“The Media” as in corporate for profit media, have been doing MUCH more harm than good lately it seems.
They exist as profit generation devices FIRST and as a reliable news source as some lesser desired facet of their function. It’s insanely frustrating to see what would amount to “click bait” or “anger porn” be “top news” all the time while useful information is passed on as “anger/fear gets clicks…”
Just to give you an idea, how good some studies are. This is the quality of the World Energy Outlook report from the IEA:
- The WEO 2010 projections for solar PV capacity for the year 2024 (180 GW) have been achieved in January 2015 and exceeded threefold the WEO projections for 2015.
- Real wind capacity in 2010 exceeded 260% and 104% the WEO 2002 and 2004 projections respectively for this year. WEO projections for wind energy from 2002 for 2030 had been achieved 20 years earlier, in 2010.
- Independent analysts have been more correct in their projections of the successful expansion of renewable energy than the WEO. Only forecasts of the conventional energy industry, including BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil, were similarly low as IEA projections.
- WEO projections overestimate the potential of coal industry in the last years and do not reflect the latest trend of divestment of finance from the coal industry in the last years as well as China’s starting coal exit and increasing investment in renewables.
- WEO from 2000 to 2006 highly overestimated oil-based electricity. Despite a decline of nuclear energy in the last 10 years, WEO still projects an annual expansion of about 10 GW nuclear in the next decade. Given a few commissioned and financed nuclear projects and the 100-200% overruns over the planning costs in Europe and delays, WEO projections appear highly overestimated.
This is why you don’t just “trust the science.” Greed, egos, corruption, perverse incentives. There’s a lot going on in the background that people are ignorant about.
I hope you’re not suggesting that climate science shouldn’t be trusted. The point of the article is that papers which discussed short term impacts on local communities could inspire more immediate change in individuals.
Anecdotally, what I’ve seen about these long term end of the 21st century studies, is that they’ve all been too conservative. How many climate headlines have you seen these past two years that have said “faster than expected”?
I hope you’re not suggesting that climate science shouldn’t be trusted.
I’m saying that blind faith in any science leaves one vulnerable. It is a bureaucratic labyrinth of conflicting human interests, and far from the pure philosophical ideal of pursuing knowledge and truth.
That is true for basicly everything humans ever touched. Humans are just not perfect, so you have to look at their personal intrest. Fortunatly science tends to attract a fairly large group of people actually intressted in studying the subject and not too much about personal gain. That is combined with a culture of testing ideas, which make faking more difficult, but not impossible. What I want to say is that science tends to be among the most accurate systems we have, certainly better then politicans or capitalists.
With too little media coverage, I still feel like too big of portion what’s pressed is being misinterpreted. I feel like people became skeptical, because often articles are about theoretical, too early or only at lab level findings. People feel baited by that, or at least I am. I agree that it would be great if climate research could be focused more on practicality, local action.
