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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'

#91

Post by Carioca »

user982 wrote: post #87
reese_john wrote: post #78

Here's the actual Amazon deforestation data in the last decades: https://imgur.com/a/cA5mXMc 2018 was a bit higher than 2017, but there is a clear downward trend. Honestly I would like to see more data points before crucifying Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro took power in 2019, replacing the more left-leaning Workers' Party, which held the presidency from 2003 to 2018*. With those dates in mind, look at your data again.

Nitpick: the Worker's Party was in power up to 2016, when president Dilma Rousseff was impeached and their former allies, centrists Democratic Movement, rose to power. Even Dilma wasn't particularly friendly to the environment, as can be seen on the 2010-2016 data.

Bolsonaro's presidency is on another level of pandering to illegal loggers and agribusiness, though. The current Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, is openly hostile to anything relating to preservation. Including risking a free investment by European countries to the tune of about half a billion dollars

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

#92

Post by braythwayt »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #80
spodek wrote: post #75

I see remarkable similarity in Bolsonaro's response on a national scale to nearly every American's response when choosing between making money and the environment. Suggest to an American to fly less and over 99% will say, "But my job. . ." as humans fly more than ever. Not to dwell on flying, we could talk of miles driven, plastic discarded, air conditioning empty rooms, eating more beef than ever. The scale is diffe…

> Suggest to an American to fly less and over 99% will say, "But my job. . ." as humans fly more than ever. I see it as the reason why individual solutions will never work and why you need the government to step in to make sure those negatives externalities (aka killing the planet for our children) are properly priced in so that we subset those practices.

Something, something, game theory, and especially the subset of games that have a cooperate/defect dynamic.

Left to themselves, individuals want to defect and get a free ride on the backs of those who cooperate. But if a critical mass of individuals cooperate—by choice, force, or persuasion—everyone wins.

—

It’s intellectually fine to be a libertarian and say, “even if the overall good is served by cooperation, there is a higher value in having the freedom to defect.”

But you are correct that on the balance, it takes a society working together to achieve certain large-scale good outcomes that demand widespread cooperation.

Whether those large-scale good outcomes are worthy of having less liberty is what certain debates are really about, even if people try to frame them otherwise, e.g. “Individual good, government bad.”

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

#93

Post by reese_john »

user982 wrote: post #87
reese_john wrote: post #78

Here's the actual Amazon deforestation data in the last decades: https://imgur.com/a/cA5mXMc 2018 was a bit higher than 2017, but there is a clear downward trend. Honestly I would like to see more data points before crucifying Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro took power in 2019, replacing the more left-leaning Workers' Party, which held the presidency from 2003 to 2018*. With those dates in mind, look at your data again.

Hence the need for more data points. 2003 and 2004 were still peak deforestation years despite the left being in power.

I would like to see the data for at least 2019 and 2020 before jumping to conclusions

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

#94

Post by davesmith1983 »

toyg wrote: post #69
davesmith1983 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a lot of this is due to how this has been presented to by the media beforehand. e.g. There is a scare story at least once a week that is plastered over newspapers/news sites such as " Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!! ", when the headline is clearly salacious. The actual research probably had a sensible conclusion of "Those who have had consistently more red meat, have an increased chance of c…

This would be the same Farage that made sure his anti-immigration message in the 2016 Brexit campaign had "the only prominent white person in the photograph obscured by a box of text": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag... Also, how can you brand somebody as "patriotic" when his party is a US-based corporation with links to the Russian government and tax havens? Sad to see this rubbish on HN…

Unfortunately I should have guessed I would have someone miss the entire point I was trying to make (How the media constantly mis-represent things to the point that the public doesn't trust even if they accurately present the truth) because I was trying to be objective and politically neutral about a successful politician.

> This would be the same Farage that made sure his anti-immigration message in the 2016 Brexit campaign had "the only prominent white person in the photograph obscured by a box of text": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag....

You just did the very thing I was complaining about!

They are claiming that how an image was cropped and where text was placed somehow indicates racism. You are concentrating on nonsense and not actually making an argument against any of his policies or any of the assumption of the advert.

As for my descriptions of Farage. They come from other Journalists such as Brendan O'Neill (runs Spiked!). As for the rest of my description they are fairly objective.

> Sad to see this rubbish on HN. Farage plays to the same racist tendencies as Trump and Bolsonaro do, with constant dog-whistling.

When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments and says "Well you know it true and you aren't admitting it". It isn't an argument of any sort.

You just did the very thing I was complaining about, and I don't think you even knew you were doing it.

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

#96

Post by davesmith1983 »

benj111 wrote: post #79
davesmith1983 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a lot of this is due to how this has been presented to by the media beforehand. e.g. There is a scare story at least once a week that is plastered over newspapers/news sites such as " Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!! ", when the headline is clearly salacious. The actual research probably had a sensible conclusion of "Those who have had consistently more red meat, have an increased chance of c…

The same newpapers that declare "Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!!" Are also the ones most enamoured with Farage. So the readership is supposed to be disenfranchised over how they're lied to over the cancer scare stories but then believe the stories about how wonderful Farage is? That said, I don't think I disagree with your greater point.

Nigel Farage himself puts a lot of his success down to Facebook and Youtube and not the UK papers. Some of his speeches/rants (depends how you view it) against the EU in the Parliament went viral in the late 2000s.

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

#97

Post by defterGoose »

pvaldes wrote: post #57
emn13 wrote: 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.

Or maybe sand-in-head.

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

#98

Post by hanniabu »

benj111 wrote: post #74
hanniabu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"I mean can you blame them" Yes. I know that everyone's jaded by various neo-fascist leaders, but this stuff does need to be called out, else it gets normalised.

It no doubt needs to be called out, but whatI'm saying is that it's already become normalized and works so they will continue to keep doing it.

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

#99

Post by jsnider3 »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #95

The data from INPE is accurate, but no one is talking about what is showing us: most part of the deforestation is happening in Bolivia and Peru. In the last decades, deforestation in Brazil was been decreasing a lot.

Don't worry, Bolsonaro will fix that.

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

#100

Post by coliveira »

spodek wrote: post #75

I see remarkable similarity in Bolsonaro's response on a national scale to nearly every American's response when choosing between making money and the environment. Suggest to an American to fly less and over 99% will say, "But my job. . ." as humans fly more than ever. Not to dwell on flying, we could talk of miles driven, plastic discarded, air conditioning empty rooms, eating more beef than ever. The scale is diffe…

Even though Bolsonaro is a stupid animal, his policies wrt the Amazon are only the result of capitalist thinking, which is the standard way of western society. So much so that he has strong support from the rich in Brazil and in other countries as well.

The reason Amazon is being deforested is simple: is not that they hate the Amazon and want to destroy it. Is that doing this is very profitable. You get FREE land to raise cattle and grow soy. You can get rich(er) from day to night. With that money you buy your way with politicians, both in Brazil (easy) as well as in other countries who will turn a blind eye on this. And its not only people in Amazon getting rich, Americans are buying like crazy into the cheaper meat, wood, and soy. And Americans will find this great, because now you can get "hormone-free beef", cheap "earth-saving" soy products, and beautiful, cheap wood products. People in America peddling these products are getting rich and telling everyone that they're making their lives "better". This is what capitalist society calls a "win-win".

The problem there is that making more money is not good to everyone as they want us to believe, and in particular not good for the environment, or to the thousands of native people who will die or be dislodged from their native land, or to the several thousand people that will have to toil on land stolen by others. There is no way capitalism can prevent this, because it only benefits a certain part of society that decided to live under its auspices (most of them in rich countries) - Brazilians making cents per day have close to zero power in the market. Making more money is not good for the workers that will be squeezed for this profit to happen. It is not good for the kids that will grow without education because their families are forced to participate in this process. In other words, making more money does not solve problems, it only create more problems, even if these problems are going somewhere you cannot see or care about. The world needs to break this vicious cycle of money making before we can find a solution to these grave problems that cannot be controlled under capitalism.

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