For years now, liberal activists have called for the media to abandon the notion of journalistic objectivity as typically defined, which is to say, the idea that good reporting makes people equally mad and strives to be “balanced” between opposing political viewpoints.
i had many of same rxns to the piece. you could write the same stuff about progressive organizations and people with some inflammatory quotes. but the times wouldn't (that's left to city journal and heather mac donald!)
You kinda have to read those pieces with the understanding of their audience capture and the catering to confirmation biases. Then just note the facts (and as you say, whatever NYT has become, it’s still decent at gathering facts) and dissociate it from the op-Ed aspects (even in the purportedly “news-y” pieces).
This reality is what requires folks to have a diverse media appetite….so that you not only recognize what the NYT is doing, but also to actually get a look beyond its curated garden. It’s basically a glorified insta feed at this point.
I get the feeling a lot of liberals also don't like DEI either. A PMC NYC-dwelling liberal who's ever had to attend a DEI workshop at their white-collar job can't honestly think that that stuff isn't a grift. But they're all afraid to speak out because elite liberals keep enforcing this idea that all good liberals are lockstep in favour of DEI and if you have doubts, you must be a closet Nazi. The NYT needs to make it seem as if it's a foregone conclusion that DEI is good because once even their own readers feel the free to question it, it will collapse (even faster).
They are not three separate words. "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" is a stand in for an entire ideology (or several overlapped ideologies, none of which map to the specific words).
You say "yes" to Diversity. That's nice. I do too. But DEI hates the kind of diversity that makes us stronger: diversity of ideas and culture that get infused into the mainstream, reinvigorating it constantly. It only likes the kind that divides us: if you are perceived as "weaker" in some sense, you are "diverse" and should be valorized.
You say "yes" to inclusion. I do too. But DEI says that the only inclusion that matters is the inclusion of the minority*. And it's quite happy to demonize the majority. It is not indeed inclusive; they way it tries to "include" the minority is by demanding the tearing down or subjugation of the majority. That is not inclusive.
Equity is simply a jargon word that appears to mean that minorities of all kinds should be accommodated to the maximum feasible, and even advantaged wherever possible to make up for the privilege of anyone who is not a minority. And we should attach moral opprobrium to anyone in the perceived majority who seeks success through a straightforward application of "being the best."
There are genuine problems with meritocracy. DEI is a cure worse than the disease.
*I use the word "minority" in a very broad sense to mean anyone who is perceived to have significantly less power than the mainstream.
That is not the definition of equity favored by Kendi, which argues that any discrepancy in representation from the larger population can only be racist.
I agree. Freddie talked about leftist criticism of DEI, but it's by far not merely leftists. It's the more classical side of liberals too. I'm a somewhat libertarian social progressive (or was? I don't know if that's even coherent at this point); what might be considered an "elite liberal" of the turn of the century. Many like me find DEI abhorrent, and neither the conservatives nor the leftists would ever claim us.
One of the recurring jokes at my workplace whenever the yearly DEI trainings come around again is some version of "man, I'm so glad we're getting training on Harassment, I'd almost forgotten how to do it!" or such. No one likes it, it takes way too long*, and in a strange coincidence, it's incredibly hard to utilize for redress if the target is someone in management. Grift is bad enough when it's purely waste, but even worse when it undermines the ostensible mission and encourages regressive zero-sum attitudes about how justice Really Works.
*missing an hour or two in a corporate world accustomed to useless meetings might feel par for the course, but in retail, taking key movers off the sales floor for hours screws up the entire day's operations. A funny inversion of the My Time Is Valuable calculation. So I guess I can thank DEI for helping point out another meritocratic flaw.
Oh, no, it's the usual everything bagel DEI stuff. The official name is "harassment training", but it also covers pronoun shit, not using retrograde slurs when referring to gay coworkers, how it's inappropriate to grind on female employees (I'm not kidding, that's one of the example quiz problems), how you should invite yourself to the local mosque to learn more about Islam if Muslim coworkers make you uncomfortable (not kidding again), how Diversity Is Our Strength and We Value All* Cultures.
It's still a shit-out crock anyway, and even my progressive coworkers know it, because none of this stuff actually gets enforced in anything like a fair, consistent, timely manner. We all know it's just CYA pap with no substance. As toothy as Corporate Values statements.
ironically I've become a mandatory-training connoisseur and the corporate stuff ended up rather good (us employees weren't seen as the ones at fault, for one), while the academic ones were all abstract and unreal ("you see Alice and Bob walking together, and the last thing you see is Alice smacking Bob on the back of the neck--do you ..." CHOICES A, B, C, and D)
As I did with Freddie, I'd advise you to read the editorial board editorial in the very same issue as article Freddie critiques. You'll find the people running the NYT aren't necessarily disagreeing with you. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/opinion/campus-free-speech.html
I also think Freddie downplays the degree to which the Trump era has seen a convergence between American liberals and leftists on many issues. I do not say that they are synonymous - they aren't. (Notably, the war in Gaza has thrown that very much into relief.) But IMO the divide has become quite porous, especially but not exclusively on the domestic front, and I think any honest analysis must concede that they are much more simpatico than they were in 2010 or even 2015.
That's right Freddie, pay no attention to that little man behind the curtain.
Karl Popper stated, that any scientific theory which cannot be falsified, is not a valid scientific theory.
Thus, if we have a single piece of contradictory data, we must re-examine our theory.
Here's the conundrum:
We all know that sea level rise is the result of anthropogenic global warming, and that this began in earnest around 1950. However sea level rise, as reported by NOAA, in long term tide gauges, places the beginning of sea level rise, hence global warming at 1863, fully 87 years before the rapid rise of anthropogenic global warming cause. Here's the analysis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28564-6
Conclusion: Sea level rise began in 1863, CO2 rise began 87 years later in 1950. Since the cause is 87 years after the effect, there must be something wrong with the theory.
By the way, didn't New York have to be abandoned in 2019 due to sea level rise? Because that was the best scientific prediction from 2004.
you genuinely believe that absolute vast majority of scientists in related fields are involved in a vast conspiracy to spread the lie of climate change? For what purpose?
If merely raising the question will get you fired: Yes.
Did you even read Climate Gate?
For What Purpose? As you know every college professor has three basic jobs: Teach, Research, Public Outreach. If you can't bring in funding to your department, you can't do research (pay grad students). If you can't pay grad students, you can't attract grad students, then you can't attract undergrad students. However, if you can attract huge attention to your department—especially by stating scary stuff—you can peddle your grants, fund your research, grow your department, grow your prestige. Big money energy companies need your fear-mongering to advance their solar & wind projects. How to do this, but to sell fear, gain big government grants, investments, subsidies.
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all… “
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,”
--Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti
“Unregulated consumerism was unsustainable and people would have to learn to make do with less. The government would have to have more control over people to enforce their austerity and the wealth of developed nations would have to be redistributed to help undeveloped nations.”
The clear intent is to use the global warming smokescreen to restrict economic and political freedoms by transforming Western countries into tightly controlled totalitarian states.
--Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., October 1, 2019
One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, ... We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy
--Ottomar Edenhofer, 14 Nov 2010. co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015
" [this is a big quote block of a table that didn't format well]
“Even before the release of the Climategate emails, numerous public concerns were raised about Mann’s conduct. Concerns about Mann’s research included:
* Mann’s undisclosed use in a 1998 paper (“MBH98”) of an algorithm which mined data for hockey-stick shaped series. The algorithm was so powerful that it could produce hockey-stick shaped “reconstructions” from auto-correlated red noise. Mann’s failure to disclose the algorithm continued even in a 2004 corrigendum.
* Mann’s failure to disclose adverse verification statistics in MBH98. Mann also did not archive results that would permit calculation of the adverse statistics. Climategate emails later revealed that Mann regarded this information as his “dirty laundry” and required an associate at the Climatic Research Unit (“CRU”) to withhold the information from potential critics.
* Mann’s misleading claims about the “robustness” of his reconstruction to the presence/absence of tree ring chronologies, including failing to fully disclose calculations excluding questionable data from strip bark bristlecone pine trees.
* Mann’s deletion of the late 20th century portion of the Briffa temperature reconstruction in Figure 2.21 in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001) to conceal its sharp decline, in apparent response to concerns that showing the data would “dilute the message” and give “fodder to the skeptics.” Mann’s insistence in 2004 that “no researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. But it was later revealed that in one figure for the cover of the 1999 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) annual report, the temperature record had not only been grafted onto the various reconstructions—and in the case of the Briffa reconstruction, had been substituted for the actual proxy
* Mann’s undisclosed grafting of temperature data for “Mike’s Nature trick,” a manipulation of data which involved: (1) grafting the temperature record after 1980 onto the proxy reconstruction up to 1980; (2) “smoothing” the data; and (3) truncating the smooth back to 1980. ”
"Climate Gate' was a load of trumped-up horseshit. I watched it unfold in real time. An important part of it, incredibly , was predicated on a misunderstanding of the use of the word 'trick' in British vs American English.
The rest of your cant is also nonsense. Quote from ten years ago from Warren Buffett, a nice guy but no expert on climate. Culture war scare quotes from the Squad.
And if you think concerned climate scientist are in it for the money, you have no clue how funding for scientific research works here, and around the world.
The climate change we are experiencing is real, human-driven, and is going to require hard choices because we've waited too damn long to make any easy ones. Those are facts.
Pointing out a bogus attribution to global warming. Dr. Steel a retired natural science professor. Of course Dr. Steel gets shut down, demonized. You should watch his instructional YouTube videos about climate, if you want to see alternative views. But everyone will shout out 'Its on Anthony Watt's site.' Well, of course, Anthony Watts is an old weather forecaster who questions and pokes holes in the narrative.
Read Eisenhower describes it nicely in his farewell address, right after the “military-industrial complex” part.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Do you I understand you right? You believe that our models say that sea levels existed in a state of equilibrium until 1863, and that the only input that can have an effect on them is atmospheric CO2 levels? That's what you think the model is? For real?
No, sea level has been all over the place. Current sea level rise is between two and three millimeters per year. However, we know that 20,000 years ago, sea level was 120m lower than today. Let's do a quick cocktail napkin analysis on those two data points. 120m, 20,000 years. We can quickly divide both the by 1,000 and have 120mm/20 years. Or 6mm/yr. That's the average sea level rise for the past 20,000 years. However we're told often & loudly that current CO2 levels are causing an unprecedented sea level rise. When the data say otherwise.
Earth systems consist of at least three complex variably interconnected heat engines, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the atmosphere. Each with it's own cycles. For instance, I live in Northern California. This region has the greatest range of variability in rainfall seen in the lower 48. Something called the Western Pacific Warm Pool, a pool of warm water in the western Pacific Ocean sporadically moves to the east. This redirects what we call The Atmospheric River further south, from the very wet Pacific Northwest to Northern California. We see warm wet winters. Our observed rainfall can triple in this time. We call it ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillations). 2023-24 is an El Nino year. Later in this spring, you'll read about flooding in California, because people built their homes on the flood plains. Is this cause by rising CO2? Nope, but it will be blamed on CO2, and if anyone questions that statement, they're a climate denier, equated with Holocaust deniers.
We are also told that satellite data is more precise than tide gauges, however we need serious skeptical look at this assertation, because there's serious problems with satellite sea level data. Satellites orbit with a precise altitude, As they fly over a spot, they basically shine a light on the Earth's surface, and time how long the reflection takes. (yes, its radio, not light, but that's an example). We all know that the speed of light, and radio waves is precise ... in a vacuum. However satellites fly in a vacuum, but the look through an atmosphere, a variable atmosphere. Sea level measurements are taken all across the oceans, however there is no starting reference of 'the ocean.' The satellite pass data starts from a known land reference, then measures the elevation of the sea, as the satellite passes over. All well and fine, the precision of the measurement resolves down to about 34mm, which is the same precision as the shore based tide gauges. But the satellite data is deviating from the shore based data, how can this be? Apparently the sea level rise measured by the satellites is only occurring in the middle of the oceans ... because if it were happening near shore, the shore based tide gauges would be measuring it also. The satellite data needs some hand tuning for each pass, because as I stated earlier, the atmosphere is variable. No one ever stops to question that a satellite isn't looking down at an infinitely small point on land, but instead sees a broad area. No one ever questions that sea waves are sine waves, with the average of zero, but that winds 'blow off the tops' of the waves, thus distorting the data.
Yet everyone lauds the satellite data, which finds drastic and scary acceleration in sea level rise, yet there are a lot of holes with satellite data, and if we're not seeing the same acceleration in shore based tide gauges, there's a lot wrong.
But if anyone were to mention there's a lot wrong, they'll get hounded out of their careers. So, its best to keep your mouth shut, and keep your job.
Same old rehashed bullshit. Your anecdotes and skepticism are just old debunked zombie memes. It's tiresome for scientists to have to address their fallacies over and over.
Why did you make such an inane comment implying that then?
There is a lot wrong with climate science. Branches of it have been overtaken by political hacks. Policy can been easily captured by bad actors. These are serious problems. But your comments don’t help.
I know you think you sound educated here. But this reads like 10th grade remedial science. I don’t really know where to start. It’s cringey. At the very least you need to stop confusing idiot journalists parroting nonsense with the actual science.
There is a huge amount of debate among climate scientists surrounding this. Michael Mann, the scientist you just wrote so much silliness about, even wrote a book largely disagreeing with much of the headline grabbing sea level journalism.
You’re not going to convince anyone this way. They assume you’re sniffing glue.
To the extent than climate change science has a problem, it's largely in how it attempts to insist that only its solutions are acceptable, that a massive investiture in the technologies that liberal elites favor because it makes them feel good and moral about the world is our only option.
The options to address climate change are manifold, and the bodies that govern actual decision-making in a democracy are largely being ignored as a group of liberal elite folk use the crisis of climate change to push their pet energy and environmental projects. They don't wish to subject the projects spawned by their values to review by the hoi polloi. They want the hoi polloi to shut the fuck up. It's no wonder the hoi polloi gives them a big middle finger, looking for every conceivable reason to criticize or ignore not only the activists pushing things, but the scientists fueling (and sometimes overlapping with) those activists.
Climate science doesn't 'insist' on any solutions unless you think 'a few extra degrees of average global warming will have serious negative consequences to humans and other life on earth, and burning fossil fuels is the fastest way to add them. Do something.' is 'insisting on a solution'. I'm all ears to hear what solutions you have that scientists are opposed to. Maybe the 'hoi polloi' is the real supremely self-interested party here.
That's a fair statement; I should be more careful. There is some overlap between climate scientists and activists, but probably less than one would think. I think the job of the climate scientist is to tell us the problem as accurately as they reasonably can, and then for the larger body politic, and other scientists and engineers to create the most appropriate solutions. Some of those are indeed to limit greenhouse gases. Some are to do pre-emptive amelioration. There are lots of solutions from both ends of the problem; I wish activists, by and large, saw fit to go down all paths. After all, they tell us it is an emergency. Yet they are not moving heaven and earth to make way for nuclear or geothermal or other forms of baseload capacity. They seem obsessed with "the solution" being to massively overbuild wind / solar / battery / transmission capacity (which will of a certainty have its own set of negative externalities -- nothing at that scale doesn't). We've known about the climate change problem for decades. We could have already been building more nuclear power, better nuclear power, for one. Trying to move vulnerable populations away from areas likely to be inundated -- or at least building better systems to deal with water incursion in those areas.
And yes, the hoi polloi are self interested. Who isn't, exactly? It's in all of our interests to treat this appropriately, isn't it? Last I checked, we are run by the people, and not by the scientists. Their job is to explain the world and provide options. It's the job of the polity to decide which options to take. But anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see how uninterested the global climate change activists are in anything but their environmental policy. If climate scientists are right -- and I tend to believe they largely are -- this isn't an "environmental" problem. It's an everything problem.
Self-interest that delays serious action will count as a 'fail' as a strategy if it leads us more quickly to global catastrophe, wouldn't you say?
One would think humans had never sacrificed en masse anywhere to overcome a problem. Maybe that's a thing of the past, or maybe this problem is just too big.
So we should have a knee-jerk reaction to something we don't understand?
I'm certain that you not driving you car isn't going to make the weather gooder. Especially when China is building over 600 new coal fired power plants.
China is doing that ..and also ramping up renewables on a vast scale. Neither of those things means the rest of the world should make no effort to lessen greenhouse gas emission. That would certainly make the weather badder.
They're also building a small electric car that would sell for 10K here in the US. They make a tiny truck that farmers can't get enough of for real agricultural work.
Competition in ideas and new technology is very important. Do you remember how awful the cars were before Japanese cars came into the market? I do. You felt grateful if they'd last 60K miles.
The people who seem to think they are smarter than everyone else and should be making all the decisions face a rather predictable backlash from making global catastrophe into one of their pet moral issues. Their idea of "persuasion" seems to be "science is the stick I get to beat you with until you do what I say."
Also, I'm not sure we've ever sacrificed en masse without an urgent and immediate problem. Urgent and immediate as in days, weeks, or months, not urgent and immediate as in decades.
Yes, but 5000 < 15000. It’s not like no one knows what’s going on in china. And I don’t have a problem with poor people being raised out of poverty by burning fossil fuels. We did that.
There’s a lot of really neat stuff going on with solar and wind and geothermal and hydrogen, etc. We can create a better energy future for ourselves if we want.
In the 70’s it was around 600ppm. Now that we know more about carbon sinks it’s probably closer to 900ppm hopefully. Don’t know about 1992.
We’re obviously not going to hit those targets. But I’m not really sure what your point is? We should stop all innovation in energy because china burns a lot of coal?
Neither CO2 rise nor temperature rise began in 1950. CO2 has been rising since we began emmitting it at the start of the Industrial Revolution, about two centuries prior to 1950, and temperature has been rising since about the turn of the century. Wherever you got those factoids, they aren't accurate, which you should be able to quickly verify with a web search. Perhaps other information you received from whatever source supplied this argument for you should be double-checked, too?
The link you provided shows that CO2 levels began rising before 1950. That much is quite clear on the graph, although it lacks the resolution to see when exactly the rise began. "Rise" and "departure from historical range" are not interchangeable. The positive relationship between CO2 and temperature and thereby sea levels doesn't only kick in when you hit a special threshold. And the year "1950" is only on the graph to provide a reference point.
CO2levels.org has a lovely interactive graph that plainly shows ~1750 as the year CO2 levels begin to rise, a trend that never recovers and only accelerates. I'm happy to clarify any other factual points for you.
1) If rising CO2 levels are an existential threat to humanity then drastic measures should be acceptable.
2) I'm talking about mathematics, not policy.
3) Maybe you think they're tedious and silly, but clearly not everyone holds to that belief. May I suggest that if you don't want to debate then you don't have to?
China may be close to peak CO2 already. India not so much. Nuking either would bring about (different) climate change.
Many coal plants in China are being mothballed, but not dismantled. Not dismantling the idled plants is strategic. Coal is how China survives if it loses sea access for trade.
I think the real problem with the mainstream media and global warming is this (and it's actually relevant to Mr. deBoer's thesis). Forget the scientific debates, which are tedious and involve nuances that will not be obvious to the average layman. Instead just take the advocacy groups pushing the climate change argument at their word:
1. The IPCC believes that global emissions levels must fall below 1992 levels in order to avoid a 2 deg C increase in average temperatures.
2. But global emissions levels are set to climb, not fall, because the third world (China, India, etc.) is industrializing.
Somehow the NY Times and other outlets look at those two simple facts and conclude that the solution is...teenagers protesting in the WH and Capitol. Anybody with an iota of common sense can put two and two together and see that the numbers don't add up. The Times is more than happy to quote the IPCC as necessary to provide the veneer of scientific respectability to their editorial opinions but actually doing a miniscule amount of elementary analysis is verboten because it would contradict the narrative.
And what is the narrative? A post-hippie fantasy where idealistic teens save the world by marching and protesting, overcoming the entrenched opposition of a bunch of fuddy duddy elders.
How would that play in China though? And thus you have the sudden failure in critical thinking.
>Somehow the NY Times and other outlets look at those two simple facts and conclude that the solution is...teenagers protesting in the WH and Capitol.
Right, the obvious solution is to go full Malthusian ecofascist and nuke developing countries. I joke, but there is a strong Malthusian and imperialist streak to a lot of environmental activism.
What is the relevance of your statement about Karl Popper? Your next claim does not follow from it. Are you claiming that the theory of anthropogenic climate change is not falsifiable? Or that it *has*, in fact, been falsified? Those are two very different claims.
In fact a single piece of contradictory data does not necessarily mean we should re-examine our theory. Philosophy of science has come a long way since Popper. The Duhem-Quine Thesis, in particular, would be worth reading up on here.
Parroting a naive falsificationist theory about science makes your argument less convincing, not more.
I once railed against the idea of "objective" reporting. I railed against it for the exact reasons Freddie outlines: not all ideas are equal, and reporting that stops at "these guys say this, and those guys say that" is unhelpful because a reiteration of each side's talking points does not bring ideas into contact with one another. Evaluate the arguments! Not in terms of values; in terms of soundness.
But you must do so fairly. Find both the most common and the best arguments and evaluate those; don't merely find a convenient strawman to destroy. And you must be respectful even to arguments you find detestable, if those arguments are either good or extremely common.
Now that I see what happens when reporters abandon "objective" reporting, I am horrified, and I should have known better: should have understood that the inevitable vector of the move away from objectivity would be, rather than fair evaluation, total recapitulation of one's own values. Please. Give us back objective reporting.
As always, you get hoisted by your own petard the minute you say 'we should end the consideration of the ideas of my political enemies, as they are unworthy,' since whatever apparatus you construct to silence those enemies will outlast your own control of it, and when those enemies get in, watch out! The only protection for whatever values you have is enshrining the robust protection of your enemies' values as well, and then having both your missionaries battle it out in the field.
Very precisely so. If you create the tools and spread the will to suppress "bad ideas", you've fulfilled the preconditions for suppressing GOOD ideas - all that needs to change now is who holds the idea suppressing button and guess what? It's not glued to your hand - others can take it. It is dangerous to enable, allow, or normalize suppression of bad ideas because you are doing the future bad guys' job for them in the process and making it easier to enact horrifying human rights abuses in the future. I have struggled for much of the last decade to understand why this is apparently hard to grasp - even many otherwise intelligent people fall back to "but we *have* to suppress [x]!" as if the conversation hadn't happened.
This is a little like the critique of science that says scientists can't be truly objective because they have the values and starting assumptions of their culture. It's a true statement and a useful corrective, until it gets morphed into a justification for deciding there's no such thing as reality and alternative ways of knowing (like visions while taking halucinogens) and just as valid as lab experiments. And at some point, you end up getting reiki for your treatable cancer and end up dying from it.
“that come largely from a particular kind of person - urban, extravagantly educated, upwardly-mobile if not already affluent, the type of person who mocks meritocracy on Twitter while enjoying the fruits of their own desperate clawing up the meritocratic ladder.”
“Whatever affirmative case is to be made for questioning the diversity, equity, and inclusion business - and it is indeed business, big business, one that makes some of its priests quite wealthy.”
“such as those of Ibram Kendi, who sees any racial disparity as ipso facto proof of racism”
“But this is the very worst kind of media bias, which is the bias that stems from pretending that you aren’t making a political point when you very much are.”
“The fact that DEI efforts are run from within institutional power itself should make us skeptical of their ability to actually achieve meaningful reform”
Taken together this all covers my explanation for the left-based woke phenomenon. I also covers the theory of anthropogenic global warming which I put in the same woke basket.
First consider that almost everyone wants more… more status, more money, more likes, more followers, more love, more,,, just fill in the blanks. Wanting more is baked-in human psychology that is both our blessing and curse. Without it and the corresponding outcome of human advancement and progress we would become extinct. However, it also results in bloody conflicts that also threaten extinction.
Al Gore is a multi-millionaire never having produced much of anything of value except global warming fear porn.
Ibram Kendi, although his reputation has been justifiably shattered by evidence of fake scholarship and plagiarism, also has made millions doing the same in the race ideology space.
The professional activism space is an industry where people can get more. It primarily serves the over-educated, upper class, coastal liberal elite… the type that would never think about a career as a welder or auto mechanic… or even an engineer… careers where tangible things are invented, made, built, grown and fixed. They also flock to government and media roles. Many of them are lawyers.
These woke topics have been woven into sub-ideologies: gender ideology, race ideology, climate ideology, America-hating ideology, etc., and their purpose is to create a money and power making sandbox for these otherwise unemployed upper-class elites.
They are aided and abetted by the Wall Street controlled corporatists, the managerial class if you will, because they also skim from money and power making capability of these ideological trends.
Wall Street bets on trends. If it can have a hand at controlling the trends, then it increases the odds that their bets pay off. Today they have a lot of control over trends.
The pandemic trend was to demand everyone get the “vaccines” from Big Pharma that later required the CDC to redefine the term “vaccine” because those mRNA novel drugs failed to prevent repeated infection.
The global warming ideology is also pushing market trends that Wall Street is betting on.
Democrat party power, the same as political establishment power, is the key to protection of the money and power-making sand box.
This is the full answer I think. Trump threatened this money and power-making sandbox in a number of ways. One is that the black underclass was waking up to the reality of decades of failed liberal and establishment policies that decimated their paths to post civil rights middle-class economic opportunity. With blacks jumping ship from the Democrat party the power game would be over. Thankfully for this Democrat looting cabal, race ideology pushed through their corporatist media control including the sensationalist George Floyd movement, got the black voters back on the voting plantation. And then the fortuitist Dodd decision to rev up female voter rage.
The woke platform is both a market and political strategy that supports a power and money-making enterprise. The Times reporting is in that pocket. Four mega Wall Street asset management companies together own a controlling interest in 80% of the media and big tech. The writing pools are infested with the children of over-educated, upper-class coastal elites. They are all in it together for the same reasons.
Part of this mess is attributable to the consequences of losing our industrial and manufacturing base, and importing so much immigrant labor to do the work “that Americans won’t do”. So then, what do all these high-educated more sophisticated people do to satiate their need for appropriate positions on the human status hierarchy? They leverage the new information economy to create their own paths to power and money. They create ideologies and then push them in the education system and media as popular trends… then they farm money and power-making opportunities from those trends.
They are the new capitalists.
Woke is a capitalist game… a virtual one… and a destructive one... or at least one that does not produce anything of real value.
Discussions of liberal media bias misses the larger point. These people don’t care about really any political orientation other than what provides them the easiest path to more... more power and money.
You are far too kind to the NYT. They have never been averse to outright lying when it serves their interests, whether by omission or commission. The truth has not always made it past the barriers to rest in the land of the “fit to print.”
The DEI business now so entrenched in our institutions and big business won't do squat to solve very real problems affecting vulnerable constituencies...folks who live with concentrated poverty, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, and lack of good employment prospects.
Saw a great interview of Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King's speech writer, who confirmed that Dr. King if alive today would be completely mortified by and in opposition to DEI.
DEI is a tool of the neoracists. It is a more sophisticated tool to identify people by race and treat them differently... the same behavior we noted in Democrats before Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act.
It serves two purposes for the over-educated, upper-class coastal and big city leftist elites. One - it is a luxury belief that allows them to signal virtue and to farm power and money-making opportunity. Two - it continues to keep minorities like blacks on the plantation of underclass so there is less competition for money and status pursuits of the coastal and big city elites.
One thing I find interesting is that NYT coverage of DEI has not always been positive. Take "‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work?", which describes at least one racist "anti-racism" training, where a "hallmark of whiteness" is "scientific, linear thinking." See here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/magazine/white-fragility-robin-diangelo.html
There are vanishingly few politicians in good faith of any stripe in any national office. The methods required to get there and stay there tend to actively destroy good faith.
Assuming one's ideological opponents are only acting in bad faith limits one's own understanding, and aids the divide and conquer goals of the oligarchy.
I assume all politicians are scum, but many did enter politics in good faith. Most just want to further their career.
Assuming bad faith is a weak cop-out to avoid considering whether one's ideological opponents have valid positions.
You might have been a leftist earlier on, but I get the sense that we are going through a political realignment right now. Thus the old categories of what is "right" and "left" are falling apart. I think this explains the rise of heterodoxy in political beliefs. I think it is a good time for all of us to reevaluate the political landscape.
I used to identify as left. On the one hand, I believed and still believe in a mixed economy that tilts heavily to the socialist end of the spectrum, with a strong view that companies should be owned in the form of co-ops of the employees. Throw in a heavy dose of single payer healthcare, and a meaningful right to housing.
On the other hand, I believe in the strongest possible way in every individual's mental and bodily autonomy. That is, everyone has the right to reproductive freedom (including abortions at any stage of pregnancy) in the name of bodily autonomy. Mental autonomy means near absolute freedom of speech, expression, conscience, and religion. But the left as it is currently constituted, has almost entirely abandoned these. Free speech is now supposedly "right wing" now as the left, as it is currently constituted, as gone mostly all in on DEI groupthink monoculture. Count me out on that. I'll never compromise on speech or abortion rights.
This means I can neither be part of the left or the right as they are currently constituted. I suspect, that you and most of the readers here, are actually in the same boat. I also suspect that this is why there is a realignment taking place. Right and left, again as currently constituted, have become ossified into ideologies that are too rigid for any but the true believers to follow. The vast majority of people are not true believers.
In the end, 'left' and 'right' are just labels. I encourage everyone to reconsider their value.
Your final point is the one I don’t understand - why isn’t anything emerging to tackle the “just the facts” space? The truth, wherever it leads? I’d subscribe. Without question.
It appears that it’s guys like me that kind of wrecked the media. I used to subscribe to way more papers and magazines than I could realistically read - at any time I’d be getting some subset of the NYT, the WSJ, one or two local papers, the Atlantic, the Economist, plus at least one or two more exciting and weird political magazines, plus Spin or something. I’ve still got my WSJ subscription, but other than that I only pay for subscriptions on Substack. And it’s because of what you’re talking about. It’s clear that I can’t trust these publications, even if some of the writers are still straight - how do I know who, and when? - so why bother. But if something new and principled emerged I’d be on it in a heartbeat.
It's because the subfloor of 'truth' is now the idea that (to put postmodern literary theory in a vulgar form) as truth is expressed only in human language, there is no truth, only social constructs and systems of oppression. It's relativism degree zero. The hoi polloi don't 'know' or 'believe' this explicitly, but it's seeped down corrosively from corners of academia for decades, now. The masses internalize it implicitly into its most cynical form. The nefarious weaponize it.
Freddie, I hope you noticed that on the same day, the Times editorial board bashed the left as well as right for restricting free speech on campus. At a ratio of about 3:1, but still.
Thank you for making clear the difference between liberal bias and left-wing bias. And also for affirming the value of the NYT's fact-finding mission. Even Noam Chomsky says that the NYT prints a lot of useful, important facts. It's what they leave out that is important. I would also say it's less "liberal" bias and more institutional, mainstream bias that is the issue. I made this same critique of NPR's news coverage for Current Affairs: https://weirdcatastrophe.substack.com/p/npr-is-not-your-friend-redux
And some NPR fans just couldn't get past their idea of NPR's supposed "balance" as being a sign of true fairness and objectivity instead of what it really is, a cover for mainstream apologetics.
My problem with the critique of the "View From Nowhere" is that it is guilty of an either/or fallacy: either you're perfectly objective or you're biased, and since you can't be perfectly objective, you might as well embrace being biased.
But this doesn't make any sense. Bias is not an either/or thing; it has many gradations. And unless you think there is some virtue in lying, I don't see why you wouldn't aspire to be less biased. Why make the perfect be the enemy of the good?
Agreed. One should strive for objectivity in journalism. At the same time, every journalist must understand their biases which prevent them from being fully objective. By understanding and accounting for these biases, journalists get closer to objectivity.
Not as pithy as "view from nowhere," but a hell of a lot more accurate.
Absolutely right. And this used to be such a basic tenet of journalism that our high school journalism teacher harped on it every year, although she described it more in terms of our culture or our experience rather than as a bias which has a more negative connotation. And journalists should be aware of their blind spots—knowing what they don’t know.
Objectivity, in the true sense of that word, was never the problem. The problem was a refusal to hold anyone to account for what they say, ever. "These guys say this, but those guys say that." It allowed the spinners on issues to simply never have to engage with the arguments of their opposition, and the "objective" reporting allowed them to get away with it. At the very least, it's the job of journalism to bring the actual arguments being made by various sides into contact with each other, and they were miserably failing to do so.
As I see it, the cure is considerably worse, but I wanted to point out that the problem with objectivity is not with the notion of objectivity in some poisoned postmodernist perspective. There is a difference between the common meaning of the word "objective" and what people mean by "objective" journalism. Objective journalism distorted the world of discourse in a particular pattern. Becoming "more objective" or "perfectly objective" in the journalism sense was a bad thing, because it meant pretending everything had equal weight and strictly refusing to evaluate anything.
True; simple reporting should indeed hew as closely to the facts as possible. I still don't like recapitulation of both sides' positions, but it's probably the only thing straight reporting should be doing, and only within the context of presenting a thing that has occurred (i.e., where the actual statements were made by the groups in question).
Harris-as-successor is Biden's insurance policy
Biden didn’t have a choice. His patron in the House told him to do it and he complied. Same with the Supreme Court.
FIRST!
i had many of same rxns to the piece. you could write the same stuff about progressive organizations and people with some inflammatory quotes. but the times wouldn't (that's left to city journal and heather mac donald!)
You kinda have to read those pieces with the understanding of their audience capture and the catering to confirmation biases. Then just note the facts (and as you say, whatever NYT has become, it’s still decent at gathering facts) and dissociate it from the op-Ed aspects (even in the purportedly “news-y” pieces).
This reality is what requires folks to have a diverse media appetite….so that you not only recognize what the NYT is doing, but also to actually get a look beyond its curated garden. It’s basically a glorified insta feed at this point.
I get the feeling a lot of liberals also don't like DEI either. A PMC NYC-dwelling liberal who's ever had to attend a DEI workshop at their white-collar job can't honestly think that that stuff isn't a grift. But they're all afraid to speak out because elite liberals keep enforcing this idea that all good liberals are lockstep in favour of DEI and if you have doubts, you must be a closet Nazi. The NYT needs to make it seem as if it's a foregone conclusion that DEI is good because once even their own readers feel the free to question it, it will collapse (even faster).
They are not three separate words. "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" is a stand in for an entire ideology (or several overlapped ideologies, none of which map to the specific words).
You say "yes" to Diversity. That's nice. I do too. But DEI hates the kind of diversity that makes us stronger: diversity of ideas and culture that get infused into the mainstream, reinvigorating it constantly. It only likes the kind that divides us: if you are perceived as "weaker" in some sense, you are "diverse" and should be valorized.
You say "yes" to inclusion. I do too. But DEI says that the only inclusion that matters is the inclusion of the minority*. And it's quite happy to demonize the majority. It is not indeed inclusive; they way it tries to "include" the minority is by demanding the tearing down or subjugation of the majority. That is not inclusive.
Equity is simply a jargon word that appears to mean that minorities of all kinds should be accommodated to the maximum feasible, and even advantaged wherever possible to make up for the privilege of anyone who is not a minority. And we should attach moral opprobrium to anyone in the perceived majority who seeks success through a straightforward application of "being the best."
There are genuine problems with meritocracy. DEI is a cure worse than the disease.
*I use the word "minority" in a very broad sense to mean anyone who is perceived to have significantly less power than the mainstream.
Like Claudine Gay?
I think her expulsion was significant in that it demonstrates the pendulum is swinging back.
Equity? Yes. It literally means not playing favorites.
How can it be practiced? There's the rub.
That is not the definition of equity favored by Kendi, which argues that any discrepancy in representation from the larger population can only be racist.
I agree. Freddie talked about leftist criticism of DEI, but it's by far not merely leftists. It's the more classical side of liberals too. I'm a somewhat libertarian social progressive (or was? I don't know if that's even coherent at this point); what might be considered an "elite liberal" of the turn of the century. Many like me find DEI abhorrent, and neither the conservatives nor the leftists would ever claim us.
One of the recurring jokes at my workplace whenever the yearly DEI trainings come around again is some version of "man, I'm so glad we're getting training on Harassment, I'd almost forgotten how to do it!" or such. No one likes it, it takes way too long*, and in a strange coincidence, it's incredibly hard to utilize for redress if the target is someone in management. Grift is bad enough when it's purely waste, but even worse when it undermines the ostensible mission and encourages regressive zero-sum attitudes about how justice Really Works.
*missing an hour or two in a corporate world accustomed to useless meetings might feel par for the course, but in retail, taking key movers off the sales floor for hours screws up the entire day's operations. A funny inversion of the My Time Is Valuable calculation. So I guess I can thank DEI for helping point out another meritocratic flaw.
My friends and I joke DEI workshops are actually a white nationalist ploy to make people more racist against minorities.
That makes me a sad panda!
O wait that’s sexual harassment training.
Oh, no, it's the usual everything bagel DEI stuff. The official name is "harassment training", but it also covers pronoun shit, not using retrograde slurs when referring to gay coworkers, how it's inappropriate to grind on female employees (I'm not kidding, that's one of the example quiz problems), how you should invite yourself to the local mosque to learn more about Islam if Muslim coworkers make you uncomfortable (not kidding again), how Diversity Is Our Strength and We Value All* Cultures.
It's still a shit-out crock anyway, and even my progressive coworkers know it, because none of this stuff actually gets enforced in anything like a fair, consistent, timely manner. We all know it's just CYA pap with no substance. As toothy as Corporate Values statements.
*right-thinking
I don’t disagree with most of what you say, I was just making a South Park reference lol
Edited: earlier link no good this better:
https://youtu.be/ap_XoAVvbQg?si=3MFq8dAGBcBSUIXc
ironically I've become a mandatory-training connoisseur and the corporate stuff ended up rather good (us employees weren't seen as the ones at fault, for one), while the academic ones were all abstract and unreal ("you see Alice and Bob walking together, and the last thing you see is Alice smacking Bob on the back of the neck--do you ..." CHOICES A, B, C, and D)
As I did with Freddie, I'd advise you to read the editorial board editorial in the very same issue as article Freddie critiques. You'll find the people running the NYT aren't necessarily disagreeing with you. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/opinion/campus-free-speech.html
Absolutely. The most liberal state in the country, CA, overwhelmingly voted against affirmative action, not once, but twice!
I also think Freddie downplays the degree to which the Trump era has seen a convergence between American liberals and leftists on many issues. I do not say that they are synonymous - they aren't. (Notably, the war in Gaza has thrown that very much into relief.) But IMO the divide has become quite porous, especially but not exclusively on the domestic front, and I think any honest analysis must concede that they are much more simpatico than they were in 2010 or even 2015.
That's right Freddie, pay no attention to that little man behind the curtain.
Karl Popper stated, that any scientific theory which cannot be falsified, is not a valid scientific theory.
Thus, if we have a single piece of contradictory data, we must re-examine our theory.
Here's the conundrum:
We all know that sea level rise is the result of anthropogenic global warming, and that this began in earnest around 1950. However sea level rise, as reported by NOAA, in long term tide gauges, places the beginning of sea level rise, hence global warming at 1863, fully 87 years before the rapid rise of anthropogenic global warming cause. Here's the analysis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28564-6
Here is the NOAA data: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9414290
Conclusion: Sea level rise began in 1863, CO2 rise began 87 years later in 1950. Since the cause is 87 years after the effect, there must be something wrong with the theory.
By the way, didn't New York have to be abandoned in 2019 due to sea level rise? Because that was the best scientific prediction from 2004.
you genuinely believe that absolute vast majority of scientists in related fields are involved in a vast conspiracy to spread the lie of climate change? For what purpose?
If merely raising the question will get you fired: Yes.
Did you even read Climate Gate?
For What Purpose? As you know every college professor has three basic jobs: Teach, Research, Public Outreach. If you can't bring in funding to your department, you can't do research (pay grad students). If you can't pay grad students, you can't attract grad students, then you can't attract undergrad students. However, if you can attract huge attention to your department—especially by stating scary stuff—you can peddle your grants, fund your research, grow your department, grow your prestige. Big money energy companies need your fear-mongering to advance their solar & wind projects. How to do this, but to sell fear, gain big government grants, investments, subsidies.
“For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” –Warren Buffet cited by U.S. News/Nancy Pfotenhauer, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all… “
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,”
--Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti
“Unregulated consumerism was unsustainable and people would have to learn to make do with less. The government would have to have more control over people to enforce their austerity and the wealth of developed nations would have to be redistributed to help undeveloped nations.”
The clear intent is to use the global warming smokescreen to restrict economic and political freedoms by transforming Western countries into tightly controlled totalitarian states.
--Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., October 1, 2019
One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, ... We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy
--Ottomar Edenhofer, 14 Nov 2010. co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015
Michael Mann picked off half a million in research grants for his now debunked Hockey Stick graph. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climategate-scientist-cleared-in-inquiry-again/
What was Climategate: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/01/climategate-ten-years-later/
Dr Curry's take on Climategate: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/15/judith-curry-legacy-of-climategate-10-years-later/
" [this is a big quote block of a table that didn't format well]
“Even before the release of the Climategate emails, numerous public concerns were raised about Mann’s conduct. Concerns about Mann’s research included:
* Mann’s undisclosed use in a 1998 paper (“MBH98”) of an algorithm which mined data for hockey-stick shaped series. The algorithm was so powerful that it could produce hockey-stick shaped “reconstructions” from auto-correlated red noise. Mann’s failure to disclose the algorithm continued even in a 2004 corrigendum.
* Mann’s failure to disclose adverse verification statistics in MBH98. Mann also did not archive results that would permit calculation of the adverse statistics. Climategate emails later revealed that Mann regarded this information as his “dirty laundry” and required an associate at the Climatic Research Unit (“CRU”) to withhold the information from potential critics.
* Mann’s misleading claims about the “robustness” of his reconstruction to the presence/absence of tree ring chronologies, including failing to fully disclose calculations excluding questionable data from strip bark bristlecone pine trees.
* Mann’s deletion of the late 20th century portion of the Briffa temperature reconstruction in Figure 2.21 in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001) to conceal its sharp decline, in apparent response to concerns that showing the data would “dilute the message” and give “fodder to the skeptics.” Mann’s insistence in 2004 that “no researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. But it was later revealed that in one figure for the cover of the 1999 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) annual report, the temperature record had not only been grafted onto the various reconstructions—and in the case of the Briffa reconstruction, had been substituted for the actual proxy
* Mann’s undisclosed grafting of temperature data for “Mike’s Nature trick,” a manipulation of data which involved: (1) grafting the temperature record after 1980 onto the proxy reconstruction up to 1980; (2) “smoothing” the data; and (3) truncating the smooth back to 1980. ”
"
"Climate Gate' was a load of trumped-up horseshit. I watched it unfold in real time. An important part of it, incredibly , was predicated on a misunderstanding of the use of the word 'trick' in British vs American English.
The rest of your cant is also nonsense. Quote from ten years ago from Warren Buffett, a nice guy but no expert on climate. Culture war scare quotes from the Squad.
And if you think concerned climate scientist are in it for the money, you have no clue how funding for scientific research works here, and around the world.
The climate change we are experiencing is real, human-driven, and is going to require hard choices because we've waited too damn long to make any easy ones. Those are facts.
Environmental 'good news' getting shut down, spun into bad news.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/20/climate-driven-noble-cause-corruption-goes-way-back/
Pointing out a bogus attribution to global warming. Dr. Steel a retired natural science professor. Of course Dr. Steel gets shut down, demonized. You should watch his instructional YouTube videos about climate, if you want to see alternative views. But everyone will shout out 'Its on Anthony Watt's site.' Well, of course, Anthony Watts is an old weather forecaster who questions and pokes holes in the narrative.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/21/how-bogus-arctic-warming-attribution-enabled-the-climate-crisis-scam/
Perhaps we won't sort out the climate change issue in this space. Let's let it lie please.
Read Eisenhower describes it nicely in his farewell address, right after the “military-industrial complex” part.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Do you I understand you right? You believe that our models say that sea levels existed in a state of equilibrium until 1863, and that the only input that can have an effect on them is atmospheric CO2 levels? That's what you think the model is? For real?
No, sea level has been all over the place. Current sea level rise is between two and three millimeters per year. However, we know that 20,000 years ago, sea level was 120m lower than today. Let's do a quick cocktail napkin analysis on those two data points. 120m, 20,000 years. We can quickly divide both the by 1,000 and have 120mm/20 years. Or 6mm/yr. That's the average sea level rise for the past 20,000 years. However we're told often & loudly that current CO2 levels are causing an unprecedented sea level rise. When the data say otherwise.
Earth systems consist of at least three complex variably interconnected heat engines, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the atmosphere. Each with it's own cycles. For instance, I live in Northern California. This region has the greatest range of variability in rainfall seen in the lower 48. Something called the Western Pacific Warm Pool, a pool of warm water in the western Pacific Ocean sporadically moves to the east. This redirects what we call The Atmospheric River further south, from the very wet Pacific Northwest to Northern California. We see warm wet winters. Our observed rainfall can triple in this time. We call it ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillations). 2023-24 is an El Nino year. Later in this spring, you'll read about flooding in California, because people built their homes on the flood plains. Is this cause by rising CO2? Nope, but it will be blamed on CO2, and if anyone questions that statement, they're a climate denier, equated with Holocaust deniers.
We are also told that satellite data is more precise than tide gauges, however we need serious skeptical look at this assertation, because there's serious problems with satellite sea level data. Satellites orbit with a precise altitude, As they fly over a spot, they basically shine a light on the Earth's surface, and time how long the reflection takes. (yes, its radio, not light, but that's an example). We all know that the speed of light, and radio waves is precise ... in a vacuum. However satellites fly in a vacuum, but the look through an atmosphere, a variable atmosphere. Sea level measurements are taken all across the oceans, however there is no starting reference of 'the ocean.' The satellite pass data starts from a known land reference, then measures the elevation of the sea, as the satellite passes over. All well and fine, the precision of the measurement resolves down to about 34mm, which is the same precision as the shore based tide gauges. But the satellite data is deviating from the shore based data, how can this be? Apparently the sea level rise measured by the satellites is only occurring in the middle of the oceans ... because if it were happening near shore, the shore based tide gauges would be measuring it also. The satellite data needs some hand tuning for each pass, because as I stated earlier, the atmosphere is variable. No one ever stops to question that a satellite isn't looking down at an infinitely small point on land, but instead sees a broad area. No one ever questions that sea waves are sine waves, with the average of zero, but that winds 'blow off the tops' of the waves, thus distorting the data.
Yet everyone lauds the satellite data, which finds drastic and scary acceleration in sea level rise, yet there are a lot of holes with satellite data, and if we're not seeing the same acceleration in shore based tide gauges, there's a lot wrong.
But if anyone were to mention there's a lot wrong, they'll get hounded out of their careers. So, its best to keep your mouth shut, and keep your job.
Same old rehashed bullshit. Your anecdotes and skepticism are just old debunked zombie memes. It's tiresome for scientists to have to address their fallacies over and over.
Why did you make such an inane comment implying that then?
There is a lot wrong with climate science. Branches of it have been overtaken by political hacks. Policy can been easily captured by bad actors. These are serious problems. But your comments don’t help.
I know you think you sound educated here. But this reads like 10th grade remedial science. I don’t really know where to start. It’s cringey. At the very least you need to stop confusing idiot journalists parroting nonsense with the actual science.
There is a huge amount of debate among climate scientists surrounding this. Michael Mann, the scientist you just wrote so much silliness about, even wrote a book largely disagreeing with much of the headline grabbing sea level journalism.
You’re not going to convince anyone this way. They assume you’re sniffing glue.
To the extent than climate change science has a problem, it's largely in how it attempts to insist that only its solutions are acceptable, that a massive investiture in the technologies that liberal elites favor because it makes them feel good and moral about the world is our only option.
The options to address climate change are manifold, and the bodies that govern actual decision-making in a democracy are largely being ignored as a group of liberal elite folk use the crisis of climate change to push their pet energy and environmental projects. They don't wish to subject the projects spawned by their values to review by the hoi polloi. They want the hoi polloi to shut the fuck up. It's no wonder the hoi polloi gives them a big middle finger, looking for every conceivable reason to criticize or ignore not only the activists pushing things, but the scientists fueling (and sometimes overlapping with) those activists.
Climate science doesn't 'insist' on any solutions unless you think 'a few extra degrees of average global warming will have serious negative consequences to humans and other life on earth, and burning fossil fuels is the fastest way to add them. Do something.' is 'insisting on a solution'. I'm all ears to hear what solutions you have that scientists are opposed to. Maybe the 'hoi polloi' is the real supremely self-interested party here.
That's a fair statement; I should be more careful. There is some overlap between climate scientists and activists, but probably less than one would think. I think the job of the climate scientist is to tell us the problem as accurately as they reasonably can, and then for the larger body politic, and other scientists and engineers to create the most appropriate solutions. Some of those are indeed to limit greenhouse gases. Some are to do pre-emptive amelioration. There are lots of solutions from both ends of the problem; I wish activists, by and large, saw fit to go down all paths. After all, they tell us it is an emergency. Yet they are not moving heaven and earth to make way for nuclear or geothermal or other forms of baseload capacity. They seem obsessed with "the solution" being to massively overbuild wind / solar / battery / transmission capacity (which will of a certainty have its own set of negative externalities -- nothing at that scale doesn't). We've known about the climate change problem for decades. We could have already been building more nuclear power, better nuclear power, for one. Trying to move vulnerable populations away from areas likely to be inundated -- or at least building better systems to deal with water incursion in those areas.
And yes, the hoi polloi are self interested. Who isn't, exactly? It's in all of our interests to treat this appropriately, isn't it? Last I checked, we are run by the people, and not by the scientists. Their job is to explain the world and provide options. It's the job of the polity to decide which options to take. But anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see how uninterested the global climate change activists are in anything but their environmental policy. If climate scientists are right -- and I tend to believe they largely are -- this isn't an "environmental" problem. It's an everything problem.
Self-interest that delays serious action will count as a 'fail' as a strategy if it leads us more quickly to global catastrophe, wouldn't you say?
One would think humans had never sacrificed en masse anywhere to overcome a problem. Maybe that's a thing of the past, or maybe this problem is just too big.
So we should have a knee-jerk reaction to something we don't understand?
I'm certain that you not driving you car isn't going to make the weather gooder. Especially when China is building over 600 new coal fired power plants.
China is doing that ..and also ramping up renewables on a vast scale. Neither of those things means the rest of the world should make no effort to lessen greenhouse gas emission. That would certainly make the weather badder.
They're also building a small electric car that would sell for 10K here in the US. They make a tiny truck that farmers can't get enough of for real agricultural work.
Competition in ideas and new technology is very important. Do you remember how awful the cars were before Japanese cars came into the market? I do. You felt grateful if they'd last 60K miles.
The people who seem to think they are smarter than everyone else and should be making all the decisions face a rather predictable backlash from making global catastrophe into one of their pet moral issues. Their idea of "persuasion" seems to be "science is the stick I get to beat you with until you do what I say."
Also, I'm not sure we've ever sacrificed en masse without an urgent and immediate problem. Urgent and immediate as in days, weeks, or months, not urgent and immediate as in decades.
You don't need fancy maths to see the problem with global warming activism. It's actually very simple.
If the US cuts 5000 tons a year and China adds 10000 tons a year what's the net change?
So that means global warming activism should stop? Efforts by other countries to mitigate global warming should stop? How stupid is that?
10000 - 5000 = 5000.
Yes, but 5000 < 15000. It’s not like no one knows what’s going on in china. And I don’t have a problem with poor people being raised out of poverty by burning fossil fuels. We did that.
There’s a lot of really neat stuff going on with solar and wind and geothermal and hydrogen, etc. We can create a better energy future for ourselves if we want.
One more simple question:
What does the IPCC say about the global carbon levels required to miss the 2 deg C threshold compared to 1992?
In the 70’s it was around 600ppm. Now that we know more about carbon sinks it’s probably closer to 900ppm hopefully. Don’t know about 1992.
We’re obviously not going to hit those targets. But I’m not really sure what your point is? We should stop all innovation in energy because china burns a lot of coal?
Neither CO2 rise nor temperature rise began in 1950. CO2 has been rising since we began emmitting it at the start of the Industrial Revolution, about two centuries prior to 1950, and temperature has been rising since about the turn of the century. Wherever you got those factoids, they aren't accurate, which you should be able to quickly verify with a web search. Perhaps other information you received from whatever source supplied this argument for you should be double-checked, too?
https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
For CO2, the baseline is 280ppm. 1950 is the departure from the historical range.
1863 is cited as the end of The Little Ice Age.
If you have another source of the data, please provide it.
The link you provided shows that CO2 levels began rising before 1950. That much is quite clear on the graph, although it lacks the resolution to see when exactly the rise began. "Rise" and "departure from historical range" are not interchangeable. The positive relationship between CO2 and temperature and thereby sea levels doesn't only kick in when you hit a special threshold. And the year "1950" is only on the graph to provide a reference point.
CO2levels.org has a lovely interactive graph that plainly shows ~1750 as the year CO2 levels begin to rise, a trend that never recovers and only accelerates. I'm happy to clarify any other factual points for you.
Here you go:
https://www.co2levels.org/
http://tinyurl.com/ymj7nsyr
If CO2 levels are critical then nuke China. And India. Because as they climb out of poverty their per capita carbon outputs are going to skyrocket.
1) Well that's a very normal and healthy human thought
2) Did it sound like I expressed a policy opinion to you?
3) Freddie said to drop it (which suits me just fine, because these climate denial arguments are tedious and silly)
1) If rising CO2 levels are an existential threat to humanity then drastic measures should be acceptable.
2) I'm talking about mathematics, not policy.
3) Maybe you think they're tedious and silly, but clearly not everyone holds to that belief. May I suggest that if you don't want to debate then you don't have to?
Is anyone actually against nuking China?
Good question.
One would think that at least the likely victims of retaliatory strikes would not be in favour.
China may be close to peak CO2 already. India not so much. Nuking either would bring about (different) climate change.
Many coal plants in China are being mothballed, but not dismantled. Not dismantling the idled plants is strategic. Coal is how China survives if it loses sea access for trade.
Global CO2 levels will rise. I see no reason why anybody should try to obfuscate that one simple fact.
I think the real problem with the mainstream media and global warming is this (and it's actually relevant to Mr. deBoer's thesis). Forget the scientific debates, which are tedious and involve nuances that will not be obvious to the average layman. Instead just take the advocacy groups pushing the climate change argument at their word:
1. The IPCC believes that global emissions levels must fall below 1992 levels in order to avoid a 2 deg C increase in average temperatures.
2. But global emissions levels are set to climb, not fall, because the third world (China, India, etc.) is industrializing.
Somehow the NY Times and other outlets look at those two simple facts and conclude that the solution is...teenagers protesting in the WH and Capitol. Anybody with an iota of common sense can put two and two together and see that the numbers don't add up. The Times is more than happy to quote the IPCC as necessary to provide the veneer of scientific respectability to their editorial opinions but actually doing a miniscule amount of elementary analysis is verboten because it would contradict the narrative.
And what is the narrative? A post-hippie fantasy where idealistic teens save the world by marching and protesting, overcoming the entrenched opposition of a bunch of fuddy duddy elders.
How would that play in China though? And thus you have the sudden failure in critical thinking.
>Somehow the NY Times and other outlets look at those two simple facts and conclude that the solution is...teenagers protesting in the WH and Capitol.
Right, the obvious solution is to go full Malthusian ecofascist and nuke developing countries. I joke, but there is a strong Malthusian and imperialist streak to a lot of environmental activism.
What is the relevance of your statement about Karl Popper? Your next claim does not follow from it. Are you claiming that the theory of anthropogenic climate change is not falsifiable? Or that it *has*, in fact, been falsified? Those are two very different claims.
In fact a single piece of contradictory data does not necessarily mean we should re-examine our theory. Philosophy of science has come a long way since Popper. The Duhem-Quine Thesis, in particular, would be worth reading up on here.
Parroting a naive falsificationist theory about science makes your argument less convincing, not more.
I once railed against the idea of "objective" reporting. I railed against it for the exact reasons Freddie outlines: not all ideas are equal, and reporting that stops at "these guys say this, and those guys say that" is unhelpful because a reiteration of each side's talking points does not bring ideas into contact with one another. Evaluate the arguments! Not in terms of values; in terms of soundness.
But you must do so fairly. Find both the most common and the best arguments and evaluate those; don't merely find a convenient strawman to destroy. And you must be respectful even to arguments you find detestable, if those arguments are either good or extremely common.
Now that I see what happens when reporters abandon "objective" reporting, I am horrified, and I should have known better: should have understood that the inevitable vector of the move away from objectivity would be, rather than fair evaluation, total recapitulation of one's own values. Please. Give us back objective reporting.
As always, you get hoisted by your own petard the minute you say 'we should end the consideration of the ideas of my political enemies, as they are unworthy,' since whatever apparatus you construct to silence those enemies will outlast your own control of it, and when those enemies get in, watch out! The only protection for whatever values you have is enshrining the robust protection of your enemies' values as well, and then having both your missionaries battle it out in the field.
Very precisely so. If you create the tools and spread the will to suppress "bad ideas", you've fulfilled the preconditions for suppressing GOOD ideas - all that needs to change now is who holds the idea suppressing button and guess what? It's not glued to your hand - others can take it. It is dangerous to enable, allow, or normalize suppression of bad ideas because you are doing the future bad guys' job for them in the process and making it easier to enact horrifying human rights abuses in the future. I have struggled for much of the last decade to understand why this is apparently hard to grasp - even many otherwise intelligent people fall back to "but we *have* to suppress [x]!" as if the conversation hadn't happened.
This is a little like the critique of science that says scientists can't be truly objective because they have the values and starting assumptions of their culture. It's a true statement and a useful corrective, until it gets morphed into a justification for deciding there's no such thing as reality and alternative ways of knowing (like visions while taking halucinogens) and just as valid as lab experiments. And at some point, you end up getting reiki for your treatable cancer and end up dying from it.
Great piece Freddie!
“that come largely from a particular kind of person - urban, extravagantly educated, upwardly-mobile if not already affluent, the type of person who mocks meritocracy on Twitter while enjoying the fruits of their own desperate clawing up the meritocratic ladder.”
“Whatever affirmative case is to be made for questioning the diversity, equity, and inclusion business - and it is indeed business, big business, one that makes some of its priests quite wealthy.”
“such as those of Ibram Kendi, who sees any racial disparity as ipso facto proof of racism”
“But this is the very worst kind of media bias, which is the bias that stems from pretending that you aren’t making a political point when you very much are.”
“The fact that DEI efforts are run from within institutional power itself should make us skeptical of their ability to actually achieve meaningful reform”
Taken together this all covers my explanation for the left-based woke phenomenon. I also covers the theory of anthropogenic global warming which I put in the same woke basket.
First consider that almost everyone wants more… more status, more money, more likes, more followers, more love, more,,, just fill in the blanks. Wanting more is baked-in human psychology that is both our blessing and curse. Without it and the corresponding outcome of human advancement and progress we would become extinct. However, it also results in bloody conflicts that also threaten extinction.
Al Gore is a multi-millionaire never having produced much of anything of value except global warming fear porn.
Ibram Kendi, although his reputation has been justifiably shattered by evidence of fake scholarship and plagiarism, also has made millions doing the same in the race ideology space.
The professional activism space is an industry where people can get more. It primarily serves the over-educated, upper class, coastal liberal elite… the type that would never think about a career as a welder or auto mechanic… or even an engineer… careers where tangible things are invented, made, built, grown and fixed. They also flock to government and media roles. Many of them are lawyers.
These woke topics have been woven into sub-ideologies: gender ideology, race ideology, climate ideology, America-hating ideology, etc., and their purpose is to create a money and power making sandbox for these otherwise unemployed upper-class elites.
They are aided and abetted by the Wall Street controlled corporatists, the managerial class if you will, because they also skim from money and power making capability of these ideological trends.
Wall Street bets on trends. If it can have a hand at controlling the trends, then it increases the odds that their bets pay off. Today they have a lot of control over trends.
The pandemic trend was to demand everyone get the “vaccines” from Big Pharma that later required the CDC to redefine the term “vaccine” because those mRNA novel drugs failed to prevent repeated infection.
The global warming ideology is also pushing market trends that Wall Street is betting on.
Democrat party power, the same as political establishment power, is the key to protection of the money and power-making sand box.
This is the full answer I think. Trump threatened this money and power-making sandbox in a number of ways. One is that the black underclass was waking up to the reality of decades of failed liberal and establishment policies that decimated their paths to post civil rights middle-class economic opportunity. With blacks jumping ship from the Democrat party the power game would be over. Thankfully for this Democrat looting cabal, race ideology pushed through their corporatist media control including the sensationalist George Floyd movement, got the black voters back on the voting plantation. And then the fortuitist Dodd decision to rev up female voter rage.
The woke platform is both a market and political strategy that supports a power and money-making enterprise. The Times reporting is in that pocket. Four mega Wall Street asset management companies together own a controlling interest in 80% of the media and big tech. The writing pools are infested with the children of over-educated, upper-class coastal elites. They are all in it together for the same reasons.
Part of this mess is attributable to the consequences of losing our industrial and manufacturing base, and importing so much immigrant labor to do the work “that Americans won’t do”. So then, what do all these high-educated more sophisticated people do to satiate their need for appropriate positions on the human status hierarchy? They leverage the new information economy to create their own paths to power and money. They create ideologies and then push them in the education system and media as popular trends… then they farm money and power-making opportunities from those trends.
They are the new capitalists.
Woke is a capitalist game… a virtual one… and a destructive one... or at least one that does not produce anything of real value.
Discussions of liberal media bias misses the larger point. These people don’t care about really any political orientation other than what provides them the easiest path to more... more power and money.
You are far too kind to the NYT. They have never been averse to outright lying when it serves their interests, whether by omission or commission. The truth has not always made it past the barriers to rest in the land of the “fit to print.”
The phrase "Gell-Man Amnesia" exists to point to just this!
The DEI business now so entrenched in our institutions and big business won't do squat to solve very real problems affecting vulnerable constituencies...folks who live with concentrated poverty, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, and lack of good employment prospects.
It was/has never been designed to help anything. It's goal is the opposite.
well, that might mean going after city councillors and state senators and Presidents with well-maintained reputations
Saw a great interview of Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King's speech writer, who confirmed that Dr. King if alive today would be completely mortified by and in opposition to DEI.
DEI is a tool of the neoracists. It is a more sophisticated tool to identify people by race and treat them differently... the same behavior we noted in Democrats before Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act.
It serves two purposes for the over-educated, upper-class coastal and big city leftist elites. One - it is a luxury belief that allows them to signal virtue and to farm power and money-making opportunity. Two - it continues to keep minorities like blacks on the plantation of underclass so there is less competition for money and status pursuits of the coastal and big city elites.
One thing I find interesting is that NYT coverage of DEI has not always been positive. Take "‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work?", which describes at least one racist "anti-racism" training, where a "hallmark of whiteness" is "scientific, linear thinking." See here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/magazine/white-fragility-robin-diangelo.html
Make of that what you will.
DEI is clearly being used to further divide and conquer and further the oligarchy.
And Freddie, why do you assume that right wing attacks on DEI are in bad faith?
I assume that the used car dealers who make up much of the state GOP apparati are mostly bad faith, yes.
You get that I'm a leftist, right?
There are vanishingly few politicians in good faith of any stripe in any national office. The methods required to get there and stay there tend to actively destroy good faith.
Assuming one's ideological opponents are only acting in bad faith limits one's own understanding, and aids the divide and conquer goals of the oligarchy.
I assume all politicians are scum, but many did enter politics in good faith. Most just want to further their career.
Assuming bad faith is a weak cop-out to avoid considering whether one's ideological opponents have valid positions.
And what about being a 'leftist' is any different than being a part of the used car salesman apparati?
now, now, some of them are car THIEVES, like Darrell Issa
You might have been a leftist earlier on, but I get the sense that we are going through a political realignment right now. Thus the old categories of what is "right" and "left" are falling apart. I think this explains the rise of heterodoxy in political beliefs. I think it is a good time for all of us to reevaluate the political landscape.
I used to identify as left. On the one hand, I believed and still believe in a mixed economy that tilts heavily to the socialist end of the spectrum, with a strong view that companies should be owned in the form of co-ops of the employees. Throw in a heavy dose of single payer healthcare, and a meaningful right to housing.
On the other hand, I believe in the strongest possible way in every individual's mental and bodily autonomy. That is, everyone has the right to reproductive freedom (including abortions at any stage of pregnancy) in the name of bodily autonomy. Mental autonomy means near absolute freedom of speech, expression, conscience, and religion. But the left as it is currently constituted, has almost entirely abandoned these. Free speech is now supposedly "right wing" now as the left, as it is currently constituted, as gone mostly all in on DEI groupthink monoculture. Count me out on that. I'll never compromise on speech or abortion rights.
This means I can neither be part of the left or the right as they are currently constituted. I suspect, that you and most of the readers here, are actually in the same boat. I also suspect that this is why there is a realignment taking place. Right and left, again as currently constituted, have become ossified into ideologies that are too rigid for any but the true believers to follow. The vast majority of people are not true believers.
In the end, 'left' and 'right' are just labels. I encourage everyone to reconsider their value.
Your final point is the one I don’t understand - why isn’t anything emerging to tackle the “just the facts” space? The truth, wherever it leads? I’d subscribe. Without question.
It appears that it’s guys like me that kind of wrecked the media. I used to subscribe to way more papers and magazines than I could realistically read - at any time I’d be getting some subset of the NYT, the WSJ, one or two local papers, the Atlantic, the Economist, plus at least one or two more exciting and weird political magazines, plus Spin or something. I’ve still got my WSJ subscription, but other than that I only pay for subscriptions on Substack. And it’s because of what you’re talking about. It’s clear that I can’t trust these publications, even if some of the writers are still straight - how do I know who, and when? - so why bother. But if something new and principled emerged I’d be on it in a heartbeat.
There are a couple of startups trying to corner the "fair and impartial" segment: NewsNation and The Messenger.
I’ll check em out. They’re actual newspapers?
Online news sites and cable networks.
It's because the subfloor of 'truth' is now the idea that (to put postmodern literary theory in a vulgar form) as truth is expressed only in human language, there is no truth, only social constructs and systems of oppression. It's relativism degree zero. The hoi polloi don't 'know' or 'believe' this explicitly, but it's seeped down corrosively from corners of academia for decades, now. The masses internalize it implicitly into its most cynical form. The nefarious weaponize it.
Freddie, I hope you noticed that on the same day, the Times editorial board bashed the left as well as right for restricting free speech on campus. At a ratio of about 3:1, but still.
Thank you for making clear the difference between liberal bias and left-wing bias. And also for affirming the value of the NYT's fact-finding mission. Even Noam Chomsky says that the NYT prints a lot of useful, important facts. It's what they leave out that is important. I would also say it's less "liberal" bias and more institutional, mainstream bias that is the issue. I made this same critique of NPR's news coverage for Current Affairs: https://weirdcatastrophe.substack.com/p/npr-is-not-your-friend-redux
And some NPR fans just couldn't get past their idea of NPR's supposed "balance" as being a sign of true fairness and objectivity instead of what it really is, a cover for mainstream apologetics.
My problem with the critique of the "View From Nowhere" is that it is guilty of an either/or fallacy: either you're perfectly objective or you're biased, and since you can't be perfectly objective, you might as well embrace being biased.
But this doesn't make any sense. Bias is not an either/or thing; it has many gradations. And unless you think there is some virtue in lying, I don't see why you wouldn't aspire to be less biased. Why make the perfect be the enemy of the good?
Agreed. One should strive for objectivity in journalism. At the same time, every journalist must understand their biases which prevent them from being fully objective. By understanding and accounting for these biases, journalists get closer to objectivity.
Not as pithy as "view from nowhere," but a hell of a lot more accurate.
Absolutely right. And this used to be such a basic tenet of journalism that our high school journalism teacher harped on it every year, although she described it more in terms of our culture or our experience rather than as a bias which has a more negative connotation. And journalists should be aware of their blind spots—knowing what they don’t know.
Objectivity, in the true sense of that word, was never the problem. The problem was a refusal to hold anyone to account for what they say, ever. "These guys say this, but those guys say that." It allowed the spinners on issues to simply never have to engage with the arguments of their opposition, and the "objective" reporting allowed them to get away with it. At the very least, it's the job of journalism to bring the actual arguments being made by various sides into contact with each other, and they were miserably failing to do so.
Agreed. But the “cure” seems to be no better
As I see it, the cure is considerably worse, but I wanted to point out that the problem with objectivity is not with the notion of objectivity in some poisoned postmodernist perspective. There is a difference between the common meaning of the word "objective" and what people mean by "objective" journalism. Objective journalism distorted the world of discourse in a particular pattern. Becoming "more objective" or "perfectly objective" in the journalism sense was a bad thing, because it meant pretending everything had equal weight and strictly refusing to evaluate anything.
"At the very least, it's the job of journalism to bring the actual arguments being made by various sides into contact with each other..."
I think that's the job of opinion journalism, editors pages, and public intellectuals, not straight journalists.
True; simple reporting should indeed hew as closely to the facts as possible. I still don't like recapitulation of both sides' positions, but it's probably the only thing straight reporting should be doing, and only within the context of presenting a thing that has occurred (i.e., where the actual statements were made by the groups in question).