Discussion > Scottish Referendum : Climate Parallels in News Media coverage
BTW Tribal thinking and false dichotomy : in a vote which is split almost 50/50 how can "winner takes all" be a good end ?
..surely like in family some kind of compromise is the best solution ..que no ?
.. you can't go on into the future with 50% of the people feeling oppressed. But political games meant the question was phrased as "one extreme or the other"
They didn't offer the compromise option of De-volution Max, but not full dissolution
The climate parallelis that "winners" want everything their way ..yet expect other half to share the expense and giving up freedoms.
stewgreen
What all issues need is a source of unbiased and comprehensive source of information and the media does a poor job of this. It can only present a much simplified and largely polarised view. To get a hint at an even picture you have to read both sides and make your own guess where the middle is. Politicians aren’t any better and are pathetically poor at debate these days. They rely on the tactic of denying everything the other side has to say, which looks neither honest nor informed. It’s better to admit that there is a problem and talk about possible solutions than pretend everything’s ok. Sceptics beware.
The other side that is poorly recognised is human nature. People lie about good intentions, they even lie to themselves. They confuse issues and can seem to act inconsistently because they don’t link one issue to another. They often fail to apply rules they approve for others, to themselves. Thus you can have someone cheering wind power and oil revenue in the same speech.
In a lesson for UKIP, to get a successful vote to leave Europe you have to first be honest about the advantages and disadvantages of going it alone and generate realistic solutions or cost equations for the hazards. They should not generate a similar cry of ‘freedom!’ from the oppressive yoke of all EU regulations and at the same time appearing to reject our neighbours personally. They should instead set out the case for simply scrapping those rules (and our own misapplication of them) that cause the friction and explain that sadly only departure can see those rules removed.
TinyCO2
My premise has always been that the UK NewsMedia is just infotainment : It's nowhere near TRUTH let alone proper context and perspective ..it just pushes fantasy views of the universe.
- I note the FT 2 days ago the FT pointed out the descrepancy and that the bookies had already decided No had won
- Despite the media spinning the story as exciting cos it was "neck and neck" , one bookie was so confident that No would win they had already started paying out BEFORE the polls opened !
- So what odds are the bookies offering on Climate Change catastrophe predictions compared to the hyperbole the DramaGreens get the media push ?
stewgreen
@TinyCO2
They rely on the tactic of denying everything the other side has to say, which looks neither honest nor informed. It’s better to admit that there is a problem and talk about possible solutions than pretend everything’s ok.No Tiny you have it the wrong way round : Instead of going with the evidence and saying "The climate is changing ie varying pretty much normally, there is no sign of catastrophe on the horizon" They push panic where there is no evidence, and say "I am the man with the solutions" when no solution is actually needed. I can only suppose that this is a policy of appeasing liberal/left voters and take advantage of their fears instead of being truthful and putting their fears in perspective.
stewgreen
The 'problems' for the consensus side are the inconvenient data. They need to be honest where proof stops and fear generated theory begins. Take the re-animation of Marcott's hockey stick as highlighted at WUWT. Which is worse, admitting that current temperatures are unexceptional but supposedly unexpected or be caught pretending current temeratures are off the charts? As the saying goes 'oh what a tangled web you weave...'
TinyCO2
If Climate catastrophe is so certain then why can't I find bookies who'll take bets against it
but Joe Romm is certain he will be collecting his winnings in 2020 from It is very safe to say the Arctic Sea will be essentially ice free by 2030, and I’d personally bet on 2020 — any takers?
oh a similar bet is on the spreadbetting tool longbets.org but "Voting has been temporarily disabled." surprise surprise
- another bet “2007 will be the historical peak year for US energy-related CO2 emissions.” due to "rising availability of cost-effective, lower carbon energy sources" Voting has been temporarily disabled." aswell
stewgreen
on longbets.org the only useful one I can find is for 2025 but even then the warmist won't bet on the actual warmist prediction of 0.3C
He states "Choosing a prediction that is halfway between the consensus and the denialist viewpoints, I predict that temperatures will increase by at least .15 degrees Celsius from 2005 to 2025."
and what William Connolley will be spending his sea ice projection bet winnings on in 2016 ?
..he is on track to win isn’t he ? ha ha
stewgreen
Betting organisations bet on sure things. Climate science is suitably raw to put them off. They're not dumb enough to accept consensus as proof. However they can be over cautious. I seem to remember some story about a guy getting very poor odds on alien invasion. Whose to say that they're not sceptics anyway?
Only bloggers and climate scientists realise what every month without significant warming means.
TinyCO2
stewgreen
BTW Tribal thinking and false dichotomy : in a vote which is split almost 50/50 how can "winner takes all" be a good end ?
It's an interesting point which isn't obvious from the percentage figures, the actual numbers were
No 2,001,926
Yes 1,617,989
Majority 383,937
So if 191,969 people (ironically slightly more than the population of Dundee) had voted Yes rather than No then we'd be looking at a very different problem. If politicians fail to deliver on the promises of the last few weeks then interesting times lie ahead.
Also it only came in the last week or so of BBC reporting that in 4 out of the last 5 years oil revenues have exceeded what Scotland received from the Treasury. This doesn't include any other taxes raised in Scotland or on products produced in rural Scotland (Whisky). A particular irritant for me in pre-Lawson days was mortgage tax relief which massively favoured the home counties.
All this does have parallels with CCC and renewables where only a third of the story is told, and the opposition, sceptics in this case, see unable to answer effectively. When the power cuts and cold winter arrive together, pray the Icelandic volcano stays quiet, the poliiticians will again promise all sorts of solutions which they know they can't deliver. Just like the problems Cameron ran into yesterday with regard to constitutional change.
Seems to me both the Union and Energy won't give Westminster a second chance.
BTW just to lay my cards on the table, I was ineligible last week but I voted Yes in the referendum of 1979. This time as an expat in the EU, NO was probably a good short term result.
SandyS
One of the things I find missing from all poltical debate is facts and figures. What do all those researchers do for their money?
TinyCO2
TinyCO2
Very much agree with you, get all this Isn't Is so but no actual verifiable data.
SandyS
Climate Parallels from how UK DEEPLY FLAWED News Media covered the Scottish Referendum
1. Ditched COMPLEX TRUTH in favour of a more exciting SIMPLISTIC NARRATIVE..it's "neck and neck",
2. SPIN chosen narrative with CONFIRMATION BIAS.."A survey says"
3. Follow the pack
4. BANG ON & ON with your narrative, distorting the perspective by ignoring bigger issues (like that in the end the result proved that you called it wrong)
5. Never admit you are wrong
(6. reinforce from feeling of "white man's guilt")
(False Dichotomy : "it has to be full independence or status quo" )
(Complexity Denial : "Argyll voted to remain with Britain"..actually Argyll is not one unit merely that when given a choice between only 2 options 60% picked one choice and 40% picked the other)
TODAY - The blinding obvious big news is that deeply flawed UK Main Stream NewsMedia got the narrative massively wrong.
- They incessantly went on for the last week it's "neck and neck", yet the actual result has proved completely different.
And today Radio4/5 are banging on and on without a mention of how wrong they called it. Far from being neck & neck, they weren't just 1 or 2% wrong.
The result was 55.3% No, 44.7% Yes; that's more than 10% margin i.e. the margin of the swing would have had to have been more than 5.3% for the No vote to be the winner. The News medias narrative was massively out.
Actually 10 days ago on Radio 4 the maths show called More Or Less pointed out IOW "But these opinion polls are intrinsically flawed as they are all internet polls, so don't reflect the true electorate, rather they are a self selecting sample who use the internet, when actually many people never use the net"
- The NewsMedia were easily able to use other polling methods, but chose rather to go with repeating poll results that confirmed their narrative ..that's confirmation bias
Other fallacies : FALSE ANALOGY
one sub-story they report "The turnout is truly massive, way better than a normal election, a true example of democracy"
..What rubbish ..in this referendum one vote could have made a difference, whereas in a normal election most people know in reality it makes no difference to the result if one person stays at home.