{"id":261,"date":"2014-08-31T21:38:36","date_gmt":"2014-08-31T21:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/?p=261"},"modified":"2014-09-21T15:15:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T15:15:04","slug":"disinformation-at-its-finest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/2014\/08\/31\/disinformation-at-its-finest\/","title":{"rendered":"Disinformation at its finest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merchants of Doubt paints a bleak picture of the state of affairs, from climate change to general rampant miss information. \u00a0In regards to climate change it almost seems that Climate Change has never had a time to shine. \u00a0In 1965 Roger Revelle made a prediction that by the year 2000, we would see physical changes in temperature due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. \u00a0Lyndon Johnson took the report to congress where it was essentially swept under the rug. \u00a0Oreskes and conway explain that it was because of timing, there were more pressing concerns. \u00a0It is clear that until very recent years there has been a generally downward spiral in the state of the world climate. \u00a0In fact environmental issues as a whole always seem to fall low on the “pressing” scale. \u00a0It would seem that because many environmental issues are “it will get bad in the future” kind of issues that they rarely seem to be dealt with “now”. \u00a0Governmental policies, historically have not seemed to address and project what unchecked issues could potentially have in the future. \u00a0Only recently when the current state of the environment<\/a> has become blatantly\u00a0apparent have there been more active movements towards preventing future issues.<\/p>\n

Apart from the obvious issues presented in Merchants of Doubt, there seems to be one issues that contributes to the others. \u00a0The issue of the modern age of communication. \u00a0As expressed in the conclusion the right to freedom of the press is a double-edged sword. \u00a0As they say everyone has an opinion, and with the advent of the internet, now you can share yours with everyone: “Opinions sometimes express ill-informed beliefs, not reliable knowledge.” \u00a0Whats worse is that scientific fact has become harder for people to believe. \u00a0By its nature the scientific process is designed to be proven wrong, and change. \u00a0experiments are done, data is recorded and a consensus is met, yet with additional research that consensus can change easily and dramatically. \u00a0Internet opinion, is organic in that it also changes constantly. \u00a0I believe that people have been conditioned to not believe things that change often, that appear “wishy washy”. \u00a0Because of this, scientific reasoning appears similar to internet information, and people are less likely to believe. \u00a0In the example of climate change science, the addition of nay sayers only reinforces peoples belief that it can not be true.<\/p>\n

With the ability of the internet, the words of Alexis de Tocqueville become very prevalent:<\/p>\n

“A confused clamor rises on every side, and a thousand voices are heard at once”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merchants of Doubt paints a bleak picture of the state of affairs, from climate change to general rampant miss information. \u00a0In regards to climate change it almost seems that Climate Change has never had a time to shine. \u00a0In 1965 Roger Revelle made a prediction that by the year 2000, we would see physical changes … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Disinformation at its finest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100738,77135],"tags":[1301,2545,1637,33,34218],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-science-2","category-mosaic","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-global-warming","tag-internet","tag-merchants-of-doubt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}