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NASA chief scientist weighs in
Americans are "under siege" from disinformation designed to confuse the public about the threat of climate change, Nasa's former chief scientist has said.
Speaking to the Guardian, Ellen Stofan, who left the US space agency in December, said that a constant barrage of half-truths had left many Americans oblivious to the potentially dire consequences of continued carbon emissions, despite the science being unequivocal.
"We are under siege by fake information that's being put forward by people who have a profit motive," she said, citing oil and coal companies as culprits. "Fake news is so harmful because once people take on a concept it's very hard to dislodge it."
During the past six months, the US science community has woken up to this threat, according to Stofan, and responded by ratcheting up efforts to communicate with the public at the grassroots level as well as in the mainstream press.
"The harder part is this active disinformation campaign," she said before her appearance at Cheltenham Science Festival this week. "I'm always wondering if these people honestly believe the nonsense they put forward. When they say 'It could be volcanoes' or 'the climate always changes'... to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry."
Stofan added that while "fake news" is frequently characterised as a problem in the right-leaning media, she saw evidence of an "erosion of people's ability to scrutinise information" across the political spectrum. "All of us have a responsibility," she said. "There's this attitude of 'I read it on the internet therefore it must be true'."
No editorial comment included.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:21PM (12 children)
You're confusing an industrial era financing technology arguably past its prime with a political system.
You're better off with a nice monarchy, neoreactionary style. Like the brits but with teeth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:32PM (7 children)
How does a monarchy have anything to do with ensuring that future decisions are likely made by people who have had a history of making profitable decisions?
Indeed, a monarchy (especially one with "teeth") is based on the principle of coercion, rather than on voluntary agreement in advance of interaction; that's a principle that capitalism rejects, and that has no place in civilized society.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:42PM (1 child)
Exactly! I propose an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We should take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer should have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs or a two-thirds majority for diplomatic affairs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:09PM
That's not capitalism. Fail.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:50PM (4 children)
Successful monarchies have stable internal opposition keeping on their feet.
Decrepit disaster monarchies have no internal opposition keep them in line, turn their countries into hellholes until the revolution violently deposes them.
That's why you want something more like a constitutional monarchy and less like a 3rd world dictatorship.
Make the right decision or end up dead. Seems a fair tradeoff, absolute power to rule, but if you screw up its off with your head.
Much better than our current system of corporations have absolute power to rule, and if they mess up, too bad for us they certainly aren't getting punished.
Again this weird fixation on "all the world's a marketplace" and if you found a hammer that works really well at pounding down financial problems then it somehow miraculously is also the best and only hammer for diplomatic alliances and treaties, or comically the government regulation of itself as a market LOL. Its weird, by analogy its like latching on to a well understood and successful technology like double entry bookkeeping or thermodynamics and declaring thats how the supreme court should rule itself or thats how treaties should be negotiated. Sort of a relativity principle, like law of physics A works over location X so moving it to location Y should continue to work much as a financial industrial corporate funding mechanism works, so using it to define social policy, lets say health care or national defense, must by definition continue to work, right?
Certainly, England in the 1800s is a better model of political governance than Somalia today, or the USA today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:13PM (3 children)
Both involve governance on the principle of coercion "Do as I say", rather than on the principle that interaction follows rules to which the parties agree in advance.
Indeed, Somalia is the result of a failed communist state, and the warlords that have taken over are just another form of the governmental mindset ("do as I say"); however, it should be noted that in the absence of a strong government, the quality in life among Somalians has skyrocketed, and this mainly due to people being allowed to pursue their own self-interest according to the capitalistic markets that naturally evolve around flows of resources.
Capitalism is what makes a society productive, even if people don't realize it; governments are merely parasites on this productivity.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:45PM
The only disagreement I have with your otherwise pretty good post is the mischaracterization of a constitutional monarchy as being purely coercive and not following agreed upon rules.
There's a big difference between a military dictatorship and a constitutional monarchy for example. Although superficially both my involve some dude declaring himself "king". In some constitutional monarchies the king is not technically self declared.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:34PM (1 child)
I dare you to say that to a Somali person. It's hard for me to predict if they would fall to the floor in paroxysms of laughter or try to kill you. I could see it going either way.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @08:24AM
Got a source, AC?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @07:34PM
Hmm, informal list of attributes the king should have:
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 12 2017, @12:35AM (1 child)
Which is what the Brits had as soon as the Romans left.
What they wound up with was 15 centuries (more or less) of war.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 12 2017, @11:45AM
The fault of the Danes and Franks. Internally they had some impressive civil wars but proportionately very small amount of time.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Wootery on Monday June 12 2017, @09:19AM
Can't tell if that's a dig at my country's dentistry, or international influence. Not wrong on either count.