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Weather Channel To Breitbart: Stop Citing Us To Spread Climate Skepticism (weather.com)
Breitbart.com published an article last week that erroneously claims global warming is coming to an end, claiming "global land temperatures have plummeted by 1 degree Celsius since the middle of the year -- the biggest and steepest fall on record." The Weather Channel finds this report especially upsetting as it's not only inaccurate but it features a video from weather.com at the top of the article. The Weather Channel reports: Breitbart had the legal right to use this clip as part of a content-sharing agreement with another company, but there should be no assumption that The Weather Company endorses the article associated with it. The Breitbart article -- a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case -- includes this statement: "The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare." In fact, thousands of researchers and scientific societies are in agreement that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are warming the planet's climate and will keep doing so. Along with its presence on the high-profile Breitbart site, the article drew even more attention after a link to it was retweeted by the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The Breitbart article heavily references a piece that first appeared on U.K. Daily Mail's site. The Weather Channel went on to refute the Breitbart article's hypothesis: This number comes from one satellite-based estimate of temperatures above land areas in the lower atmosphere. Data from the other two groups that regularly publish satellite-based temperature estimates show smaller drops, more typical of the decline one would expect after a strong El Nino event. Temperatures over land give an incomplete picture of global-scale temperature. Most of the planet -- about 70 percent -- is covered by water, and the land surface warms and cools more quickly than the ocean. Land-plus-ocean data from the other two satellite groups, released after the Breitbart article, show that Earth's lower atmosphere actually set a record high in November 2016.
It's getting close to the point that the schadenfreude of seeing morons get their due makes up for the fact that we all will be screwed.
So by all means lets call climate change a hoax. When the inevitable calamities fall, I suspect the deplorables and Breitbart readers will be disproportionately affected and not only will I not shed a tear but I will kick dirt in their faces.
then our democracy truly is dead. We aren't there yet. I still have hope, but any government that relies on propaganda to gain and hold power is the opposite of a democracy, and that is the road we are traveling toward.
There are no excuses. Neither candidate or party was that impressive, but one was and clearly is so much worse. No elected representative should ever excuse a single blatant lie just to keep their political capital, let alone the nonsense that is beginning now. We are living in a time when post truth is the word of the year, and not without reason.
Demand honesty from our politicians. Demand it from our news sources and anything that presents itself as legitimate news. If we have any hope of building a more perfect union, then we have to move past and ever be on guard for lies and deception, and never make excuses for them. We may never get a 100% honest candidate. Sadly I don't think one would make it in politics, but we can at least value that highly and penalize those severely who really do continually violate the public trust.
You underestimate the power of the Alt+Right. It can undo presses of the Back button in your web browser. If you end up on a Dimbart article, and you click the Back button to escape what you see as reactionary bullcrap, pressing Alt+Right will bring it right back.
Skepticism is doubt.
Unqualified disbelief is just another kind of orthodoxy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's getting close to the point that the schadenfreude of seeing morons get their due makes up for the fact that we all will be screwed.
So by all means lets call climate change a hoax. When the inevitable calamities fall, I suspect the deplorables and Breitbart readers will be disproportionately affected and not only will I not shed a tear but I will kick dirt in their faces.
Ok, so which is more important: everyone in the country slipping into poverty and terrorist attacks from immigrants next year, or...
Global warming, only [our] part of which can fixed by us, is driven by political corruption, and won't affect us for a couple of decades?
Of these issues, political corruption is the biggest impediment to rational climate change action. Getting rid of that has to come first, and only then can we expect to make progress on the other issues.
Do you think anything would get done under a Clinton administration?
We knew Trump had shortcomings, and still elected him - warts and all. We did it because he promised to fix certain issues that we felt were more important in the near term. Global warming will kill us, but, mass poverty will kill us sooner.
I'm completely happy taking steps to curb global warming, but a) I want to be safe doing it, and b) I want to eat first.
Get some perspective. Not everything Trump is going to do will be bad, and you always have 2024 to look forward to.
We've just seen the hottest November on satellite record. http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...
You believe those leftard satellites and liberal thermometers? kek.
There is no real evidence for the laws of physics, just conjecture by Soros-funded so-called "scientists". It's all an SJW marxist plot, and the brave journalists at Breitbart have confirmed this, but of course, you don't want to see the truth because it doesn't fit your fact-based agenda.
You are welcome on my lawn.
if you're not able to tell the difference? Sure, maybe 20 million could and didn't care. But I'd say there's at least 40 million who couldn't...
It's more or less the same thing as anything else computer related. Assume anything you read is a lie until proven otherwise. Check the pedigree of any web site you visit. Is the name really spelled correctly? Are you connecting via https as expected? Do not automatically assume just because it is on or linked from some site you visit that it is correct. Check the little i on your address bar to see what the web site is, look for misspellings, etc.
If you think a story is from a popular web site, but can't tell for sure, then you can always clear your cache and then reload your browser and go directly to the correct site. (Personally, I'd recommend not starting your news search at Facebook and all the rest, but that is another matter.)
Also, if you haven't already point your router to some legit DNS servers. Do not assume your ISP is providing your valid results. I personally use opendns servers, with google's as backup. It is debatable if I should leave google as the fallback, though it should I think only hit them if opendns fails to respond.
In fact, a DNS server that does some basic filtering is the first line of defense against a lot of crap, though I doubt it would help much here. Still, it is something. Adding ublock probably doesn't hurt either. A compromised system is liable to show anything fake as real. I suppose you could also make it a point to say reimage with an updated linux distro and keep it updated at least once a year, and of course occasionally change passwords of personal systems. Yearly wouldn't hurt, though i'm doubting much is really compromised that way.
Beyond all that, people need to double check any suspect or suspicious results. Google will generally tell you pretty quickly if it is a scam. Search for the topic plus scam or fake as a keyword and 24 hours or something like that. Of course you also have to be wary about fake sites saying real news is a scam, so always check the sources. One thing to be especially wary of is well established narratives. A lie is easier to believe if you can link it to a pattern of other similar things, but in today's world it is possible that pattern was made up of a string of false stories, with one lie building on the previous. Oddly enough wikipedia usually seems to be relatively neutral, eventually, though you may see wild edits on some things before an article is locked down. Check the revision history. If the article suddenly changed tone, well I think you can look at the author's other edits.
Look for the reason behind the likely lies. Sometimes it is not entirely obvious. There was probably enough fake news generated this election to shift the election for no other reason that to harvest the click money. Of course much of it had darker reasons, and some of it was brought attention to for darker purposes. As you might have read in a story like Naruto, Learn to look underneath the underneath. If you see a story that politician x is responsible for running a child slaver ring, well, unless you see it on a legit site complete with the police in pursuit, then suspect it is bs. Also, think things through. Is politician X stupid? Is he or she basically competent and intelligent? If so, why exactly would they be doing something so guaranteed to destroy their whole career? Occasionally Anthony Weiner's do happen, but it is certainly the kind of thing you want to double check.
Look for evidence of editing. Is a clip suspiciously short? Can you find the full length version? Was their context missing? Does the source have a reputation for editing things deceptively? Is the source credible at all? What other kinds of stories has the source been responsible in the past? It sholdn't be hard to check.
Actually even if you can't find a way to disprove a current story right away, you can often find reason to doubt
And here again we see the goddamn problem. You're presented with a fair argument, outlined in easy-to-reply-to numbers, and your only response is "bu-bu-but Hillary lol."
Conservatives used to make serious arguments, sometimes reasonable, sometimes specious. Not anymore. What the fuck happened? Decades of right-wing radio and Fox News? Trump's magical promises to make literally everything better without ever explaining how? An addiction to #pizzagate-style conspiracy-mongering? Come on.
Here's the problem with that situation: If you're so fed up with political corruption, why the fuck are you defending the very people who are perpetuating the problem?
I do not defend or support Hillary Clinton in any way!
I really don't get it, to be honest. Your parent is right - Trump is EXACTLY the kind of person you claim he's supposed to deal with. Let me help you understand; we're going to 'trumpify' Hillary Clinton. She:
* puts NYT's head reporter on her cabinet team because he relentlessly supported her throughtout her campaign (which they didn't really btw, they had plenty of critical articles, and when they did it was largely based on facts and policy details, not publishing blatant lies)
* puts a guy convicted of selling state secrets to a hooker in a national security position
* built a luxury estate and then refused to pay the people who built it
* is completely dependent on Russian banks to not revoke her credit, actively serves them, and caves in on policy decisions to wealthy people
* refuses to release any tax returns or details on her finances
Honestly, I'm just getting started. Can you seriously compare Trump and Clinton, and then tell me that he's the model who's going to clear corruption? I'd argue he's faaaaar more corrupt than she is, because unlike her, he is completely dependent on the establishment for power - the instant he crosses the line, they can simply impeach him and replace him with Pence. And if Pence isn't the image of an establishment Republican, I think you're not really anti-establishment, but anti-democrat. Which makes you partisian, and that isn't really a necessarily a bad thing (even though I disagree with that philosophy), but don't even pretend that you want an outsider if that's the case.
And seriously, the whole Hillary thing has got to go. She's gone, you need to get over it, and deal with our current presidential canidate, the one with with blantant ties to the mafia. Do you honestly expect a man dependent on Putin, the mafia, and the existing establishment, to prevent any new form of corruption, let alone actually clear the existing situation out?
The one shining light in all this hell is Mrs. Ivanka, who actually seems to be pretty resonable and agrees with climate change, but we'll see how long that lasts.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Years ago, I came here for insightful and informative exchange of arguments on a topic.Not that long ago, it was for witty and cynical but still topic commentary.
Today, all I come for is to watch the entertaining, ballistic mud slinging of Trump supporters and opponents. Independent of topic. But climate change themes sure add another layer of vitriol to it.
In movie terms, I came for the documentaries, stayed for the mocumentaries and now I'm here for the Michael Bay popcorn flick. I used to care about the story, but today, all I watch are the explosions, whether there is a script anymore or not isn't important, I'm just here to watch the pretty pictures and don't give a shit about the content anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Electors not following the voters' will would set a very ugly precedent. Or, did this happen before? Was a winning president ever rejected by electors?
Not following the voters' will is the entire purpose of the electoral college. They have disagreed with the popular vote five times in history. The last time was this last time. Before that, the last time gave us a Dubya presidency. Tell us again what the EC should do, please.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Guess what though... change is inevitable.. all things change both physical and societal. Entropy always increases, and entropy is change.
Silence is a state of mime.
they assume that the only thing that matters is winning
This is, unfortunately, an inherent trait in humans.
There was, many years ago, a "competition" in Scientific American to win up to $1M
The rules were:
1. Random draw from all the entries received
2. You could enter as many times as you liked - to make this easier you could write multiple entries on a single postcard. (write the number of entries you wanted to submit on your postcard)
3. Final prize was $1M divided by the total number of entries.
It was estimated that there was in the order of 10K readers of the column. (Actually I think it was less than this but I can't be bothered to try and track down the columns again now) There had also been a detailed discussion of the prisoners dilemma and other related problems in the previous weeks.
It's immediately obvious that to win $1M you need to be the only entrant and send in a postcard with a single entry on it.
If every subscriber sent in a single postcard with a single entry on it then someone would win of the order of $100.
But some people sent in huge numbers - the postcard filled with '9's. Others went one better and put a 9 and then filled the postcard with '!'s (factorial). Others went even further.
IIRC the author (Douglas Hofstadter) wasn't actually able to determine who the winner was. He lacked the ability to randomly select from the total number of entries. He couldn't even tell which of the numbers was actually the largest.
However, whoever won, the number of entries was so large that the prize was zero for all intents and purposes.
Some people got it - some wrote in to say that they hadn't submitted an entry because they had metaphorically "tossed a coin" and lost and so allowed someone else to win a bigger prize. But so many people were more interested in winning nothing than someone winning something.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
And here again we see the goddamn problem. You're presented with a fair argument, outlined in easy-to-reply-to numbers, and your only response is "bu-bu-but Hillary lol."
That's a human thing, not a conservative thing. Ask almost anybody about the horrible thing that $PERSON_THEY_SUPPORT did, and the answer is almost ALWAYS going to be, "but $OTHER_GUY did the same thing!" Ask them about something they personally did, and they'll complain about something you did. It comes down to education (or lack thereof) and emotion--most people cannot think critically anymore, have no desire to do so, and allow their emotions to rule their arguments.
Conservatives used to make serious arguments, sometimes reasonable, sometimes specious. Not anymore. What the fuck happened?
Again, same problem on both sides. The arguments on the conservative side are largely devolving into conspiracy theories, while the arguments on the liberal side these days largely consist of repeating the words "you racist, misogynist, fuck!" over and over.
I'm not being entirely fair--there are quite a few people on both sides that still make really good arguments. But their numbers are relatively small, and their signal is being lost in the sea of noise. The conservative thinkers appear to be letting this go because their side is (currently) "winning." The liberal thinkers appear to be letting this go because if they open their mouths, they'll be ripped apart by the shrieking hordes of SJWs.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?