Archive for the ‘Media and the Environment’ Category
Before obsessing on arsenic risks in apple juice which the news cycle most likely has forgotten about by now, here’s an exploration of something likely to become a current topic of discussion. Over on io9 there’s an article titled “Democracy Needs Ignorant People Too” which riffs off of the Miller-McCune post which isn’t titled much better – “Why a Democracy Needs Uninformed People”, both of which are riffing off of a paper by Iain Couzin of Princeton published last month in Science. It’s behind the firewall which means a trip to the library before I can comment on the specific paper. However, based on these news accounts, the key message seems to be that the group dynamics of decision-making are influenced by having a diverse mix of “informed” and “uninformed” opinions – which is something different from what’s conveyed in the headlines of the articles; the articles capture the research findings better than what’s reflected in the headlines. I wouldn’t have bothered reading these and commenting on them without the sensational headlines, and I’d rather think that the editors are kind of clever in coming up with eye-catching headlines to draw attention to a geeky story about evolutionary biology research rather than being stupid or corrupt or both. It puts the “information dilution” concept (from the previous post) in a new light.
I’m actually dealing with this problem at work right now (a small group of vocal and opinionated subject-matter experts are driving decision-making about how to solve a problem, and possibly not in a good direction either).
Originally published in July 2005. Edited slightly to accommodate now-dead links.
From Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom Weblog I linked to a great article by Edward Tufte about how the findings of primary studies gradually lose their power and meaning, when they become repackaged and redistributed by secondary organizations (journalists, public relations firms, think tanks, nongovernmental organizations, governmental agencies, and on and on – see the posts from the previous couple of days):
In repackagings, a persistent rage to conclude denies the complexities, ambiguities and uncertainties of the primary evidence. A substantial selection bias also operates: news wins out over olds, as recency of evidence decides relevance of evidence.
You must see the original to get the subtext behind the phrase “rage to conclude”, which is a wonderful quote from Flaubert.
It was easy enough to be dismissive when Dr. Oz was flogging the issue of arsenic in apple juice being purchased by U.S. consumers. However, the issue just doesn’t seem to be settling to the level of importance that it deserves, which, in the larger scheme of things environmentally-healthy-related, is not much. Thoughtful journalists and those not-so-thoughtful seem to feel compelled to make it grow unduly in an already overgrown media landscape. The proximate cause of this media attention is the current issue of Consumers’ Report, which by itself appears to be a reasonably insightful discussion – more on that later – through once again through the magicks of short attention spans and the news cycle, momentary uproar and alarm and another opportunity to be stupid about this issue have been created. Read the rest of this entry »
Hard on the heels of the President (through the OMB) canceling EPA’s rulemaking on a more stringent ambient air quality standard for ozone, comes Walter Russell Mead fatuously intoning the death of environmentalism. The point he brings forward is a pretty punchless and poorly founded way of saying, “hah, loooosers”. I expected better from someone with Mr. Mead’s gravitas, and other people have foretold the “death of environmentalism” with far more eloquence than his. None of this concerns me terribly because it’s just conservatives vaporing, and people will be back as soon as the real environmental crises kick in, as if Hurricane Katrina or Texas burning up with drought this year aren’t real environmental crises.
Environmental progress seems to be more difficult compared with the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. The early successes resulted from going after low-hanging fruit (DDT, burning rivers, smog) which didn’t require a lot of individual sacrifice or change. It’s understandable that Western governments are reluctant to confront their citizens with the news that confronting climate change or resource depletion could involve curtailing everyone’s standard of living. The future of environmentalism involves a social revolution over values, and I’m not sure the professional environmentalist class is cut out for that. In the US, the professional environmentalists are still looking for legal/bureaucratic solutions from a system that’s either corrupt (Congress), or has undergone regulatory capture (the agencies), is too conservative for them (the courts) or has thrown them under the bus (the current Administration). Without governmental allies, against the money and media influence exerted by the regulated industries environmentalists are bringing a knife into a gun fight.
There appears to be some growing awareness of this problem. Some would argue that environmentalism needs to get more religious (see Lynn White for the definitive statement on faith and the environment). Someone is advocating a crowdsourcing approach blending today’s social networking tools with the values of the Summer of Love, though I’m with Terry Mann, the writer character played by James Earl Jones in “Field of Dreams”.
What’s an environmentalist to do if money, mainstream media and government aren’t in your corner, and you have difficult truths to convey? Satire and ridicule is a start, perhaps. Recognize that you’re fighting a culture war and start reading about 4GW. Stop being reactive and start preparing to play the long game. Time is on the side of environmentalism.
Over a glass of wine this week with a colleague from the office, we got to talking about television and how neither of us watch much any longer. I confessed to my Internet surfing habit, which had become a TV replacement, and about as unhealthy for my intellect and use of time. However, my internet habits are changing. At one time, I found myself frequenting lefty political blogs. I even posted to the Great Orange Satan for several years, until I stopped three years ago became convinced it simply an echo chamber and that most of the folks commenting on my posts weren’t being terribly insightful or thoughtful. Hard on the few folks who are trying to think and engage meaningfully, I know, but there really are better uses for my time. And, as with many, I’ve fallen into the intellectual trap of not reading broadly across the spectrum of political and social thought, outlined by Susan Jacoby in a book I’m currently reading, The Age of American Unreason. But this is tempered by my growing awareness that most commentary on the Internet is wholly unreadable. So, when I can summon the will, I’ve stopped reading most of it. By extension, its arguable this essay is also unreadable. But that’s ok, I think, because it’s unlikely to be read.
That needs some context. The group blog Lawyers, Guns and Money, which was a regular reading stop for me until they added as a writer obesity denier Paul Campos, recently posted a blog item about the impact of the meltdown of the Fukashima reactor in the United States. It was the standard cut-and-paste from another blog item which alleges that an apparent increase in infant mortality in the Pacific Northwest, reported on by the Centers for Disease Control, is associated with fallout from the meltdown of the Fukushima reactor. The item gets debunked multiple times in the comments, an example of the self-correcting nature of the Internet, and comments raise the typical issues about the original source (I skim Counterpunch for many things, but not thoughtful commentary). But there are other issues with regard to giving wider distribution to this piece. The original sourcing is understandable – the authors are anti-nuclear activists, though what they’ve written reflects badly on anti-nuclear activists as a whole. The placement is understandable – Counterpunch is a strongly leftist publication, one that I go to for leads or dirt but not thoughtful commentary. What is less understandable is how the item got apparently wider distribution, including Al Jazeera. It’s a statement and not a complimentary one about the judgment and questioning attitude on the part of journalists and Internet commenters.
On the favorable side, there was some good citizen science done at the blog The Capacity Factor, where a guest poster obtained the raw mortality data and conducted an analysis using the professional-grade statistics freeware package R (I’ve recently downloaded and started learning to use it – R is awesome). Events like this restore my faith in blogging and encourage me to get back out there. But the high-traffic blogs such as LGM remain a major disappointment for the ordinary reader such as myself.