701–710 of 968 posts
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A list of cherry picked quotes from a motivated contrarian is not evidence that they "got it so wrong."
That the media have (with some regularity) promoted the most catastrophic predictions, predictions that were subsequently falsified, is not exactly news.
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So what should we do?
The United States military could best be used to fight this by destroying (with warning) global fossil fuel infrastructure that wasn't voluntarily closed, bit by bit with a decade long schedule. The announcement alone would prompt a massive shift in energy production, use, investment etc. Our own legacy infrastructure would also have to be on the list. Call it a Paris accord with teeth. It will never happen, because…
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> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life Before making such a confident statement, I would recommend re-reading this particular statement in pg's essay... "These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future t…
Your response is quite remarkable. PG's article contrasts 1) the careful predictions of experts, who study an issue in depth their entire life and pronounce on it carefully based on scientific models, with 2) the remarks of politically motivated hacks that seek to distract from the consensus for their own political agenda, often with remarkable (but unjustified) confidence. PG warns against 2), the hacks, and points…
To the extent your 1) and 2) are reasonable categories, I don't see PG giving any examples of 1). I see him giving examples of 2) trying to pass themselves off as 1). Which is what I see happening with claims of catastrophe related to climate change.
If you're getting your "news" from CNN/Fox/MSNBC, or "gathering evidence" to promote one the two permitted narratives, that's your problem. This is stuff is low effort "Presidential Level Politics" 24x7. Real news died when reporters stopped having to craft a story so that the Associated Press or United Press International picked it up and made it available to the varied local newspapers of America, both liberal and…
Each day, you have to read CNN, Fox, Reuters, the Economist, the Center for Disease Control, and some of the better local newspaper sites to figure out what's going on. Ignore what they choose to put on the home page. Even Fox News is not totally out of touch with reality once you get off the home page and ignore the opinion section.
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So what should we do?
The United States military could best be used to fight this by destroying (with warning) global fossil fuel infrastructure that wasn't voluntarily closed, bit by bit with a decade long schedule. The announcement alone would prompt a massive shift in energy production, use, investment etc. Our own legacy infrastructure would also have to be on the list. Call it a Paris accord with teeth. It will never happen, because…
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What you're saying is that votes should be lost. Claiming that they will be is a stretch.
Actually, I think what they're saying is that voters will die, and therefore reduce the number of available votes. Edit: and, of course, that this effect will dispropotionately affect political tribes whose propagandists under-, rather than over-, estimated the dangers of covid-19.
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Your response is quite remarkable. PG's article contrasts 1) the careful predictions of experts, who study an issue in depth their entire life and pronounce on it carefully based on scientific models, with 2) the remarks of politically motivated hacks that seek to distract from the consensus for their own political agenda, often with remarkable (but unjustified) confidence. PG warns against 2), the hacks, and points…
GP was incorrect in taking a position that global warming was not a threat. The actual threat of COVID is going to be much lower than global warming, COVID is either going to be temporary or in the long term settle to look a lot like all the other diseases we put up with. Climate change could be a legitimate crisis at some point. However, directionally speaking, they have an excellent point that people who predict th…
I think you are conflating two different possible meanings of the term "threat".
Climate change is likely to be much more of a "threat" than COVID-19 in the sense that we are likely going to have to be dealing with it for a much longer time. But humanity has already been dealing with climate change through all of human history, so having to deal with it for the indefinite future is nothing new. It's only more of a "threat" in the sense of it being a long-term thing we need to factor into our planning, as opposed to COVID-19 being (hopefully) a short-term crisis that we weather and then move on.
Climate change is not more of a "threat" than COVID-19 in the sense of causing more disruption to our society; COVID-19 has already caused far more disruption in a few months than climate change has caused over decades, if not centuries, and also far more than climate change is likely to cause in the future. Time frames matter. Having to restructure the global economy over a century is one thing; that's already been done multiple times in the past, and happens as a natural result of people gradually changing the way they live and work in response to other changes. Having to restructure it in a few months is a very, very different (and much, much more difficult) problem. In that sense COVID-19 is a far worse threat than climate change.
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That's not at odds with what I wrote. What mattered was the original description of him as "an economist at ..." which effectively neuters his very public positions on things like coordinated action w.r.t. climate change. He's absolutely entitled to his beliefs, but shouldn't be cited as if "oh wow, an ECONOMIST at SANTA CLARA says this, so ..."
The fact that he's an economist at a respectable institution means that he's eminently qualified to comment the economic impacts of climate policy. But of course, this has nothing to do with the subject of the blog post, which is whether Cook paper asserting that "97% agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming" is at best a misleading application of statistics. There is no need to have a particular bac…
I want him acknowledged as a source with a pre-determined axe to grind. He's smart, he's clever, he's sometimes right. But he's not J. Random "Economist from Somewhere University".
It looks like California and Texas are making better choices than NY or Florida. Trump was too slow to act on testing, but was criticized for acting too quickly with the travel bans. The most credible and forward-thinking leaders on pandemics include George W Bush[1] and Arnold Schwarzenegger[2]; and their best-laid plans crumbled under later Democratic administrations.
Credibility is a funny thing. For some things, people are very credible but still drop the ball in big ways. Honestly it's just hard to know how someone is going to act in a major disaster. I would have guessed that if anyone were to overreact on a Chinese virus pandemic, it would be Trump. And people that are highly competent during normal situations might start behaving strangely and lose credibility quickly during more interesting times (like lying about masks not helping ordinary people).
There isn't a magic team of scientists that has all the answers. There is a science to pandemics, but there's a fair amount of guesswork, as well, especially when China was hiding so much information. Politicians need to make decisions based on incomplete information. So do doctors, for that matter.
So let's have some humility and realize that a lot of formerly-credible people are also in the process of screwing this up. It's not just the shoot-from-the-hip politicians.
[1] https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi... [2] https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/31/...
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The NYC health commissioner was saying to go outside and take the subway Feb 7th, 4 days after Trump's China ban went into effect. https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1243539189020401664?s... Literally everyone was saying it's not as bad as the Flu. I don't see why we're playing the blame game in the peak of things. I could definitely tell you WHO (China) is to blame, but now isn't the time. Also: https://twitter.…
I'm curious as to why you think China is to blame for American politicians ignoring precautions and prioritizing their own wealth over the well-being of their citizens?