves "the radical middle" and positing that it will be much cheaper and more cost effective to "adapt" to the effects of global warming than do anything to stop it.
In ultra-brief, things deeply wrong with this view -- (1) it takes good ideas that are part of what we really should do, such as not building more houses in hurricane-prone wetlands areas, for examples, and treats this as an either/or alternative to actually doing things about global warming; (2) it evinces a complete lack of concern, caring or even comprehension that someone might be concerned or caring about any view other than a purely human-centric one, i.e. as long as we survive I don't think it even occurs to them that other species matter; (3) it bases things purely on a monetary cost treatment, i.e. as long as it saves people/business money, that we will live in what most of us will view as a shittier world doesn't seem to be relevant to them; (4) as the article actually managed to point out, because we can predict a few effects of global warming (for example some particular disease increases in certain regions, drought areas, and where the hurricanes are most likely to destroy houses) doesn't mean we can predict them all; and (5) it completely ignores some predicted possible effects of global warming that very much affect humans and even large corporate interests, such as the possible permanent heat death of the entire planet (this idea is controversial and its main proponent is a shill for the the nuclear power industry who rubs me the wrong way in a host of ways, but he makes a very credible, logical sounding case on this issue that there's at least a strong chance of this happening, to my layman's analysis; I'll leave it to the climatologists among you to say for reasonably sure he's wrong)
There's also something deeply wrong with this article -- This is in some ways more disturbing to me. Seriously. Because it's what's wrong with journalism, and if we don't know what is going wrong with our world, we can't fix it. And journalism simply isn't adequately or accurately informing us anymore, and to the extent it does inform of events, it frequently does so innacurately and far too incompletely, and to the extent it provides analysis, as several recent blogs on both sides of the Hillary/Obama divide have pointed out, it provides deliberately misleading and/or incredibly stupid analysis--sometimes it is hard to tell which. It not only fails to point out most of the flaws I just mentioned in the above article, or gives them extremely brief discussion, it treats this view as if it is not part of the scientific fringe but as if it *actually* might be the reasonable middle ground between deniers and "alarmists". What makes this worse is that the *one* area of LA Times news reporting where they are normally sane and where they haven't become essentially a conservative mouthpiece the majority of the time is on environmental issues --they've done magnificent, groundbeaking work on how the combination of excess pollution and global warming are destroying the oceans, and mentioned the implications of these things for our future survival. They shocked the hell out of me with a recent editorial pointing out the flaws in nuclear power as a solution to global warming and at least mentioning (albeit it was a short editorial and didn't have time to say "why") that a solar/wind combo makes more sense as the way to go (solar can do it all alone, if needed, and I direct everyone to Scientific American a couple of months ago as a recent semi-in depth example of an article discussing this). And then they put *this* right next to the story about "giant ice sheet melting 15 years ahead of earliest predictions; might cause sea level to rise" (that wasn't the actual headline, btw, that was me being sarcastic)
I'm all for providing fringe views, when they are presented as such, and when they are reasonably analyzed. But this is part of a drumbeat that keeps trying to minimize the problem, and it's part of our news as tools for corporate behemoth money interests rather than as actual information, and it really dismays/pisses me off.