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Sunday, October 21, 2018

Making Sense of Climate Science Denial

Skepticism is healthy. Denialism is not.

Climate Change Denial (3 minute)
https://youtu.be/BS3-ByfoRSI

Psychological Barriers to Concern About Climate Change (7 minutes):
https://youtu.be/b3mxyFGjelA

Reclaiming Populism from Plutocrats (Like 'He Who Shall Remain Nameless')

"....It’s necessary to restate the history of populism and reassert its true spirit because both are being subverted today by corporate manipulators and a careless media establishment. To these debasers of the language, any politico (think Donald Trump or Sarah Palin) or pundit (such as Rush Limbaugh) who taps into any popular anger (toward Obama, liberals, Muslims, the IRS, poor people, unions, gays, immigrants, Hollywood, community organizers, environmentalists, etc.) gets a peel-off populist label slapped on–even when their “populist” pose operates as a front for one or another corporate interest. That’s not populism; it’s rank hucksterism—plutocracy in disguise...."

https://hightowerlowdown.org/about/people-revolting-brief-introduction-populism/

Short Greenhouse Effect Videos

“The 'Greenhouse Effect' discovered in 1824 by Joseph Fourier is what keeps the earth from being a frozen ball in space. Without greenhouse gases (GHG's) the temperature of earth would be below freezing and incapable of supporting life as we know it. It is precisely because GHG's other than water are such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that adding a little more can have a large effect on the climate system of earth.”
A Climate Minute - The Greenhouse Effect (2 minutes):
https://youtu.be/Hi3ERes0h84

Climate Change Is Boring- (5 minutes):
https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8

How Global Warming Works:
Variety of short clips-
http://www.howglobalwarmingworks.org/400-words.html

Variety of my postings on the subject of greenhouse effect:
https://samslair.blogspot.com/search?q=Greenhouse+effect&m=1

Major Greenhouse Gases Levels Rising

Nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide are the major gases that enhance the greenhouse effect by capturing reradiated infrared radiation from the Earth's surface and subsequently warming the troposphere (lower atmosphere). Atmospheric levels of all three have been growing due to human activities. Once released, they remain as greenhouse gases in the biosphere for very long periods of time.

http://climatechange.lta.org/wp-content/uploads/cct/2015/02/GHGases.jpg

http://climatechange.lta.org/get-started/learn/co2-methane-greenhouse-effect/

Defining Neutrality

"First, let’s define neutrality.
Here’s the basic idea: if you’re neutral, you don’t take a position. You present all sides fairly and let your reader decide which is correct.
A disputed topic is treated neutrally if each viewpoint about it is not asserted but rather presented as sympathetically as possible, bearing in mind that other, competing views must be represented as well, and with an equitable amount of space being allotted to each, whatever that might be.
On this account, neutrality is a concept dealing specifically with disputed topics, and it has three basic requirements.
First, if an issue that is mentioned in the text is disputed, the text takes no position on the issue. Neutrality is not some midpoint in between competing options. A political moderate’s positions are not “the neutral positions”: they are positions as well. Neutral writing takes no position, left, right, or middle.
Second, there’s the requirement of tone, or the strength of the case made for a viewpoint. Basically, if you’re going to be neutral, you have to represent all the main views about the topic, and you have to represent them all sympathetically, i.e., according to their best, most convincing arguments, evidence, and representatives.
Third, there’s the question of how much space it is fair or equitable to spend in a text on the different sides. Prima facie, it would seem that spending a numerically equal amount of space on both (or all) sides is fair, but it doesn’t always work out that way. 
Basically, to write neutrally is to lay out all sides of any disputed question, without asserting, implying, or insinuating that any one side is correct. If a debated point is mentioned, you represent the state of the debate rather than taking a stand.....”

https://ballotpedia.org/Why_Neutrality%3F

Ballotpedia: Nonpartisan Online Political Encyclopedia


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  • The Daily Brew: Perhaps the best part of waking up, this short morning email, sent each weekday, gives a quick update on the main political stories of the day—a perfect way to start your day off in the know.
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  • Heart of the Primaries: Launched on January 15, Heart of the Primaries takes you to the frontlines of primary battles. Witness intraparty conflict as Democrats and Republicans compete to make it onto the general election ballot. We're offering two versions: one for Democratic primaries and one for Republican primaries. Subscribe to one or the other—or both!
  • The Tap: What’s on tap in politics this week? Our two newsletters will let you know! Arriving in your inbox on Saturday mornings, The Tap has so much information to give you that we broke it up into two newsletters: The Federal Tap and The State and Local Tap.
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Infotainment vs Journalism: News Media For Public Entertainment

Propaganda- information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infotainment

When hard news goes soft, entertainment takes over.
http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatever-happened-news

The first that I ever heard the term yellow journalism was in the fifth grade when it was mentioned in our American History book as a trigger for the Spanish American War.  
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

When I taught high school Language Arts, I collected the National Enquirer copies that my mother was finished with [Yes, she also enjoyed conservative talk radio. But even so, she was pragmatic enough and enough of a horticulturist and nature lover to see that climate change was increasing despite what other conservatives said.] When I had enough so that each student had a copy to peruse, I challenged them to find five things that were solid truths and five things that were flagrant lies. The lies were easy to spot, but the available truths were harder to find because they were so minor and were generally used as a backdrop for the sensationalisms being foisted upon the reader. 
https://samslair.blogspot.com/2017/01/fake-news-new-species-hotheaded-mole.html?m=0

If It Weren’t For Bad News....

...there’d be no news at all.

Most of the news media seems to be stuck in a negative feedback loop. Though it is extremely useful and beneficial when handled properly and impartially as in the way that negative feedback steers a self guided torpedo to its target, it is largely detrimental when the information itself emphasizes material designed for its emotional reactivity and is too light on meaningful and accurate information. The worst abuses come from ‘shock jock entertainers’ like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, though Noam Chomsky and Steven Bannon are also perpetrators with an agenda.

Note: Supposedly smart people who protest ‘stupidity’ too loudly are all too often deliberately ignorant of the big picture because of preconceived notions. So, when they go on-and-on, I think they “doth protest too much”. They’re actually ‘projecting’.

Supplemental reading:
https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2017/02/giving-feedback/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection