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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'

#111

Post by hutzlibu »

rlander wrote: post #106
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.

In one episode of Parks and Rec, the lead character, councilwoman Leslie Knope, is trying to pass a bill that adds fluoride to the town’s water source, while being opposed by a councilman/dentist who wants to continue making money off of the many cavities that occur in the town. As she discusses the debate, she realizes, “On my side, I have facts, science, and reason. All he has is fear-mongering. Oh my god, he’s gon…

Only that fluoride in the water were in fact a really bad idea ..

Not healthy for your organs and also not really helping with teeth.

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

#112

Post by devoply »

scottLobster wrote: post #105
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…

Which is why the fix must be economic, not moral. LED light bulbs and wind power in the Midwest aren't successes because everyone decided to pitch in, take their place on the line and give it all for Captain Planet, they're successes because they fulfill the fundamental promise of efficiency: do more with less. They save people money. And if you doubt the efficacy of said approach, just look at Texas renewable number…

There are no economic fixes, there are only fixes to growth. In that we reduce the growth of the economy and the growth of population and consume less... until such a point that our consumption of resources matches their production by the environment. Anything else is rhetorical bullshit meant to placate the masses... and make them feel better about being Bolsonaro which all you are.

I call it environmental austerity in order to pay the environmental debt accrued through economic development.

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

#113

Post by DFHippie »

scottLobster wrote: post #105
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…

Which is why the fix must be economic, not moral. LED light bulbs and wind power in the Midwest aren't successes because everyone decided to pitch in, take their place on the line and give it all for Captain Planet, they're successes because they fulfill the fundamental promise of efficiency: do more with less. They save people money. And if you doubt the efficacy of said approach, just look at Texas renewable number…

> It's a concept most environmentalists I encounter look upon as the dark side of the force, like if they used economics and human selfishness towards a positive end it would somehow take away their environmentalist virtue. Guess it's hard to be a martyr when you take away the sacrifice. Doesn't help that they usually look down on the individuals in question, and can't seem to understand why "pay more and do less so you can make a negligible personal impact on the problem, because it's the right thing to do." is a hollow argument for many people.

Do you think an environmentalist would read this description and think, "that's me to a tee!"? If not, do you think you are more perceptive about the motives, beliefs, and strategies of environmentalists than they are themselves?

Your point would be better made without the dubious theories about the beliefs and motives of environmentalists.

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

#114

Post by lotsofpulp »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #37
Waterluvian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of the costs of democracy. We could always just take power away from all the uneducated who rely on emotion-based decision making. And then somehow punish the educated who do the same despite being equipped with the tools to parse the facts. I'm sure this would work out horribly.

I'm not entirely sure of this 1:1 relationship of intelligence/education to bad political ideas such as Bolsonaro's. There is a lot of ideology involved, which correlates rather poorly with intelligence. There are, for example, quite a few Republican politicians that aren't obviously stupid, who still spent decades denying first the existence of climate change, then the human contribution, followed by the risks and,…

>It is an expression of ideology.

It’s a veiled way of signaling they are willing to discriminate against certain races to other racists, while claiming plausible deniability.

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

#115

Post by toyg »

davesmith1983 wrote: post #94
toyg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I was trying to be objective and politically neutral about a successful politician.

No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-down on it while completely ignoring the bits of my post that are inconvenient to your biases.

> not actually making an argument

Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.

The main problem with populists is precisely that their policies are unassailable, because they are completely devoid of details. They sell emotions, typically negative ones.

> When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments

As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)

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

#116

Post by myko »

scottLobster wrote: post #105
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…

Which is why the fix must be economic, not moral. LED light bulbs and wind power in the Midwest aren't successes because everyone decided to pitch in, take their place on the line and give it all for Captain Planet, they're successes because they fulfill the fundamental promise of efficiency: do more with less. They save people money. And if you doubt the efficacy of said approach, just look at Texas renewable number…

> LED light bulbs

I live in the midwest and my friends still complain that the government forced them to switch to the new bulbs.

There's a lot of weird anxiety about doing things to help the environment from a lot of folks that makes them not want to do even things that benefit themselves.

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

#117

Post by TomMckenny »

The new crop of wannabe autocrats call every inconvenient fact a lie. They imply a vast conspiracy to undermine their "always right" supporters and the one and only leader who can fix things.

In democracies with bad leaders you might get "it needs more study" or "we can't afford it" or just silence. At worst opponents are labeled "misguided". But the new autocrats end all conversation by turning facts and those who believe them into conspiring enemies.

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

#118

Post by holografix »

You can put the blame for Trump, Brexit, Bozo-naro and other populists squarely at the feet of the previous administrations.

The political elite alienated the population.

By spying, failing to prosecute financial criminals that decimated economies, stealing several billion dollars, failing to pro-actively prevent a human calamity in the Russia x US proxy wars in Syria, squabbling amongst themselves as the non-politicians gained in popularity.

Can you blame people who’s savings and jobs were annihilated by the GFC and saw no major arrests voting the incumbents out?

Can you blame the underprivileged domestic populations in Europe from turning right and nationalistic when they see spikes in homelessness, criminality and culture friction when their small towns are flooded with desperate immigrants?

Can you blame people voting out de-facto organised crime from power after they rob billions from a third world economy?

I don’t think it’s right. I think Bozo-naro is an embarrassment of a human being. But I empathise with the people who threw the previous job out.

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

#119

Post by davesmith1983 »

toyg wrote: post #115
davesmith1983 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I was trying to be objective and politically neutral about a successful politician. No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-do…

> No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-down on it while completely ignoring the bits of my post that are inconvenient to your biases.

In my original post I said something along the lines of "He was less controversial than Bolsonaro" not that he was uncontroversial.

You didn't point me at anything objective. The best you linked me to a guardian article about an ad-campaign that claimed it was racist because one white person was removed from the photo. I think that sort of logic is ridiculous.

As for me ignoring parts of your post, yes I ignored parts of your post because I thought they were irrelevant to the point I was originally trying to convey.

> Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.

Well UKIP's manifesto of 2015 is a 76 page document according to the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32318683

I chose this because this is the last time I believe they fought a general election with Farage as Leader. So this would be indicative of his policies (as he would have had a fair amount of input in the process).

From the BBC summary it seems quite comprehensive. It seems to cover a similar number of areas as Labour's manifesto of 2015.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32284159

So I think your characterisation is quite unfair.

> As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)

I know what the term means. However many of those that use the term do so as an accusation. They don't mention who they are whistling at and what terms they are using to do that.

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

#120

Post by triangleman »

myko wrote: post #116
scottLobster wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the fix must be economic, not moral. LED light bulbs and wind power in the Midwest aren't successes because everyone decided to pitch in, take their place on the line and give it all for Captain Planet, they're successes because they fulfill the fundamental promise of efficiency: do more with less. They save people money. And if you doubt the efficacy of said approach, just look at Texas renewable number…

> LED light bulbs I live in the midwest and my friends still complain that the government forced them to switch to the new bulbs. There's a lot of weird anxiety about doing things to help the environment from a lot of folks that makes them not want to do even things that benefit themselves.

It's perfectly reasonable to complain about the government banning incandescent bulbs. For a drop in the bucket of energy savings, they took away a choice that many people preferred in favor of mainly fluorescent bulbs which are an environmental hazard. Thank God for decent LED lights in the last few years or the irony would still be pretty thick.

It's a great example of poor environmental policy and you dismiss criticism as "weird anxiety". It's not weird to dislike other people forcing you to make choices that they think are for your own good.

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