I think that the video linked is unnecessarily partisan. Lots of politicians and media of all mainstream ideologies got this wrong. At the same time, plenty of woke progressives were telling us that the US/China travel ban was racist and unnecessary on Jan 31, and are now saying that it wasnt done soon enough. Plenty of conservative-leaning news outlets and politicians were sounding the alarm bells since January as well. Lets be honest, lots of public figures screwed this up, and it does your credibility no good to engage in partisan blame games instead of either just shutting up or working towards realistic solutions that keep us safe and prosperous at the same time as respecting our constitutional freedoms (in the USA). The world deserves better.
Coronavirus and Credibility
411–420 of 968 posts
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Central America ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-... ), Syria ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981... ), Australia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... ), and Alaska https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-cli... might beg to differ, among others. It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. I…
> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening None of these "experts" have a track record of correct predictions that justifies taking their current predictions seriously. Remember we are not talking about the fact that the climate changes: yes, it does, it always has, and it always will (unless at some point in the distant future we learn how to control it accurately). We are talking about the dir…
Just a friendly reminder that the consensus estimates about climate change have been reasonably accurate. Not perfect but decent enough as decision making tools. See for example the IPCC report from 1990:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_First_Assessment_Report
There have certainly been very dramatic (all overly well reported) warnings representing a minority of researchers which have not been accurate. These should not invalidate the whole lot of predictions.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Central America ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-... ), Syria ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981... ), Australia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... ), and Alaska https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-cli... might beg to differ, among others. It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. I…
Your reply, while valid in isolation, isn't a meaningful response to the parent post. There is no single "global warming prediction", there have been thousands. The parent was speaking to those, not whichever one ends up being closest to the truth. >> consider how it applies to all the people who have made confident predictions over the years regarding global warming.
There have been thousands of predictions, but only a subset of them have consensus. The IPCC is that consensus across varying stakeholders. It's looking like the consensus has been too conservative with it's predictions and that's the scary part.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#414Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that, but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence from the medical and scientific community early on - things around wearing masks in public and its inability to prevent spread, or UV light from the Sun and its ability to kill the virus (a popular statement projected by several doctors within the media), and seve…
This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark.
If, in a fast moving situation, someone tells you something based on the best information available at the time coming from leading experts, which later turns out to be wrong, that's unfortunate.
If someone ignores the leadings experts and the best information available at the time and instead tells you what they want you to believe for their own political advantage, that's despicable.
Drawing those as equivalent just doesn't make sense. No one is perfect anywhere on the spectrum, and you can find people who are wrong, stupid, or disingenuous everywhere. But on one side we have most organizations generally trying to get it right for the most part, and on the other, we have organizations trying their best to con people, regardless of the consequences.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
to an outsider, americas left vs right hostility and mutual disrespect are becoming painful to watch. lets make a counter example to they one you provided, does the nyt "create reality" for their readers? they did publish their fare share of dangerously incorrect material about the virus, pandemic, the countermeasures,you name it.
This is false equivalency. When you have to seek to find bad examples from other side, and it's the every day modus operandi the other side there is no comparison.
the two outlets are absolutely equal when it comes to making half of the americans view the other half as raging lunatics. it is basically this https://youtu.be/aFQFB5YpDZE
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#416I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…
It's an interesting point. The flu is "baked in" to our healthcare systems. Just like cancer and heart disease and a thousand other ailments that we can accommodate almost all of the time. Maybe the end game of this pandemic will be expanding our healthcare systems to accommodate the annual surge of COVID-19 cases?
But in the meantime, we're stuck with a pandemic that is not baked in, so while it may be "less bad" in some ways than the flu, it is catastrophically worse because no healthcare systems are prepared to deal with it.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#417I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…
When's the last time the annual flu caused upwards of 50-80% ICU occupancy rates in several countries simultaneously?
That's the difference between biology and medicine.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist. That's a nice "No True Scotsman" right there. Unless, of course, you can give me a non-arbitrary reason why Dr. David Barber of the University of Manitoba speaking in 2008 is a "pre-modern" climate scientist, whereas Dr. James Hansen of NASA writing in 2009 is a "modern" climate scientist.
The quote's from a newspaper. However, I did your job (again) digging into that man's actual predictions, and he was wrong not once.
> The quote's from a newspaper.
Is the quote a fabrication?
> However, I did your job (again) digging into that man's actual predictions, and he was wrong not once.
How magnanimous of you. Care to provide a link since you already did the work?
Also, you've failed to provide a clarification for what you mean by "modern" scientist.
You put the sole blame for these false predictions in the lap of journalists if you want, but is it still a problem? If not, what changed? And if the bright folks at NYT and National Geographic can get it so wrong, what hope do the rest of us have?
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#419In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players . There is also zero introspection - the people who were wrong about covid-19 are simply denying they said what they said. The truly scary part is they are getting away with it in real time, and changing a large populations' memory of contemporary events. I realize it's hard to remember f…
> but here he is again
what do you mean by this?
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happened over a longer timescale with the Iraq War too. Pretty much everyone who was right remained marginal. Those who were prominently wrong became more prominent.
Barack Obama wasn't exactly marginal.
It is true that Obama was not yet in the senate for the original Iraq war vote, so we can only speculate what his vote would have been.
Support for the war among his peer moderate Democrats in the senate was near unanimous: Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry all voted in favor. It's not unfair to assume he would have as well. https://progressive.org/op-eds/clinton-s-iraq-war-vote-still...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/17/joe-bi...
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/joe-lieberman-iraq-war
His withdrawal of forces from Iraq for which many give him credit was on the schedule of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration before he took office. It would likely have happened the same under a McCain administration.
He bears 100% of the responsibility for the shit-show that happened in Libya.
The US policies that prolonged and worsened the Syrian civil war were birthed under his watch as well. The "we're fighting ISIS" while simultaneously arming anti-government Al-Qaeda-aligned groups was a recipe for disaster.
Obama "surged" to double US troop levels in Afghanistan shortly after taking office. Also from this era: The drone assassination program. Lots of extra killing, to no lasting effect.
https://www.wired.com/2012/09/surge-report-card/
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/oba...
Let's not pretend that Obama was in any way but rhetorically anti-war.