Re:Seeding oceans with volcanic ash could be new tool to tac...
by AtlasBarfed on Sunday October 31, 2021 @10:47PM
(#29062572)
Yes this kind of reporting is the established industry exploiting "whataboutism" / newspaper scoring when absolute numbers are absolutely necessary.
It doesn't matter that smart people immediately do the actual gigatons accounting within seconds of reading the article. The headline is in the public, ready to populate some neuron in their brain that represents false equivalence "Well we polluted the atmosphere with gigatons for 150 years, well that's offset by the gee-whiz volcanic ash headline".
What I mean by newspaper scoring is the surfacing of that simplistic offsetting neuron encoding in lazy people: Simply have three points on one side, three points on the other, regardless of veracity or actual scientific/environmental/economic scales and accounting, they offset in the minds of both the vapid news parroters and those that watch them. Worst of all, the newsmen get to pretend like they are objective because they "represented a balanced perspective".
It doesn't matter that smart people immediately do the actual gigatons accounting within seconds of reading the article. The headline is in the public, ready to populate some neuron in their brain that represents false equivalence "Well we polluted the atmosphere with gigatons for 150 years, well that's offset by the gee-whiz volcanic ash headline".
What I mean by newspaper scoring is the surfacing of that simplistic offsetting neuron encoding in lazy people: Simply have three points on one side, three points on the other, regardless of veracity or actual scientific/environmental/economic scales and accounting, they offset in the minds of both the vapid news parroters and those that watch them. Worst of all, the newsmen get to pretend like they are objective because they "represented a balanced perspective".