
Shut Up, Franzen - jmsflknr
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/hot-planet/shut-up-franzen/
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crispinb
I'd say "shut up, climate scientists". Not on the science, but on this simple-
minded superstitious view of political 'choice' (which, incidentally,
completely ignores all science related to choice, human cognitive development,
etc).

WTF does 'choice' mean for 7 billion people organised into a bunch of
mutually-hostile nations? Not one person in the world has a clue how to herd
the global mob of semi-conscious apes. 30 years of failure amply demonstrate
this.

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mark-r
I don't get any text on the page, just the picture at the top. What am I doing
wrong?

Edit: that was in Chrome, works fine in Firefox.

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B1FF_PSUVM
I find it interesting the most of the rhetoric could have been lifted from a
XIII century religious tract.

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chmaynard
Serious scientists don't write headlines like this. Whatever her objective was
in writing this opinion piece, she shot herself in the foot. Franzen's essay
in The New Yorker is profound and extremely well-written. It deserves a better
response than this diatribe.

~~~
mikeyouse
Franzen's essay was garbage. There are rebuttals all over the place including
from some of the most prominent Climate scientists in the world (e.g. Michael
Mann who was asked to fact check a specific accounting of climate modeling,
who was then ignored for the more pessimistic framing that Franzen
preferred[1]). Tone policing the n+1th article to correct blatant
misinformation isn't super useful.

[1] -
[https://twitter.com/michaelemann/status/1170847152060477440](https://twitter.com/michaelemann/status/1170847152060477440)

~~~
mistersquid
Mann's correction is not very helpful to Franzen's political agenda which is
to motivate people by inducing fear. Mann states (on Twitter)

> Even after Franzen was informed of his error by the fact-checker, he still
> ended up skewing the notion of uncertainty, implying the model averages
> preferentially underestimate likely warming, when I had clearly indicated
> there's an equal likelihood of under and over-estimation. [0]

which suggests Franzen took the side of the "equal likelihood" and skewed it
in the direction he preferred. What Mann wants is an accurate scientific
representation of the model's accuracy whereas Franzen wants to emphasize the
potentially disastrous consequences of a model that underestimates the
severity of warming.

Mann is scientifically correct but Franzen is after something more crucial
which is convincing people to act.

Kate Marvel seems to read Franzen's article as fatalist (or at least
encouraging readers to adopt a fatalist position). I personally read Franzen
as trying to motivate people to act in the face of imminent and unavoidable
danger and, in my opinion, I think Franzen's approach is more likely to
produce action than Marvel's.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1170848372569325570](https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1170848372569325570)

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coldtea
> _We are, I promise you, not doomed, no matter what Jonathan Franzen says. We
> could be, of course, if we decided we really wanted to._

Well, we knew about these things for 3+ decades, so how does that "decision"
thing working out thus far?

