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Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

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Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#51
Leaders do not operate in an environment where they can tell the truth and do things based on facts on the ground.[1]

Leaders have one real job, that is to reward (through jobs/money/political clout) people who help them. If they don't think telling the truth about deforestation or global warming will help their sycophants, they will tell lies.

[1] CGP Grey's Rules for Rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#52

It's funny how the HN community which is left leaning, start to whine whenever they see news like this. Y'all let them CNN, The Guardian, and the BBC drive you. You all ask for hard evidence. Yet I am waiting for one of you to confirm you have been in the Amazon. Why didn't you say anything for ~20 years when the duo Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro have been destroying the Amazon? Destroying. Why didn't you say anything a…

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Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

79% of Brazilian soybean exports go to China. Very very little goes to the US as it’s a net exporter (by a significant margin). Source: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/bra/show...

Good correction, I meant beef, it's linked. Although USA does seem to avoid Brazilian soybean and beef.

Thanks for the clarification. This led me down a fun rabbit hole of understanding Brazilian exports. I would not have guessed that Lebanon and Saudi Arabia were the third and fourth largest importers of Brazilian beef after Chile and the Netherlands.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#54
Again, for the ones that don't have a side in Brazilian politics but do have a concern for the Amazon, and what the president may or may not do, I'd suggest checking out https://www.brazilianpoliticspodcast.com for unbiased political information/analysis on the country and its policies.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#56
post #52

It's funny how the HN community which is left leaning, start to whine whenever they see news like this. Y'all let them CNN, The Guardian, and the BBC drive you. You all ask for hard evidence. Yet I am waiting for one of you to confirm you have been in the Amazon. Why didn't you say anything for ~20 years when the duo Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro have been destroying the Amazon? Destroying. Why didn't you say anything a…

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Countries don't live in a vacuum. Economies are intertwined and dismissing valid comparisons as "whataboutism" isn't constructive.

There's an economic cost to preserving forest which developed countries didn't pay in the past, aren't paying in the present but hypocritically expect developing economies to pay.

All the while buying cheap soy, beef and labor from developing economies. Funny how everyone wants all the benefits but none of the compromises.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#57
post #2

We really live in the age of head-in-sand. How do you do anything about that? Somehow reality has become not just optional and uncertain in our policies, perceptions and opinions, but downright irrelevant. When there's no merit in even trying to be truthful and accurate, well... you get this.

head-in-snow would be a beter description IMHO, probably.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#58
post #44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's fine. A productive discussion can be had along those lines. However if someone refuses to even acknowledge that there are facts then there's no discussion to be had. It almost feels like we're in an age with a kind of new post-modernism. Everyone can have their own reality and make up their own "facts" to fit. This makes science and philosophy irrelevant because there is no shared reality that can be inves…

IMHO, it stems from never updating our basic education from an information-scarce world to an information-flooded one. I'm firmly in favor of making a media consumption class mandatory for primary education. Essentially a mix of logic & fallacies, evaluating sources, and meta scientific news literacy.

This would be actively fought against, at least in the United States, as an attempt to indoctrinate kids with "liberal biases".

Which is, if one thinks about it, the real problem at hand: when the political ideology of half a country requires complete and uncritical rejection of...yanno... the things happening in front of one's face, you can't actually fix the thing. People have to agree that it's broken first.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#59

What needs to happen for Long Term Earth? 1) The economics of every process must take into account the cost of the environment. If it's not going to biodegrade, that costs. If it comes from an unsustainable logging practice, that costs. If came in a boat from across the world, that costs. Adding the cost of environmental consequences to all stages of production opens up the room for investors to sensibly bet on less…

> A global body needs to be created to handle environmental policy

I think some people have too much faith in the ability of politicians and bureaucrats to protect the environment.

A better solution would be decentralized decision making. Place ownership of the rain forest in private hands and let the market determine the most valuable use of the land. If a sufficient number of people believe the rain forest should be set aside for environmental preservation they will have the ability to act on that belief.

Letting politicians and bureaucrats decide will do nothing to preserve the rain forest or environment short- or long term.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#60
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing facts as lies is just... something to say. Bolsonaro and his followers know this is true but they simply don't care. Which is a reasonable political stance I reckon.

Dismissing facts as lies is just lying. It should not be brushed off as an acceptable position.

I mean can you blame them when all you need to do to make a problem go away is say FAKE NEWS and people eat it up? It's much easier then presenting evidence yourself, especially when your motives go against facts, because then you need to find a way to create fake facts like the oil companies do with denying global warming.
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