IPCC: Climate change taking lives and livelihoods now and driving disease and crop failure, says UN report - but there is still a window to act
At least 3.3 billion people are already highly vulnerable, half of animals have already shifted towards the poles and, while it's not too late to act, the window to limit the damage is narrowing, the latest United Nations (UN) climate report warns.
This drivel highlights a constant headache - where to find trustworthy sources of news and worthwhile analysis. When mainstream media are willing to pump out such garbage, we need our own criteria for assessing trustworthy sources. As those paying attention have known for years.
Sometimes it isn't too difficult. There were rational pandemic presentations based on official data just as there are sound presentations on climate change based on uncontentious data. Sometimes the issue is less straightforward as in the case of the Ukraine conflict. Here, the notorious fog of war tends to obscure almost everything.
Yet in a world where clicks matter, sources need to attract clicks rather than trust. At the moment it is not obvious that trust itself generates enough click for the big players. It is not obvious that there is a large audience out there constantly looking for trustworthy sources. Otherwise the sources would appear. If they eventually do appear, some of the big players are stuffed.
Maybe trust is a minority interest, which is less cynical than it sounds because so many people bestow their clicks on the big players in most contexts. Yet clicks and trust maybe not be the same thing. It may be that paying attention to the big players is more a case of being wary of unfamiliar alternatives. That could change as the internet matures.
Perhaps the vast number of internet scams is widely seen as one of its core problems, so at the moment the unfamiliar automatically becomes untrustworthy. In which case some of those big players will probably notice and do something about it - as seems to be happening already. Good news perhaps. Eventually.
4 comments:
My old tutor Onora O'Neill has spent a lot of time thinking about trust and trustworthiness. The former is common, and organisations spend a lot of time courting it, but the latter is very rare, of course. The issue of trust being a minority interest is very relevant, not least because an untruthful and dodgy source can still be trusted to deliver us our fix of confirmation or outrage or self-righteousness, etc.
We might try to use logic to isolate some trustworthy source of info, but even then we need to remain vigilant in case the author drifts away from that area and into territory where our trust is misplaced. And then there is the issue of our lack of personal understanding. Who do we trust in areas where our understanding is limited? As I have mentioned on here before, the normal response to an admission of one's ignorance, or a genuine request for information, is an attempt to "blind with science". I guess the best approach is to go slowly and look out for the usual signs that people are bullshitting.
The Fog of War is a well recognised phrase which seems to capture a key insight. Perhaps we should add the Fog of Politics, the Fog of Celebrity, the Fog of COVID, and (ha ha) the Fog of Climate Change.
Around the world governments and the main stream media have thrown away their reputations for the sake of recognition, either at the ballot box or for advertising revenue. We used to rely on them to peer through the fog of the future for us. No more.
I find SVs and DJs comments perceptive and penetrating. The way I tackle the problem is partly to use my powers of logic as S suggests and partly to store detail and experience for a long time and see how it matches current topics, controversies and considerations to see if I can define any corroboration or refutation. I often find this surprising and interesting.
Examples and details available on request.
Sam - I'm sure you are right - go slowly and look out for the usual signs that people are bullshitting. There are usually signs too, but picking them out requires effort. It seems to be what some do any many don't bother if the bullshitting has popularity or authority to back it up.
DJ - throwing away reputations may still have consequences in that alternatives may grow by making trustworthy attempts to peer through the fog. A fundamental problem remains though, it is always simpler to go with the flow.
Tammly - yes we accumulate detail and experience over a long time and these provide us with useful hints even in areas where we lack expertise. We learn to recognise dodgy claims.
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