
Anti-climate action statements get more visibility in news coverage, study finds - hhs
https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-07-27/wetts
======
0-O-0
> Approximately 14% of press releases opposing climate action or denying the
> science behind climate change received major national news coverage, she
> found, compared to about 7% of press releases with pro-climate action
> messages.

There might be a very simple explanation: there are significantly more pro-
climate change press releases, than anti. Comparing percentages without
correcting for that seems to be dishonest.

~~~
netcan
Covid has really driven home a point to me. As a society, we are statistically
illiterate. Politicians and journalists particularly so. Most of our
important, newsworthy information today is statistical.

This is a real problem. In the context of public schooling, I think statistics
needs to become the primary discipline taught in high school maths. It's more
useful to our work life, and (relevant in the context of public schooling)
essential to informed citizenship.

Literacy is a pretty close analogy here. The average person is totally ill
equipped to to read politically relevant news and form an opinion about it.
Often, the person who wrote it is just as ill equipped.

Statistical statements have a tricky form. They seem like a statement of fact.
They are, kind of. It's a fact that this researcher measured what she
measured. The implication though, that's conjecture, and it may or may not be
a good one.

~~~
tomp
If anything, COVID drove the opposite point for me.

The whole "masks don't work" spiel that the WHO did was _statistically_
legitimate... We really _don 't_ have proof (or whatever the medical community
considers is "proof" \- like double blind large scale trail with less than 5%
chance of being false) that masks work. _Statistically,_ we don't know.

But _operationally_ masks have negligible risk and practical burden, while
having a huge _potential_ benefit (stopping the pandemic in its tracks), so
even if the overall probability of this benefit is low (or at least not
necessarily 95+%), it's the correct decision from an _executive_ perspective.

Basically: scientific / statistical opinion: masks aren't proven to work;
executive decision: recommending masks has minimal downside and massive
potential upside;

~~~
tacocataco
I was under the impression that masks only work to protect you from
transmitting to others. Has that aspect not been studied yet?

Or are you talking about the efficacy of masks protecting the person that
wears it?

Appreciate your time.

~~~
ryanmcbride
The largest reduction in rate of transmission is when the infected person is
wearing a mask. However if both the infected, and uninfected person are
wearing masts, it drops just a little bit lower. But you're right that if an
unmasked infected person comes in contact with a masked healthy person, the
masked person is still very likely to get infected.

------
topkai22
90% of press releases were pro-climate action, only 10% were anti-climate
action. That’s makes it less newsworthy if an org is pro climate action.

Let’s also talk about scale in the study- it looked at 1,794 press releases.
Only 10% of those were anti climate action, and only 14% of those were cited,
so we are talking about 25 press releases over 20 years, as opposed to 113
pro-climate press releases. That means that 81% of covered PRs are pro climate
action instead of 90% of press releases- readers would still get the
impression that an overwhelming majority of orgs are pro climate action.

I have other quibbles here (climate consensus has changed over the last 35
years), but I definitely didn’t come away agreeing that there is something
fundamentally wrong with journalistic standards as the article and abstract
imply.

~~~
DangitBobby
What do you mean, climate consensus has changed?

~~~
topkai22
To be clear, I'm talking about views and understanding in broader society, not
the scientific community. 35 years is a long time- roughly half the humans in
the US weren't alive 35 years ago. It'd be surprising if nothing had changed.

(edit: although maybe things have not changed as much as my lived experience
tells me:
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx))

------
acidburnNSA
Debate on climate is now much more interesting than whether or not climate
change is real or caused by humans. Those things are pretty well established.
Now people are debating what the appropriate actions are, and it's much more
nuanced.

For example, we have the "eco-pragmatists" like Michael Shellenberger
publishing "Apocalypse Never" that involves some really interesting interviews
and points about how economic development can be more important for people
living on the edge of the Amazon rainforest or alongside Virunga National Park
in the Congo from the perspective of climate resilience. In other words,
having modern electricity and infrastructure seems more likely to help people
in these situations than rapid decarbonization, especially given our slow
progress in decarbonization and that fact that the world today is still >80%
fossil fueled.

He also suggested a merit order of fuels that went: biomass < coal < natural
gas < nuclear. Moving from left to right is good, but moving from right to
left is bad, he argues.

He published this with a pretty abrasive blog post featuring undersupported
controversial points and basically got blacklisted and deplatformed by the
major media outlets. Yes, he seems to have cherry-picked a bit to support his
narrative, but that's something all authors do.

And we have the Michael Moore produced doco on Youtube (Planet of the Humans)
that criticized the mainstream green energy narrative and also got temporarily
deplatformed due to outcry.

I have found interesting insight in these people even though I've considered
climate change one of the major challenges of our time for 20 years now. It's
certainly interesting times.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>And we have the Michael Moore produced doco on Youtube (Planet of the Humans)
that criticized the mainstream green energy narrative and also got temporarily
deplatformed due to outcry.

That pseudo-documentary was so dishonest, though:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Factual_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Factual_accuracy)

As Dana Nucitelli said: "The film's case is akin to arguing that because fruit
contains sugar, eating strawberries is no healthier than eating a cheesecake."

~~~
acidburnNSA
That section lists very weak criticism. Some solar farms are lower efficiency
than others. So what? That doesn't go against any of the points made in the
film. They did not say that all solar farms have lower-than-average capacity
factors. The fact that you can get deplatformed for this really surprises me.
This level of technical criticism is not even remotely proportional to the
massive negative backlash it got. Clearly there's a higher-level battle being
fought.

A lot of what it had to say about the combustion of renewable biofuels (air
pollution, carbon emissions) was pretty right-on though, and is not very well
known.

The fact that there are indeed actual externalities to renewable energy is a
conversation that needs to be had. I think a lot of people are hoping they
won't be too bad at scale.

------
tafurnace
After reading this article, my mind simplified the findings as: organizations
that have more money get more press than those that have less. Seems pretty
obvious when framed in this manner.

~~~
Udik
If two very reliable scientific studies come out about the same subject, one
confirming what everyone already knows about it, and the other one finding
some basic flaw in the accepted science that entirely challenges our
understanding of it- in that case, which one do you think would have more
press?

It seems only natural to me that the more interesting one is the one
challenging our knowledge: its (potential) information content is higher,
simply because it is less probable.

In other words, in the current world an article pushing for climate change
activism might be the classic "dog bites man" while the opposite is "man bites
dog".

~~~
gameswithgo
I agree with your premise, but nobody is finding basic flaws in climate
science that challenge our understanding of it.

~~~
skinkestek
Warning: light hyperbole in this first paragraph: We don't really know because
anything that could challenge it sadly get summarily downvoted without an
explanation.

I believe in it but it is sad to see that we are so scared of it that we
cannot even bother to explain why something is wrong and instead have to opt
for

\- name calling

\- appeal to authority

\- strawmen

every time.

Again: I don't work for big oil. I don't fly and haven't for years. I reduce,
reuse and recycle and do all the right things.

But there are still a number of questions I have that I cannot get answers for
because if I ask them before anyone who knows has a chance to answer someone
will summarily downvote and/or flag it and say I am a JAQ-ing shill. (JAQ =
Just Asking Questions is a known bad tactic, but it is incredibly frustrating
to be accused of that when I just want to know the answer.)

~~~
adrianN
Something getting downvoted is different from a study presenting solid data
not getting published. As far as I know there is no solid data refuting the
consensus as described for example in the IPCC reports.

~~~
Udik
But then maybe we should treat with the same scepticism studies diverging from
the IPCC consensus in _either_ direction. Those that downplay the risks of
climate change as well as those that announce catastrophic outcomes that are
not considered likely by the IPCC.

~~~
adrianN
If you look at climate policy we treat everything with extreme skepticism that
tells us any change is necessary. Announced climate goals fall way short of
anything the IPCC reports would support, and implemented policies fall short
even of those unambitious goals.

------
rsa25519
> “Journalists seem to feel that they always have to include opposing voices
> when they report on climate change,” Wetts said. “But sometimes they give
> those opposing voices so much weight, they lead readers to believe that
> climate denial is more than a fringe stance.”

Interesting. I agree that false equivalency should be avoided. But in all
honesty, humans love novelty, so disproportionately covering things like this
makes sense, even if wrong

~~~
hannob
There is really nothing novel about climate denial.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
If a large portion of the population thinks climate denial is not a good thing
climate denial is also an outrage prompter, prompting outrage is good business
in 2020.

~~~
pstuart
> prompting outrage is good business in 2020

Yes, in the social media sense. But there's plenty to be outraged about
regardless of that.

------
human3047628272
Any article about impending catastrophes that may well end up wiping us all
from the Planet are a bit hard to tolerate. When we are confronted to them our
brain automatically trigger its best protection mechanism, which is denial. We
immediately think of thousands of reasons convincing us that the article is
wrong, misinformed, etc. Another article with any explanation of why the first
one is wrong is therefore much more pleasant to our brain. That's why denial
articles get more coverage. That's also why we don't clearly see the reality
and why we do nothing to prevent our impending doom.

~~~
andrewprock
Yet post-apocalyptic entertainment media is a thriving niche.

~~~
HankB99
Would that be for the same reason automobile traffic slows to a crawl when
there is a traffic accident to view? (Not talking about traffic in the same
direction which is subject to lane closure and slowed down for safety of
responders but traffic in the opposite direction.)

------
Taylor_OD
Alcohol has positive health benefit articles get far more shares than alcohol
has negative health benefit articles. People/companies like to share things
that support their views and advertising dollars.

------
the3b
Reading the linked article, and not the full text of the article, I do not see
what the criteria was for determining what constitutes a position "opposing
climate action." Is it defined more in the full article? Opposing climate
action can be defined on a broad spectrum, which will cross political and
other boundaries. For instance, if a company or group opposed Green New Deal
legislation, that is a big difference from opposing implementation of any
action.

------
blackbrokkoli
1922 Walter Lippmann kickstarted the idea of "news value" which lists criteria
predicting whether an event or narrative is worth printing.

He proposed the following, and we can apply them here to compare the two types
of news:

Oddity: anti-climate wins

Sensationalism: anti-climate wins

Damage: anti-climate wins

Establishment, Duration, Structure, Relevancy, Use, Prominency, Proximity:
about equal

(Translations mine, couldn't find good English ones)

Thus, the result is little surprising. Still a good study, the obvious should
also be proved!

------
tengbretson
> When organizations take a stand against actions to combat climate change,
> they get more news coverage than their pro-climate action peers

Could it be that news organizations are doing this as a way of publicly
shaming? In which case the discrepancy makes perfect sense.

------
akimball
Broadly speaking, the press loves the nutters. They make a sensational story
and draw eyeballs. This is fine, but then both-sidesing leads to the
normalization of nuttery. Fact checking is hard work, and not adequately
compensated. It's a public good problem, a failure of capitalist incentives to
protect the public interest. Often the impulse is to use regulation to
circumscribe such damages, but in the case of the press, doing so has
unconscionable consequences as well. It will take a simple act of genius,
restructuring the markets for public information (supply side), and/or a leap
in public education and conscience (demand side) to address such a wicked
problem.

------
JackFr
Clickbait generates clicks, study finds.

~~~
DudeInBasement
Clickbait study finds clickbait generates clicks.

~~~
kube-system
New study discovers one weird marketing trick you'll never believe!

