For the past few weeks there has been the appearance of a flood of news about the Copenhagen climate talks and the clean energy bill in the U.S. Senate. Standing in that flood it’s easy to get caught up in the atmospherics of frantic action and constant crisis. But step out for a while and it becomes clear just how much of the “news” consists of people who don’t really know anything guessing: what things mean, who’s thinking what, what the future holds.
Copenhagen failed and sprang back to life a half-dozen times and it hasn’t even started yet. The clean energy bill was declared doomed over and over in the House, until it passed. The Senate bill was declared dead, totally impossible ... then, no, it would be done by Copenhagen ... then it was hopeless ... then there was a bipartisan road to passage ... then they were abandoning the carbon cap entirely ... then it was a bill in Spring ...
What all this “news” has in common is that it’s based on Some Person Guessing. The closer one gets to the circus, the more one realizes that everyone is guessing, right up to negotiators and senators themselves. Everyone’s trying to shape the future, not forecast it. Check out these results from National Journal‘s poll of political insiders:
Q: How likely is this Congress to enact cap-and-trade legislation to curb global warming?
Democrats (38 votes)
Very likely: 16 percent
Somewhat likely: 37 percent
Somewhat unlikely: 37 percent
Very unlikely: 11 percentRepublicans (40 votes)
Very likely: 3 percent
Somewhat likely: 10 percent
Somewhat unlikely: 35 percent
Very unlikely: 48 percent
Other responses (volunteered) 5 percent
These are insiders, close to the process itself, and their predictions line up rather eerily with their ideological predispositions. Kerry says the bill will pass in the Spring; Murkowski mutters that it won’t happen this session. Which really knows? Neither. There is nobody who really knows. In an age of text, Twitter, and 24 hour media, there just aren’t many secrets left, even for insiders. What secrets there are stay that way not by being concealed but by being difficult to pick out from the torrent of junk speculation that surrounds them. (The same is true of predictions about what effect such a massive piece of legislation would have. The accurate answer is that no one really knows.)
Anyway, these days everyone’s a pundit, and pundits are always wrong:
[Philip Tetlock at Berkeley] studied pundits and discovered they were, to a rough approximation, always wrong when making predictions. He took 284 pundits and asked them questions about the future. Their performance was worse than chance. With three possible answers, they were right less than 33 per cent of the time. A monkey chucking darts would have done better. This is consoling. More consoling still is Tetlock’s further finding that the more certain a pundit was, the more likely he was to be wrong. Their problem being that they couldn’t self-correct, presumably because they’d invested so much of their personality and self-esteem in a specific view. (That makes me think of so many people, almost everybody, in fact.)
There’s a whole political media ecosystem that feeds on everyone being a pundit. Those inside it have every incentive to exaggerate the importance of every day’s comments and developments. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country ignores almost all of it. It’s hard not to think sometimes that the world would be a better place if there were fewer people involved in the closed-loop meta-gossip circuit and more involved just putting their heads down and doing real work.
(Yes, yes, I know. Guilty as charged.)
U.S. warns China against ‘stillborn’ climate deal
Michael Pollan video on Democracy Now
Four stories that should have changed the media narrative ... but didn’t
Comments
View as Flat
dtrom4 Posted 8:12 am
19 Nov 2009
Can you fix the link to that study? It looks very interesting.
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David Roberts Posted 10:47 am
19 Nov 2009
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bianca.fletcher Posted 9:42 am
19 Nov 2009
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Sam Penrose Posted 10:02 am
19 Nov 2009
- Activist takeaways from those long reports on the psychology of climate change education. Here's a 215 pager that looks valuable: http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cec/?4092/Psychology-Climate-Change . What action items does it suggest?
- Investigate the local electoral dynamics facing swing Senators. Can we change the political calculus causing e.g. Franken or Feingold to sign an "honor coal first" letter?
- What's going to with land use? Example per Gregor MacDonald: 22 million people live in car-centric SoCal. How can we best mitigate their GHG impact? Electric cars? Mass transit? Pay them to move to Michigan and Ohio?
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Biodiversivist Posted 11:27 am
19 Nov 2009
"..The term originates from the Sanskrit (a language from ancient India) term paṇḍitá, meaning "learned" (see also Pandit). It refers to someone who is erudite in various subjects and who conducts religious ceremonies and offers counsel to the king..."
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Ken Ward Posted 11:47 am
19 Nov 2009
After almost 30 years working at the nexus of politics-as-usual and efforts to put enough outsider pressure to knock the whole thing of kilter, I would agree that climate legislation has had an abnormally unpredictable journey thus far. I say "abnormally" because in 9 out of 10 instances, 9 out of 10 insiders get it right, at least conflicts occurring this late in the game.
The reason this is not the case with ACES is certainly due in part to ramping up activism, but I think the more crucial factor is that the the measure being touted as the solution to climate cataclysm, or at least a significant step in the right direction, is nothing of the sort. To the extent that there is a kernel or two of reasoned, worried thinking going on in DC, within the ranks of Boxer-Kerry supporters as well as critics, those lucid moments of weighing geophysical versus political realities are tending to gum up the works. I'm willing to bet that even John Kerry is having a few sleepless nights right now, flogging a bill that will guarantee we blow past the point of no return (that's what 450 ppm means).
Now, if we had the correct definition of the problem (300-350 ppm, or lower) and a functional solution on the table it would be a definite loser, because there's apparently not yet enough support for maintaining conditions remotely similar to those in which civilization began; but there'd be no problem sorting out what direction is up.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 12:36 pm
19 Nov 2009
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Matt Petryni Posted 6:15 pm
19 Nov 2009
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HealthyHiker Posted 10:15 pm
19 Nov 2009
People should contact mainstream media sources that they may be subscribed to and demand better. The editors and publishers need to hear from their customers.
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stormkite Posted 9:52 pm
22 Nov 2009
Thing is, we (you, me, the folks who read or watch) are NOT the customers. We're actually the product... or at least our attention and mindspace is.
The CUSTOMERS are the advertising agents and companies who pay the MSM guys to deliver their messages into our mindspace... and I assure you, the eds and publishers hear from those customers. After every issue.
Whereas we, unless we fit the "right" demographic categories (which probably nobody reading this site does) are considered defective product, can't be sold, and the eds and pubs would just as soon we DON'T read their stuff; we've a bad habit of breaking the buying trance they're trying to create.
Contacting the media folks is a waste. If you want to be heard, you've GOT to contact the advertisers directly... and en masse.
They're the customers, they're the money. They'll get heard in the editorial offices. We won't.
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